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THE 



WOKKS 



[THE EET. SYDNEY SMITH. 

t • 

I 



THREE VOLUMES, 

COMPLETE IN ONE. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
CAREY AND HART. 

STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHKSON. 

1844. 



Copy— j t 



9 

48 



■^k^ 

\':^^ 



fj rv \ 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON^ 
PRINTED BY T. K. &^. G. COLLINS, PHiIaDELPHIA. 



PRETACE. ^^ 



When first I went into the Church, I had a curacy in the middle of 
Salisbury Plain. The Squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and requested 
me to go with his son to reside at the University of Weimar ; before we 
could get there, Germany became the seat of war, and in stress of politics 
we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five years. The principles of 
the French Revolution were then fully afloat, and it is impossible to con- 
ceive a more violent and agitated state of society. Among the first persons 
with whom I became acquainted were, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray (late 
Lord Advocate for Scotland), and Lord Brougham; all of them maintaining 
opinions upon political subjects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Duhdas, 
then exercising supreme power over the northern division of the island. 

One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat in 
Buccleugh-place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed 
that we should set up a Review ; this was acceded to with acclamation. 
I was appointed Editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit 
the first number of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed for the 
Review was, 

" Tenui musam meditamur avena." 
" We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal." 

But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present 

grave motto fi:om Publius Syrus^ of whom none of us had, I am sure, 

ever read a single line ; and so began what has since turned out to be 

a very important and able journal. When I left Edinburgh, it fell into 

the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and reached the 

highest point of popularity and success. I contributed from England many 

articles, which I have been foolish enough to collect and publish with some 

other tracts written by me. 

To appreciate the value of the Edinburgh Review, the state of England 

at the period when that journal began should be had in remembrance. 

The Catholics were not emancipated — the Corporation and Test Acts were 

unrepealed — the Game Laws were horribly oppressive — Steel Traps and Spring 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

Guns were set all over the country — Prisoners tried for their Lives could 
have no Counsel — Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed heavily 
upon mankind — Libel was punished by the most cruel and vindictive im- 
prisonments — the principles of Political Economy were little understood 

the Law of Debt and of Conspiracy were upon the worst possible footing 

the enormous wickedness of the Slave Trade was tolerated — a thousand evils 
were in existence, which the talents of good and able men have since 
lessened or removed; and these effects have been not a little assisted by 
the honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review. 

I see very little in my Reviews to alter or repent of: I always endea- 
voured to fight against evil; and what I thought evil then, I think evil 
now. 1 am heartily glad that all our disqualifying laws for religious opinions 
are abolished, and I see nothing in such measures but unmixed good and 
real increase of strength to our Establishment. 

The idea of danger from the extension of the Catholic religion in Eng- 
land I utterly deride. The Catholic faith is a misfortune to the world, 
but those whose faith it conscientiously is, are quite right in professing it 
boldly, and in promoting it by all means which the law allows. A phy-" 
sician does not say " You will be well az soon as the bile is got rid of;'' 
but he says, "You will not be well until after the bile is got rid of." 
He knows after the cause of the malady is removed, that morbid habits 
are to be changed, weakness to be supported, organs to be called back 
to their proper exercise, subordinate maladies to be watched, secondary and 
vicarious symptoms to be studied. The physician is a wise man— but the- 
anserous politician insists, after 200 years of persecution, and ten of emanci- 
pation, that Cathohc Ireland should be as quiet as Edmonton, or Tooting.'* 

Not only are just laws wanted for Cathohc Ireland, but the just adminis- 
tration of just laws; such as they have in general experienced under the 
Whig government; and this system steadily preserved in will, after a lapse 
of time and O'Connell, quiet, conciliate, and civilize that long injured and 
irritable people. 

I have printed in this Collection the Letters of Peter Plymley. The 
Government of that day took great pains to find out the author; all that 
they could find was, that they were brought to Mr. Budd, the publisher, 
by the Earl of Lauderdale. Somehow or another, it came to be conjec- 
tured that I was that author: I have always denied it; but finding that 
I deny it in vain, I have thought it might be as well to include the Let- 
ters in this Collection; they had an immense circulation at the time, and 
I think above 20,000 copies were sold. 

From the beginning of the century (about which time the Review began) 



PREFACE. 5 

to the death of Lord Liverpool, was an awful period for those who had 
the misfortune to entertain liberal opinions, and who were too honest to 
sell them for the ermine of the judge, or the lawn of the prelate: — a long 
and hopeless career in your profession, the chuckling grin of noodles, the 
sarcastic leer of the genuine political rogue — prebendaries, deans, and bishops 
made over your head — reverend renegadoes advanced to the highest digni- 

^ties of the Church, for helping to rivet the fetters of Catholic and Protestant 
Dissenters, and no more chance of a Whig administration than of a thaw 
in Zembla — these were the penalties exacted for liberality of opinion at that, 
period ; and not only was there no pay, but there were many stripes. It 
is always considered as a piece of impertinence in England, if a man of less 

) than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important 
subjects; and in addition he was sure at that time to be assailed with all 
the Billingsgate of the French Revolution — Jacobin, Leveller, Atheist, Deist, 
Socinian, Incendiary, Regicide, were the gentlest appellations used ; and the 
man who breathed a syllable against the senseless bigotry of the two Georges, 
or hinted at the abominable tyranny and persecution exercised upon Catholic 
Ireland, was shunned as unfit for the relations of social life. Not a murmur 

J against any abuse was permitted ; to ,say a word against the suitorcide delays 
of the Court of Chancery, or the cruel punishments of the Game Laws, 
or against any abuse which a rich man idflicted, or a poor man suffered, 
was treason against the Plousiocracy, and was bitterly and steadily resented^ 
Lord Grey had not then taken off the bearing-rein from the English people, 
as Sir Francis Head has now done from horses. 

To set on foot such a Journal in such times, to contribute towards it 
for many years, to bear patiently the reproach and poverty which it caused, 
and to look back and see that I have nothing to retract, and no intempe- 
rance and violence to reproach myself with, is a career of life which I must 
think to be extremely fortunate. Strange and ludicrous are the changes in 
human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the well-paid 
Whigs are riding in chariots : with many faces, however, looking out of the 
windows, (including that of our Prime Minister,) which I never remember to 
have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Libe- 
rality is now a lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy, 
may consider himself as a commissioner, and his fortune as made; and to 
my utter and never ending astonishment, I, an old Edinburgh Reviewer, 

. find myself fighting, in the year 1839, against the Archbishop of Canterbury 
and the Bishop of London, for the existence of the National Church. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

a2 



CONTENTS. 



eM 



ABTICKSS OBIOIVAIXT FUBUSHZB IS THE 

"EDIKBtTHSH BETIEW." 

Page 

Dr. Parr 9 

Dr. Rennel 12 

John Bowles 15 

Dr. Langford 17 

Archdeacon Nares 17 

Matthew Lewis 19 

Australia 20 

Fiev^e's Letters on England 26 

> Edgeworth on Bulls.. 28 

Trimmer and Lancaster 30 

Parnell and Ireland 33 

Methodism 37 

Lidian Missions 48 

Catholics 62 

Methodism 65 

Hannah More 70 

Professional Education 73 

Female Education 79 

' Public Schools 86 

Toleration 90 

Charles Fox 95 

\ Mad Quakers 103 

/ America 107 

Game Laws 116 

Botany Bay 122 

I Chimneysweepers 131 

' America 137 

Ireland 142 

Spring Guns 150 

Prisons 155 

Prisons 162 

Persecuting Bishops 172 

Botany Bay 179 

Game Laws 189 



Pag»- 

Cruel Treatment of untried Prisoners. . . 195' 

America 202~ 

Bentham on Fallacies 209 

Waterton 219 

Man Traps and Spring Guns 227 

Hamilton's Method of teaching Languages 233 

Counsel for Prisoners 243 

Catholics 253 

Neckar's Last Views 263 

Catteau, Tableau des Etats Danois 270 

Thoughts on the Residence of the Clergy 279 

Travels from Palestine 281 

Letter on the Curates' Salary Bill 283 

Proceedings of the Society for the Sup- 
pression of Vice -. 287 

Characters of Fox 292 

Observations on the Historical Work of 
the Right Honoui-able Charles James 

Fox 295 

Disturbances at Madras 304 

Bishop of Lincoln's Charge 311 

Madame d'Epinay 315 

Poor Laws 320 

Public Characters of 1801, 1802 328 

Anastasius 329 

Scarlett's Poor Bill 334 

Memoirs of Captain Rock 338 

Granby 343 

Island of Ceylon 349 

Delphine 354 

Mission to Ashantee. 356 

Wittman's Travels 361. 

SPEECHES. 

Speech on the Catholic Claims 365- 

Speech at the Taunton Reform Meeting. . 369' 

7 



CONTENTS. 



Flf> 



Speefch at Taunton at a Meeting to cele- 
brate the Accession of King William IV. 372 

Speech at Taunton in 1831 on the Reform 
Bill not being passed 373 

Speech respecting the Reform Bill 374 



The Ballot 379 

First Letter to Archdeacon Singleton. . . . 388 
Second Letter to Archdeacon Singleton. . 401 

Third Letter to Archdeacon Singleton 408 

.Letter on the Character of Sir James - 
Mackintosh 416 



Letter to Lord John Russell 4l8 

Sermon on the Duties of the Queen 421 

The Lawyer that tempted Christ : a Ser- 
mon 424 

The Judge that smites contrary to the 

Law: a Sermon 428 

A letter to the Electors upon the Catholic 

Question 432 

A Sermon on the Rules of Christian Cha- 

445 



^^'O'^Y 



Peter Plymley's Letters 449 



WORKS 



OF THE 



REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



DR. PARR.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1802.] 



Ww«ji,nBii has had the good fortune to see 
Dr. Parr's wig, must have observed, that while 
it trespasses a little on the orthodox magnitude 
of perukes in the anterior parts, it scorns even 
Episcopal limits behind, and swells out into 
boundless convexity of frizz, the [/.rya. ^clv/xa of 
barbers, and the terror of the literary world. 
After the manner of his wig, the Doctorf has 
constructed his sermon, giving us a discourse 
of no common length, and subjoining an im- 
measurable mass of notes, which appear to 
concern every learned thing, every learned 
man, and almost every unlearned man since 
the beginning of the world. 

For his text, Dr. Parr has chosen Gal. vi. 10. 
As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good to 
all men, especially to those who are of the household 
of faith. After a short preliminary comparison 
between the dangers of the selfish system, and 
the modern one of universal benevolence, he 
divides his sermon into two parts : in the first, 
examining how far, by the constitution of hu- 
man nature, and the circumstances of human 
life, the principles of particular and universal 
benevolence are compatible : in the last, com- 
menting on the nature of the charitable institu- 
tion for which he is preaching. 

The former part is levelled against the doc- 
trines of Mr. Godwin ; and, here, Dr. Parr ex- 
poses, very strongly and happily, the folly of 
making universal benevolence the immediate 
motive of our actions. As we consider this, 
though of no very difficult execution, to be by 
far the best part of the sermon, we shall very 
willingly make some extracts from it. 

"To me it appears, that the modern advo- 
cates for universal philanthropy have fallen 
into the error charged upon those who are fas- 
cinated by a violent and extraordinary fondness 
for what a celebrated author calls ' some moral 



* Spital Sermon, preached at Christ Church upon Eas- 
ter-Tuesday, April 15, 1800. To which are added. Notes 
by Samuel Park, LL.D. Printed for J. Mawman in the 
Poultry. 1801. 

t A great scholar, as rude and violent as most Greek 
scholars are, unless they happen to he Bishops. He has 
left nothing behind him worth leavinii : he was rather 
fitted for the law than the church, and would have be^n 
a more considerable man, if he had been more knocked 
about among his equals. He lived with country gen- 
'tlemen and clercynien, who flattered and feared him. 
2 



species.' Some men, it has been remarked, 
are hurried into romantic adventures, by their 
excessive admiration of fortitude. Others are 
actuated by a headstrong zeal for disseminat- 
ing the true religion. Hence, while the only 
properties, for which fortitude or zeal can be 
esteemed, are scarcely discernible, from the 
enormous bulkiness to which they are swollen, 
the ends to which alone they can be directed 
usefully are overlooked or defeated ; the public 
good is impaired, rather than increased ; and 
the claims that other virtues equally obligatory 
have to our notice are totally disregarded. 
Thus, too, when any dazzling phantoms of 
universal philanthropy have seized our atten- 
tion, the objects that formerly engaged it shrink 
and fade. All considerations of kindred, 
friends, and countrymen, drop from the mind, 
during the struggles it makes to grasp the col- 
lective interests of the species ; and when the 
association that attached us to them has been 
dissolved, the notions we have formed of their 
comparative insignificance will prevent them 
from recovering, I do not say any hold what- 
soever, but that strong and lasting hold they 
once had upon our conviction and our feelings. 
Universal benevolence, should it, from any 
strange combination of circumstances, ever 
become passionate, will, like every other pas- 
sion, justify itself; and the importunity of its 
demands to obtain a hearing will be propor- 
tionate to the weakness of its cause. But 
what are the consequences 1 A perpetual 
wrestling for victory between the refinements 
of sophistry, and the remonstrances of indig- 
nant nature — the agitations of secret distrust 
in opinions which gain few or no proselytes, 
and feelings which excite little or no sympathy 
— the neglect of all the usual duties, by which 
social life is preserved or adorned ; and in the 
pursuit of other duties which are unusual, and 
indeed imaginary, a succession of airy projects, 
eager hopes, tumultuous efforts, and galling 
disappointments, such, in truth, as every wise 
man foresaw, and a good man would rarely 
commiserate." 

In a subsequent part of his sermon, Dr. 
Parr handles the same topic with equal 
success. 

9 



10 



WORKS OF THE RE V. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"The stoics, it has been said, were more 
successful in weakening the lender affections, 
than in animating men to the stronger virtues 
of fortitude and self-command ; and possible 
it is, that the influence of our modern reform- 
ers may be greater, in furnishing their disciples 
with pleas for the neglect of their ordinary 
duties, than in stimulating their endeavours 
for the performance of those which are extra- 
ordinary, and perhaps ideal. If, indeed, the 
representations we have lately heard of uni- 
versal philanthropy served only to amuse the 
fancy of those who approve of them, and to 
communicate that pleasure which arises from 
contemplating the magnitude and grandeur of 
a favourite subject, we might be tempted to 
smile at them as groundless and harmless. 
But they tend to debase the dignity, and to 
weaken the efficacy of those particular affec- 
tions, for which we have daily and hourly 
occasion in the events of real life. They 
tempt us to substitute the ease of speculation, 
and the pride of dogmatism, for the toil of prac- 
tice. To a class of artificial and ostentatious 
sentiments, they give the most dangerous 
triumph over the genuine and salutary dictates 
of nature. They delude and inflame our minds 
with Pharisaical notions of superior wisdom 
and superior virtue ; and, what is the worst of 
all, they may be used as ' a cloke to us' for 
insensibility, where other men feel; and for 
negligence, where other men act with visible 
and useful, though limited, effect." 

In attempting to show the connection be- 
tween particular and universal benevolence, 
Dr. Parr does not appear to us to have taken a 
clear and satisfactory view of the subject. Na- 
ture impels us both to good and bad actions ; 
and, even in the former, gives us no measure 
by which we may prevent them from degenerat- 
ing into excess. Rapine and revenge are not 
less natural than parental and filial affection ; 
which latter class of feelings may themselves 
be a source of crimes, if they overpower (as 
they frequently do) the sense of justice. It is 
not, therefore, a sufficient justification of our 
actions, that they are natural. We must seek, 
from our reason, some principle which will 
enable us to determine what impulses of nature 
we are to obey, and what we are to resist : 
such is that of general utility, or, what is the 
same thing, of universal good ; a principle 
which sanctifies and limits the more particular 
aflJections. The duty of a son to a parent, or a 
parent to a son, is not an ultimate principle of 
morals, but depends on the principle of univer- 
sal good, and is only praiseworthy because it 
is found to promote it. At the same time, our 
spheres of action and intelligence are so con- 
fined, that it is better, in a great majority of 
instances, to suffer our conduct to be guided 
by those aff'ections which have been long sanc- 
tioned by the approbation of mankind, than to 
enter into a process of reasoning, and investi- 
gate the relation which every trifling event 
might bear to the general interests of the world. 
In his principle of universal benevolence, Mr. 
Godwin is unquestionably right. That it is the 
grand principle on which all morals rest — that 
it is the corrective for the excess of all parti- 
cular aff'ections, we believe to be undeniable : 



j and he is only erroneous in excluding the par- 
ticular affections, because, in so doing, he de- 
prives us of our most powerful means of pro- 
moting his own principle of universal good; 
for it is as much as to say, that all the crew 
ought to have the general welfare of the ship 
so much at heart that no sailor should ever 
pull any particular rope, or hand any individual 
sail. By universal benevolence, we mean, and 
understand Dr. Parr to mean, not a barren 
affection for the species, but a desire to pro- 
mote their real happiness; and of this princi- 
ple, he thus speaks : 

" I admit, and I approve of it, as an emotion 
of which general happiness is the cause, but 
not as a passion, of which, according to the 
usual order of human affairs, it could often be 
the object. I approve of it as a disposition to 
wish, and, as opportunity may occur, to desire 
and do good, rather than harm, to those with 
whom we are quite unconnected." 

It would appear, from this kind of lan- 
guage, that a desire of promoting the universal 
good were a pardonable weakness, rather than 
a fundamental principle of ethics ; that the 
particular affections were incapable of excess ; 
and that they never wanted the corrective of a 
more generous and exalted feeling. In a sub- 
sequent part of his sermon, Dr. Parr atones a 
little for this over-zealous depreciation of the 
principle of universal benevolence ; but he 
nowhere states the particular aflfections to 
derive their value and their limits from their 
subservience to a more extensive philanthro- 
py. He does not show us that they exist only 
as virtues, from their instrumentality in pro- 
moting the general good ; and that, to preserve 
their true character, they should be frequently 
referred to that principle as their proper crite- 
rion. 

In the latter part of his sermon, Dr. Parr 
combats the general objections of Mr. Turgot 
to all charitable institutions, with considerable 
vigour and success. To say that an institution 
is necessarily bad, because it will not always 
be administered with the same zeal, proves a 
little too much ; for it is an objection to po- 
litical and religious, as well as to charitable 
institutions ; and, from a lively apprehension 
of the fluctuating characters of those who 
govern, would leave the world without any 
government at all. It is better there should be 
an asylum for the mad, and a hospital for the 
wounded, if they were to squander away 50 
per cent, of their income, than that we should 
be disgusted with sore limbs, and shocked by 
straw-crowned monarchs in the streets. All 
institutions of this kind must suffer the risk 
of being governed by more or less of probity 
and talents. The good which one active cha- 
racter eflfects, and the wise order which he 
establishes, may outlive him for a long period ; 
and we all hate each other's crimes, by which 
we gain nothing, so much, that in proportion 
as public opinion acquires ascendency in any 
particular country, every public institution 
becomes more and more guarantied from 
abuse. 

Upon the whole, this sermon is rather the 
production of what is called a sensible, than 
of a very acute man ; of a man certainly 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



n 



more remarkable for his learning than his ori- 
ginality. It refutes the very refutable positions 
of Mr. Godwin, without placing the doctrine of 
benevolence in a clear light ; and it almost 
leaves us to suppose, that the particular affec- 
tions are themselves ultimate principles of ac- 
tion, instead of convenient instruments of a 
more general principle. 

The style is such as to give a general im- 
pression of heaviness to the whole sermon. 
The Doctor is never simple and natural for a 
single instant. Every thing smells of the rhe- 
torician. He never appears to forget himself, 
or to be hurried by his subject into obvious 
language. Every expression seems to be the 
result of artifice and intention ; and as to the 
worthy dedicatees, the Lord Mayor and Alder- 
men, unless the sermon be done into English by 
a person of honour, they may perhaps be flatter- 
ed by the Doctor's politeness, but they can 
never be much edified by his meaning. Dr. 
Parr seems to think, that eloquence consists 
not in exuberance of beautiful images — not in 
simple and sublime conceptions — not in the 
feelings of the passions ; but in a studious ar- 
rangement of sonorous, exotic, and sesquipedal 
words: a very ancient error, which corrupts 
the style of young, and wearies the patience 
of sensible men. In some of his combinations 
of words the Doctor is singularly unhappy. 
We have the din of superficial cavillers, the 
prancings of giddy ostentation, flattering vanity, 
hissing scorn, dank clod, &c. &c. &c. The fol- 
lowing intrusion of a technical word into a 
pathetic description renders the whole passage 
almost ludicrous. 

" Within a few days, mute was the tongue 
that uttered these celestial sounds, and the hand 
which signed your indenture lay cold and mo- 
tionless in the dark and dreary chambers of 
death." 

In page 16, Dr. Parr, in speaking of the in- 
dentures of the hospital, a subject (as we should 
have thought) little calculated for rhetorical 
panegyric, says of them— 

" If the writer of whom I am speaking had 
perused, as I have, your indentures, and your 
rules, he would have found in them serious- 
ness without austerity, earnestness without ex- 
travagance, good sense without the trickeries 
of art, good language without the trappings of 
rhetoric, and the firmness of conscious worth, 
rather than the prancings of giddy ostenta- 
tion." 

The latter member of this eloge would not 
be wholly unintelligible, if applied to a spirited 
coach horse; but we have never yet witnessed 
the phenomenon of a pra7icing indenture. 

It is not our intention to follow Dr. Parr 
through the copious and varied learning of his 
notes ; in the perusal of which we have been 
as much delighted with the richness of his ac- 
quisitions, the vigour of his understanding, and 
the genuine goodness of his heart, as we have 
been amused with his ludicrous self-import- 
ance, and the miraculous simplicity of his cha- 
racter. We would rather recommend it to the 
Doctor to publish an annual list of worthies, as 
a kind of stimulus to literary men ; to be in- 
cluded in which, will unquestionably be con- 



sidered as great an honour, as for a commoner 
to be elevated to the peerage. A line of Greek, 
a line of Latin, or no line at all, subsequent to 
each name, will distinguish, with sufficient ac- 
curacy, the shades of merit, and the degree of 
immortality conferred. 

Why should Dr. Parr confine this eulogoma- 
nia to the literary characters of this island 
alone 1 In the university of Benares, in the 
lettered kingdom of Ava, among the Mandarins 
at Pekin, there must, doubtless, be many men 
who have the eloquence of* Baggoyoc, the feel- 
ing of Tmaupo;, and the judgment of ilKngof, of 
whom Dr. Parr might be happy to say, that 
they have profundity without obscurity — per- 
spicuity without prolixity — ornament without 
glare — ters^ess without barrenness — penetra- 
tion without subtlety — comprehensiveness with- 
out digression — and a great number of other 
things without a great number of other things. 

In spite of 32 pages of very close printing, 
in defence of the University of Oxford, is it, or 
is it not true, that very many of its Professors 
enjoy ample salaries, without reading any lec- 
tures at all 1 The character of particular col- 
leges will certainly vary with the character of 
their governors; but the University of Oxford 
so far differs from Dr. Parr in the commenda- 
tion he has bestowed upon its state of public 
education, that they have, since the publication 
of his book, we believe, and forty years after 
Mr. Gibbon's residence, completely abolished 
their very ludicrous and disgraceful exercises 
for degrees, and have substituted in their place 
a system of exertion, and a scale of academical 
honours, calculated (we are willing to hope) to 
produce the happiest effects. 

We were very sorry, in reading Dr. Parr's 
note on the Universities, to meet with the fol- 
lowing passage : — 

" 111 would it become me tamely and silently 
to acquiesce in the strictures of this formidable 
accuser upon a seminary to which I owe many 
obligations, though I left it, as must not be dis- 
sembled, before the usual time, and, in truth, 
had been almost compelled to leave it, not by 
the want of proper education, for I had arrived 
at the first place in the first form of Harrow 
School, when I was not quite fourteen — not by 
the want of useful tutors, for mine were emi- 
nently able, and to me had been uniformly 
kind — not by the want of ambition, for I had 
begun to look up ardently and anxiously to 
academical distinctions — not by the want of at- 
tachment to the place, for I regarded it then, as 
I continue to regard it now, with the fondest 
and most unfeigned affection — but by another 
want, which it were unnecessary to name, and 
for the supply of which, after some hesitation, 
I determined to provide by patient toil and re- 
solute self-denial, when I had not completed 
my twentieth year. I ceased, therefore, to re- 
side, with an aching heart : I looked back with 
mingled feelings of regret and humiliation to 
advantages of which I could no longer partake, 
and honours to which I could no longer 
aspire." 

To those who know the truly honourable 



* VlavTes liiv <TO(poi' sAo) ic"S,Kripov fiiv acSd), Saviia^b} 
Si Bappovov KaX ^tXoj TaiXi^'pov. See Luciaii in Vita 
Daiiuonact. vol. ii. p. 394. — (Dr. Parr's note.) 



12 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



and respectable character of Dr. Parr, the vast 
extent of his learning, and the unadulterated 
benevolence of his nature, such an account 
cannot but be very affecting, in spile of the bad 
taste in which it is communicated. How pain- 
ful to reflect, that a truly devout and attentive 



minister, a strenuous defender of the church 
establishment, and by far the most learned 
man of his day, should be permitted to languish 
oa a little paltry curacy in Warwickshire ! 

Dii meliora, &c. &c.* 



BE. RENNELt 



[EDINBURGH Review, 1802.] 



We have no modern sermons in the English 
language that can be considered as very elo- 
quent. The merits of Blair (by far the most 
popular writer of sermons within the last cen- 
tury) are plain good sense, a happy applica- 
tion of scriptural quotation, and a clear har- 
monious style, richly tinged with scriptural 
language. He generally leaves his readers 
pleased with his judgment, and his just obser- 
vations on human conduct, without ever rising 
so high as to touch the great passions, or kindle 
any enthusiasm in favour of virtue. For elo- 
quence, we must ascend as high as the days of 
Barrow and Jeremy Taylor : and even there, 
while we are delighted with their energy, their 
copiousness, and their fancy, we are in danger 
of being suffocated by a redundance which 
abhors all discrimination ; which compares 
till it perplexes, and illustrates till it confounds. 
To the Oases of Tillotson, Sherlock, and At- 
terbury, we must wade through many a barren 
page, in which the weary Christian can descry 
nothing all around him but a dreary expanse 
of trite sentiments and languid words. 

The great object of modern sermons is to 
hazard nothing : their characteristic is, decent 
debility ; which alike guards their authors from 
ludicrous errors, and precludes them from 
striking beauties. Every man of sense, in 
taking up an English sermon, expects to find 
it a tedious essay, full of commonplace morali- 
ty; and if the fulfilment of such expectations 
be meritorious, the clergy have certainly the 
merit of not disappointing their readers. Yet 
it is curious to consider, how a body of men so 
well educated, and so magnificently endowed 
as the English clergy, should distinguish them- 
selves so little in a species of composition to 
which it is their peculiar duty, as well as their 
ordinary habit, to attend. To solve this diffi- 
culty, it should be remembered, that the elo- 
quence of the Bar and of the Senate force them- 
selves into notice, power, and wealth — that the 
penalt}' which an individual client pays for 
choosing a bad advocate, is the loss of his 
cause — that a prime minister must infallibly 
• suffer in the estimation of the public, who neg- 
lects to conciliate the eloquent men, and trusts 
the defence of his measures to those who have 
not adequate talents for that purpose : whereas 
the only evil which accrues from the promotion 
of a clergyman to the pulpit, which he has no 
ability to fill as he ought, is the fatigue of the 
audience, and the discredit of that species of 



public instruction ; an evil so general, that no 
individual patron would dream of sacrificing 
to it his particular interest. The clergy are 
generally appointed to their situations by those 
who have no interest that they should please 
the audience before whom they speak; while 
the very reverse is the case in the eloquence 
of the Bar, and of Parliament. We by no 
means would be understood to say, that the 
clergy should owe their promotion principally 
to their eloquence, or that eloquence ever could, 
consistently with the constitution of the English 
Church, be made out a common cause of pre- 
ferment. In pointing out the total want of con- 
nection between the privilege of preaching, 
and the power of preaching well, we are giving 
no opinion as to whether it might, or might not 
be remedied; but merely stating a fact. Pulpit 
discourses have insensibly dwindled from 
speaking to reading ; a practice, of itself, suf- 
ficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is 
only by the fresh feelings of the heart, that man- 
kind can be very powerfully affected. What 
can be more ludicrous, than an orator deliver- 
ing stale indignation, and fervour of a week 
old ; turning over whole pages of violent pas- 
sions, written out in German text; reading the 
tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried 
by the ardour of his mind ; and so affected at a 
preconcerted line, and page, that he is unable 
to proceed any farther ! 

The prejudices of the English nation have 
proceeded a good deal from their hatred to the 
French; and because that country is the na- 
tive soil of elegance, animation, and grace, a 
certain patriotic solidity, and loyal awkward- 
ness, have become the characteristics of this ; 
so that an adventurous preacher is afraid of 
violating the ancient tranquillity of the pulpit ; 
and the audience are commonly apt to consider 
the man who tires them less than usual, as a 
trifler, or a charlatan. 

Of British education, the study of eloquence 
makes little or no part. The exterior graces 
of a speaker are despised ; and debating socie- 
ties (admirable institutions, under proper regu- 
lations) would hardly be tolerated either at Ox- 
ford or Cambridge. It is commonly answered 
to any animadversions upon the eloquence of 

* The courtly phrase was, that Dr. Parr was not a pro- 
ducible man. The same phrase was used for the neglect 
of Paley. 

t Discourses on Various Subjects. By Thomas Ren- 
NEL, D.D. Master of the Temple. Bivington, London. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



IS 



the English pulpit, that a clergyman is to re- 
commend himself, not by his eloquence, but by 
(he purity of his life, and the soundness of his 
doctrine ; an objection good enough, if any 
connection could be pointed out between elo- 
quence, heresy, and dissipation ; but if it is 
possible for a man to live well, preach well, 
and teach well, at the same time, such objec- 
tions, resting only upon a supposed incompati- 
bility of these good qualities, are duller than 
the dalness they defend. 

The clergy are apt to shelter themselves 
under the plea, that subjects so exhausted are 
utterly incapable of novelty ; and, in the very 
strictest sense of the word novelty, meaning that 
which was never said before, at any time, or 
in any place, this may be true enough, of the 
first principles of morals; but the modes of ex- 
panding, illustrating, and enforcing a particular 
theme are capable of infinite variety; and, if 
they were not, this might be a very good rea- 
son for preaching commonplace sermons, but 
is a very bad one for publishing them. 

We had great hopes, that Dr. Rennel's Ser- 
mons would have proved an exception to the 
character we have given of sermons in gene- 
ral ; and we have read through his present vo- 
lume with a conviction rather that he has mis- 
applied, than that he wants, talents for pulpit 
eloquence. The subjects of his sermons, four- 
teen in number, are, 1. The consequences of 
the vice of gaming : 2. On old age : 3. Benevo- 
lence exclusively an evangelical virtue : 4. The 
services rendered to the English nation by the 
Church of England, a motive for liberality to 
the orphan children of indigent ministers : 5. On 
the grounds and regulation of national joy : 
6. On the connection of the duties of loving the 
brotherhood, fearing God, and honouring the 
King : 7. On the guilt of blood-thirstiness : 8. On 
atonement: 9. A visitation sermon: 10. Great 
Britain's naval strength, and insular situation, 
a cause of gratitude to Almighty God: 11. Ig- 
norance productive of atheism, anarchy, and 
superstition: 12, 13, 14. On the sting of death, 
the strength of sin, and the victory over them 
both by Jesus Christ. 

Dr. Rennel's first sermon, upon the conse- 
quences of gaming, is admirable for its strength 
of language, its sound good sense, and the 
vigour with which it combats that detestable 
vice. From this sermon, we shall, with great 
pleasure, make an extract of some length. 

"Farther to this sordid habit the gamester 
joins a disposition to fraud, and that of the 
meanest cast. To those who soberly and fairly 
appreciate the real nature of human actions, 
nothing appears more inconsistent than that 
societies of men, who have incorporated them- 
selves for the express purpose of gaming, should 
disclaim fraud or indirection, or affect to drive 
from their assemblies those among their asso- 
ciates whose crimes would reflect disgrace on 
them. Surely this, to a considerate mind, is as 
solemn and refined a banter as can well be 
exhibited : for when we take into view the vast 
latitude allowed by the most upright gamesters, 
when we reflect that, according to their precious 
casuistry, every advantage may be legitimately 
taken of the young, the unwary, and the ine- 
briated, which superior coolness, skill, address. 



and activity can supply, we must look upoa 
pretences to honesty as a most shameless ag- 
gravation of their crimes. Even if it were pos- 
sible that, in his own practices, a man might 
be a FAiK GAMESTER, yct, for the result of the 
extended frauds committed by his fellows, he 
stands deeply accountable to God, his country, 
and his conscience. To a system necessarily 
implicated with fraud; to associations of men, 
a large majority of whom subsist by fraud ; to 
habits calculated to poison the source and 
principle of all integrity, he gives efficacy, 
countenance, and concurrence. Even his mV- 
tues he suffers to be subsidiary to the cause of 
vice. He sees with calmness, depredation 
committed daily and hourly in his company, 
perhaps under his very roof. Yet men of this 
description declaim (so desperately deceitful is 
the heart of man) against the very knaves they 
cherish and protect, and whom, perhaps, with 
some poor sophistical refuge for a worn-out 
conscience, they even imitate. To such, let 
the Scripture speak with emphatical decisioa 
— When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst 
with Atwi." 

The reader will easily observe, in this quota- 
tion, a command of language, and a power of 
style, very superior to what is met with in the 
great mass of sermons. We shall make one 
more extract. 

"But in addition to fraud, and all its train of 
crimes, propensities and habits of a very diffe- 
rent complexion enter into the composition of 
a gamester : a most ungovernable fehocitt of 
DisposiTiox, however for a time disguised and 
latent, is invariably the result of his system of 
conduct. .Jealousy, rage, and revenge, exist 
among gamesters in their worst and most fraur 
tic excesses, and end frequently in conse- 
quences of the most atrocious violence and 
outrage. By perpetual agitation the malignant 
passions spurn and overwhelm every boundary 
which discretion and conscience can oppose. 
From what source are we to trace a very large 
number of those murders, sanctioned or palli- 
ated indeed by custom, but which stand at the 
tribunal of God precisely upon the same 
grounds with every other species of murder 1 — 
From the gaming-table, from the nocturnal re- 
ceptacles of distraction and frenzy, the duellist 
rushes with his hand lifted up against his bro- 
ther's life ! — Those who are as yet on the 
threshold of these habits should be warned, that 
however calm their mitnral temperament, how- 
ever meek and placable their disposition, yet 
that, by the events which every moment arise, 
they stand exposed to the ungovernable fury 
of themselves and others. In the midst of fraud, 
protected by menace on the one hand, and on 
the other, of despair ; irritated by a recollection 
of the meanness of the artifices and the base- 
ness of the hands by which utter and remediless 
ruin has been inflicted ; in the midst of these 
feelings of horror and distraction it is, that the 
voice of brethren's blood 'crieth imto God from 
the ground' — ' and now art thou cursed from the 
earth, ichich hath opened her mouth to receive thy 
brother's blood from thy hand.' Not only THOU 
who actually sheddesi that blood, butTHoo who 
art the artificer of death — thou who adminis- 
terest incentives to these habits — who dissemi- 
B 



14 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



natest the practice of them — improvest the 
skill in them — sharpenest the propensity to 
them— at tht hands will it be required, surely, 
at the tribunal of God in the next world, and 
perhaps, in most instances, in his distributive 
and awful dispensations towards thee and thine 
here on earth." 

Having paid this tribute of praise to Dr. 
Rennel's first sermon, we are sorry so soon to 
change our eulogium into censure, and to blame 
him for having selected for publication so many 
sermons touching directly and indirectly upon 
the French Revolution. We confess ourselves 
long since wearied with this kind of discourses, 
bespattered with blood and brains, and ringing 
eternal changes upon atheism, cannibalism, 
and apostasy. Upon the enormities of the 
French Revolution there can be but one opinion ; 
but the subject is not fit for the pulpit. The 
public are disgusted with it to satiety; and we 
can never help remembering, that this politico- 
orthodox rage in the mouth of a preacher may 
be profitable as well as sincere. Upon such 
subjects as the murder of the Queen of France, 
and the great events of these days, it is not pos- 
sible to endure the draggling and the daubing 
of such a ponderous limner as Dr. Rennel, 
after the ethereal touches of Mr. Burke. In 
events so truly horrid in themselves, the field 
is so easy for a declaimer, that we set little 
value upon the declamation ; and the mind, on 
such occasions, so easily outruns ordinary 
description, that we are apt to feel more, before 
a mediocre oration begins, than it even aims 
at inspiring. 

We are surprised that Dr. Rennel, from 
among the great number of subjects which he 
must have discussed in the pulpit (the interest 
in which must be permanent and universal), 
should have published such an empty and 
frivolous sermon as that upon the victory of 
Lord Nelson ; a sermon good enough for the 
garrulity of jo)% when the phrases, and the ex- 
ultation of the Porcupine, or the True Briton, 
may pass for eloquence or sense ; but utterly 
unworthy of the works of a man who aims at 
a place among the great teachers of morality 
and religion. 

Dr. Rennel is apt to put on the appearance 
of a holy bully, an evangelical swaggerer, as 
if he could carry his point against infidelity by 
big words and strong abuse, and kick and cuff 
men into Christians. It is a very easy thing to 
talk about the shallow impostures, and the silly 
ignorant sophisms of Voltaire, Rousseau, Con- 
dorcet, D'Alembert, and Volney, and to say 
that Hume is not worth answering. This af- 
fectation of contempt will not do. While these 
pernicious writers have power to allure from 
the church great numbers of proselytes, it is 
better to study them diligently, and to reply to 
them satisfactorily, than to veil insolence, want 
of power, or want of industry, by a pretended 
contempt; which may leave infidels and 
wavering Christians to suppose that such 
writers are abused, because they are feared; 
and not answered, because they are unanswer- 
able. While every body was abusing and 
despising Mr. Godwin, and while Mr. Godwin 
was, among a certain description of under- 
standings, increasing every day in popularity. 



Mr. Malthus* took the trouble of refuting him ; 
and we hear no more of Mr. Godwin. We 
recommend this example to the consideration 
of Dr. Rennel, who seems to think it more use- 
ful, and more pleasant, to rail than to fight. 

After the world has returned to its sober 
senses upon the merits of the ancient philoso- 
phy, it is amusing enough to see a few bad 
heads bawling for the restoration of exploded 
errors and past infatuation. We have some 
dozen of plethoric phrases about Aristotle, who 
is, in the estimation of the Doctor, e< rex et sutor 
bonus, and every thing else ; and to the neglect 
of whose works he seems to attribute every 
moral and physical evil under which the world 
has groaned for the last century. Dr. Rennel's 
admiration of the ancients is so great, that he 
considers the works of Homer to be the region 
and depository of natural law, and natural reli- 
gion.f Now, if, by natural religion, is meant 
the will of God collected from his works, and 
the necessity man is under of obeying it; it is 
rather extraordinary that Homer should be so 
good a natural theologian, when the divinities 
he has painted are certai-nly a more drunken, 
quarrelsome, adulterous, intriguing, lascivious 
set of beings, than are to be met with in. the 
most profligate court in Europe. There is, 
every now and then, some plain coarse morality 
in Homer; but the most bloody revenge, and 
the most savage cruelty in warfare, the ravish- 
ing of women, and the sale of men, &c. &c. 
&c. are circumstances which the old bard 
seems to relate as the ordinary events of his 
times, without ever dreaming that there could 
be much harm in them ; and if it be urged 
that Homer took his ideas of right and wrong 
from a barbarous age, that is just saying, in 
other words, that Homer had very imperfect 
ideas of natural law. 

Having exhausted all his powers of eulogium 
upon the times that are gone, Dr. Rennel in- 
demnifies himself by the very novel practice 
of declaiming against the present age. It is 
an evil age — an adidlcrovs age — an ignorant age — 
an apostate age — and a foppish age. Of the pro- 
priety of the last epithet, our readers may per- 
haps be more convinced, by calling to mind a 
class of fops not usually designated by that 
epithet — men clothed in profound black, with 
large canes, and strange amorphous hats — of 
big speech, and imperative presence — talkers 
about Plato — great affecters of senility — de- 
spisers of women, and all the graces of life — 
fierce foes to common sense — abusive of the 
living, and approving no one who has not been 
dead for at least a century. Such fops, as vain 
and as shallow as their fraternity in Bond 
street, differ from these only as Gorgonius dif- 
fered from Rufillus. 

In the ninth Discourse (p. 226), we read of 
St. Paul, that he had "an heroic zeal, directed, 
rather than bounded, by the nicest discretion — 
a conscious and commanding dignity, softened 
by the meekest and most profound humility." 



* I cannot read the name of Malthus without adding 
my tribute of affection for the memory of one of the best 
men that ever lived. He loved philosophical truth more 
than any man I ever knew, — was full of practical wis- 
dom, — and never indulged in contemptuous feelings 
against his inferiors in understanding. 

t Page 318 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



16 



This is intended for a fine piece of writing ; 
but it is without meaning : for, if words have 
any limits, it is a contradiction in terms to say of 
the same person, at the same time, that he is 
nicely discreet, and heroically zealous ; or that 
he is profoundly humble, and imperatively dig- 
nified : and if Dr. Rennel means, that St. Paul 
displayed these qualities at different times, then 
could not any one of them direct or soften the 
other. 

Sermons are so seldom examined with any 
considerable degree of critical vigilance, that we 
are apt to discover in them sometimes a great 
laxity of assertion : such as the following: — 

" Labour to be undergone, afflictions to be 
borne, contradictions to be endured, danger to 
be braved, interest to be despised in the best 
and most flourishing ages of the church, are 
the perpetual badges of far the greater part of 
those who take up their cross and follow 
Christ." 

This passage, at first, struck us to be untrue ; 
and we could not immediately recollect the 
afflictions Dr. Rennel alluded to, till it occurred 
io us, that he must undoubtedly mean the eight 
hundred and fifty actions which, in the course 
of eighteen months, have been brought against 
the clergy for non-residence. 

Upon the danger to be apprehended from 
Roman Catholics in this country, Dr. Rennel is 
laughable. We should as soon dream that the 
wars of York and Lancaster would break out 
afresh, as that the Protestant religion in Eng- 



land has any thing to apprehend from the 
machinations of Catholics. To such a scheme 
as that of Catholic emancipation, which has 
for its object to restore their natural rights to 
three or four millions of men, and to allay the 
fury of religious hatred. Dr. Rennel is, as might 
be expected, a very strenuous antagonist. Time, 
which lifts up the veil of political mystery, will 
inform us if the Doctor has taken that side of 
the question which maybe^as lucrative to him- 
self as it is inimical to human happiness, and 
repugnant to enlightened policy. 

Of Dr. Rennel's talents as a reasoner, we 
certainly have formed no very high opinion. 
Unless dogmatical assertion, and the practice 
(but too common among theological writers) 
of taking the thing to be proved, for part of the 
proof, can be considered as evidence of a 
logical understanding, the specimens of argu- 
ment Dr. Rennel has afforded us are very in- 
significant. For putting obvious truths into 
vehement language ; for expanding and adorn- 
ing moral instruction ; this gentleman certain- 
ly possesses considerable talents : and if he 
will moderate his insolence, steer clear of 
theological metaphysics, and consider rather 
those great laws of Christian practice, which 
must interest mankind through all ages, than 
the petty questions which are important to the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being, 
he may live beyond his own days, and become 
a star of the third or fourth magnitude in the 
English Church. 



JOHN BOWLES/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1802.] 



If this piece be, as Mr. Bowles asserts,f the 
death-warrant of the liberty and power of Great 
Britain, we will venture to assert, that it is also 
the death-warrant of Mr. Bowles's literary re- 
putation ; and that the people of this island, 
if they verify his predictions, and cease to read 
his books, whatever they may lose in political 
greatness, will evince no small improvement 
in critical acumen. There is a political, as 
well as a bodily hypochondriasis; and there 
are empirics always on the watch to make 
their prey, either of the one or of the other. 
Dr. Solomon, Dr. Brodum, and Mr. Bowles, 
have all commanded their share of the public 
attention : but the two former gentlemen con- 
tinue to flourish with undiminished splendour ; 
while the patients of the latter are fast dwin- 
dling away, and his drugs falling into disuse 
and contempt. 



* Reflections at the Conclusion of the War: Being a 
Sequel to Reflections on the Political and Moral State of 
Society at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. The 
Third Edition, with Additions. By John Bowles, 
Esq. 

+ It is impossible tn conceive the mischievous power of 
the corrupt alarmists of those days, and the despotic 
manner in which they exercised their authority. They 
•were fair objects for the Edinburgh Review. 



The truth is, if Mr. Bowles had begun his 
literary career at a period when superior dis- 
crimination, and profj^nd thought, not vulgar 
violence, and the it^nal repetition of rabble- 
rousing words, were necessar)' to literary 
reputation, he would never have emerged 
from that obscurity to which he will soon 
turn. The intemperate passions of the public, 
not his own talents, have given him some tem- 
porary reputation ; and now, when men hope 
and fear with less eagerness than they have 
been lately accustomed to do, Mr. Bowles will 
be compelled to descend from that moderate 
eminence, where no man of real genius would 
ever have condescended to remain. 

The pamphlet is written in the genuine spi- 
rit of the Windham and Burke School ; though 
Mr. Bowles cannot be called a servile copyist 
of either of these gentlemen, as he has rejected 
the logic of the one, and the eloquence of the 
other, and imitated them only in their head- 
strong violence, and exaggerated abuse. There 
are some men who continue to astonish and 
please the world, even in the support of a bad 
cause. They are mighty in their fallacies, and 
beautiful in their errors. Mr. Bowles sees 
only one half of the precedent ; and thinks, in 



16 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



order to be famous, that he has nothing to do 
but to be in the wrong. 

War, eternal war, till the wrongs of Europe 
are avenged, and the Bourbons restored, is the 
master-principle of Mr. Bowles's political opi- 
nions, and the object for which he declaims 
through the whole of the present pamphlet. 

The first apprehensions which Mr. Bowles 
seems to entertain, are of the boundless am- 
bition and perfidious character of the First 
Consul, and of that military despotism he has 
established, which is not only impelled by the 
love of conquest, but interested, for its own 
preservation, to desire the overthrow of other 
states. Yet the author informs us, immediate- 
ly after, that the life of Buonaparte is exposed 
to more dangers than that of any other indi- 
vidual in Europe who is not actually in the 
last stage of an incurable disease ; and that 
his death, whenever it happens, must involve 
the dissolution of that machine of government, 
of which he must be considered not only as the 
sole director, but the main spring. Confusion 
of thought, we are told, is one of the truest 
indications of terror; and the panic of this 
alarmist is so very great, that he cannot listen 
to the consolation which he himself affords : 
for it appears, upon summing up these perils, 
that we are in the utmost danger of being de- 
stroyed by a despot, whose system of govern- 
ment, as dreadful as himself, cannot survive 
him, and who, in all human probability, will 
be shot or hanged before he can execute any 
one of his projects against us. 

We have a good deal of flourishing in the 
beginning of the pamphlet, about the effect of 
the moral sense upon the stability of govern- 
ments ; that is, as Mr. Bowles explains it, the 
power which all old governments derive from 
the opinion entertained by the people of the 
justice of their rights. If this sense of an- 
cient right be (as is here confidently asserted) 
strong enough ultimately to restore the Bour- 
bons, why are we to fight for that which will 
be done without any fighting at all 1 And if 
it be strong enough to restore, M'hy was it weak 
enough to render restftration necessary 1 

To notice every singular train of reasoning 
into which Mr. Bowles falls, is not possible ; 
and, in the copious choice of evils, we shall, 
from feelings of mercy, take the least. 

It must not be forgotten, he observes, that 
" those rights of government, which, because 
they are ancient, are recognised by the moral 
sense as lawful, are the only ones which are 
compatible with civil liberty." So that all 
questions of right and wrong, between the 
governors and the governed, are determinable 
by chronology alone. Every political institu- 
tion is favourable to liberty, not according to 
its spirit, but in proportion to the antiquity of 
its date ; and the slaves of Great Britain are 
groaning under the trial by jury, while the free 
men of Asia exult in the bold privilege trans- 
mitted to tkpm by their fathers, of being tram- 
pled to death by elephants. 

In the 8th page, Mr. Bowles thinks that 
France, if she remains without a king, will 
conquer all Europe; and, in the 19th page, 
that she will be an object of Divine venreance 
till she takes one. In the same pagp, all the 



miseries of France are stated to be a judgment 
of Heaven for their cruelty to the king ; and, 
in the 33d page, they are discovered to pro- 
ceed from the perfidy of the same king to this 
country in the American contest. So that cer- 
tain misfortpnes proceed from the maltreat- 
ment of a person, who had himself occasioned 
these identical misfortunes before he was mal- 
treated ; and while Providence is compelling 
the French, by every species of affliction, to 
resume the monarchical government, they are 
to acquire such extraordinary vigour, from not 
acting as Providence would wish, that they 
are to trample on every nation which co-ope- 
rates with the Divine intention. 

In the 60th page, Mr. Bowles explains what 
is meant by Jacobinism; and, as a concluding 
proof of the justice with which the character 
is drawn, triumphantly quotes the case of a 
certain R. Mountain, who was tried for damn- 
ing all kings and all governments upon earth ; 
for, adds R. Mountain, " I am a Jacobin." No- 
body can more thoroughly detest and despise 
that restless spirit of political innovation, 
which, we suppose, is meant by the name of 
Jacobinism, than we ourselves do ; but we 
were highly amused with this proof, ab ebriis 
sutorihus, of the prostration of Europe, the last 
hour of human felicity, the perdition of man, 
discovered in the crapulous eructations of a 
drunken cobler. 

This species of evidence might certainly 
have escaped a common observer : But this is 
not all ; there are other proofs of treason and 
sedition, equally remote, sagacious, and pro- 
found. Many good subjects are not very 
much pleased with the idea of the Whig Club 
dining together ; but Mr. Bowles has the merit 
of first calling the public attention to the 
alarming practice of singing after dinner at 
these political meetings. He speaks with a 
proper horror of tavern dinners, 

" — where conviviality is made a stimulus 
to disaffection — where wine serves only to in- 
flame disloyalty — where toasts are converted 
into a vehicle of sedition — and where the 
powers of harmony are called forth in the 
cause of Discord by those hireling singers, 
who are equally ready to invoke the Divine 
favour on the head of their King, or tp strain 
their venal throats in chanting the triumphs of 
his bitterest enemies." 

All complaint is futile, which is not followed 
up by appropriate remedies. If Parliament, 
or Catarrh, do not save us, Dignum and Sedg- 
wick will quaver away the King, shake down 
the House of Lords, and warble us into all the 
horrors of republican government. When, in 
addition to these dangers, we reflect also upon 
those with which our national happiness is 
menaced, by the present thinness of ladies' 
petticoats (p. 78), temerity may hope our sal- 
vation, but how can reason promise it ? 

One solitary gleam of comfort, indeed, 
beams upon us in reading the solemn devo- 
tion of this modern Cui'tius to the cause of his 
King and country — 

" My attachment to the British monarchy, 
and to the reigning family, is rooted in my 
' heart's core.' — My anxiety for the British 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



17 



throne, pending the dangers to which, in com- 
mon with every other throne, it has lately been 
exposed, has imbittered my choicest comforts. 
And I must solemnly vow, before Almighty 
God, to devote myself, to the end of my days, 
to the maintenance of that throne." 

Whethef this patriotism be original, or whe- 
ther it be copied from the Upholsterer in 
Foote's Farces, who sits up whole nights 
watching over the British constitution, we shall 
not stop to inquire ; because, when the practi- 
cal effect of sentiments is good, we would not 
diminish their merits by investigating their 



origin. We seriously commend in Mr. Bowles 
this future dedication of his life to the service 
of his King and country ; and consider it as a 
virtual promise that he will write no more in 
their defence. No wise or good man has ever 
thought of either, but with admiration and re- 
spect. That they should be exposed to that 
ridicule, by the forward imbecility of friend- 
ship, from which they appear to be protected 
by intrinsic worth, is so painful a considera.- 
tion, that the very thought of it, we are per- 
suaded, will induce Mr. Bowles to desist from, 
writing on political subjects. 



DR. langeord; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1802.] 



Ak accident which happened to the gentle- 
man engaged in reviewing this Sermon proves, 
in the most striking manner, the importance 
of this charity for restoring to life persons in 
whom the vital power is suspended. He was 
discovered, with Dr. Langford'sf discourse 
lying open before him, in a state of the most 
profound sleep; from which he could not, by 
any means, be awakened for a great length of 
time. By attending, however, to the rules pre- 
scribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the 
smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and 
carefully removing the discourse itself to a 
great distance, the critic was restored to his 
disconsolate brothers. 

The only account he could give of himself 
was, that he remembers reading on, regularly, 
till he came to the following pathetic descrip- 
tion of a drowned tradesman; beyond which 
he recollects nothing. 



"But to the individual himself, as a man, let 
us add the interruption to all the temporal 
business in which his interest was engaged. 
To him indeed, now apparently lost, the world 
is as nothing : but it seldom happens, that man 
can live for himself alone: society parcels out 
its concerns in various connections ; and from 
one head issue waters which run down in 
many channels. — The spring being suddenly 
cut off, what confusion must follow in the 
streams which have flowed from its source] 
It may be, that all the expectations reasonably 
raised of approaching prosperity, to those who 
have embarked in the same occupation, may 
at once disappear; and the' important inter- 
change of commercial faith be broken off, 
before it could be brought to any advantageous 
conclusion." 

This extract will sufllice for the style of the 
sermon. The charity itself is above all praise. 



ARCHDEACON NARES.t 

[Edinburgh Review, 1802.] 



FoH the swarm of ephemeral sermons which 
issue from the press, we are principally in- 
debted to the vanity of popular preachers, who 
are puffed up by female praises into a belief, 
that what may be delivered, with great pro- 
priety, in a chapel full of visitors and friends, 
is fit for the deliberate attention of the public, 

* Anniversary Sermon of the Royal Humane Society. By 
W. Langford, D. D. Printed for F. and C. Rivington. 

t To this exceedingly foolish man, the first years of 
Etonian Education were intrusted. How is it possible 
to inflict a greater misfortune on a country, than to fill 
up such an office with such an officer ? 

X-^ Thanksgiving for Plenty, and Warning against 
Avarice. A Sermon. By the Reverend Robkrt Nares, 
Archdeacon of Stafford, and Canon Residentiary of 
Litchfield. London : Printed for the author, and sold by 
Rivingtons, St. Paul's Churchyard. 

This was another gentleman of the alarmist tribe. 
3 



who cannot be influenced by the aecency of a 
clergyman's private life, flattered by the sedu- 
lous politeness of his manners, or misled by 
the fallacious circumstances of voice and 
action. A clergyman cannot be always consi- 
dered as reprehensible for preaching an indif- 
ferent sermon ; because, to the active piety, 
and correct life, which the profession requires, 
many an excellent man may not unite talents 
for that species of composition; but every 
man who prints, imagines he gives to the 
world something which they had not before, 
either in matter or style; that he has brought 
forth new truths, or adorned old ones; and 
when, in lieu of novelty and ornament, we can 
discover nothing but trite imbecility, the law 
must lake its course, and the delinquent suffer 
B 2 



18 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



that mortification from which vanity can rarely 
be expected to escape, when it chooses dulness 
for the minister of its gratifications. 

The learned author, after observing that a 
large army praying would be a much finer 
spectacle than a large army fighting, and after 
entertaining us with the old anecdote of 
Xerxes, and the flood of tears, proceeds to ex- 
press his sentiments on the late scarcity, and 
the present abundance; then, stating the man- 
ner in which the Jews were governed by the 
immediate interference of God, and informing 
us, that other people expect not, nor are taught 
to look for, miraculous interference, to punish 
or reward them, he proceeds to talk of the 
visitation of Providence, for the purposes of 
trial, warning, and correction, as if it were a 
truth of which he had never doubted. 

Still, however, he contends, though the Deity 
does interfere, it would be presumptuous and 
impious to pronounce the purposes for which 
he interferes ; and then adds, that it has pleased 
God, within these few year.s, to give us a most 
awful lesson of the vanity of agriculture and 
importation without piety, and that he has 
proved this to the conviction of every thinking 
mind. 

"Though he interpose not (says Mr. Nares) 
by positive miracle, he influences by means 
unknown to all but himself, and directs the 
winds, the rain, and the glorious beams of 
heaven to execute his judgment, or fulfil his 
merciful, designs." — Now, either the wind, the 
rain, and the beams, are here represented to 
act as they do in the ordinary course of nature, 
or they are not. If they are, how can their 
operations be considered as a judgment on 
sins ■? and if they are not, what are their extra- 
ordinary operations, but positive miracles? So 
that the archdeacon, after denying that any 
body knows when, how, and why, the Creator 
works a miracle, proceeds to specify the time, 
instrument, and object of a miraculous scarcity; 
and then, assuring us that the elements were 
employed to execute the judgments of Provi- 
dence, denies that this is any proof of a posi- 
tive miracle. 

Having given us this specimen of his talents 
for theological metaphysics, Mr. Nares com- 
mences his attack upon the farmers; accuses 
them of cruelty and avarice; raises the old cry 
of monopoly; and expresses some doubts, in a 
note, whether the better way would not be, to 
subject their granaries to the control of an 
exciseman ; and to levy heavy penalties upon 
those, in whose possession corn, beyond a cer- 
tain quantity to be fixed by law, should be 
found. — This style of reasoning is pardonable 



enough in those who argue from the belly 
rather than the brains; but in a well-fed, and 
well-educated clergyman, who has never been 
disturbed by hunger from the free exercise of 
cultivated talents, it merits the severest repre- 
hension. The farmer has it not in his power 
to raise the price of corn; he never has fixed 
and never can fix it. He is unquestionably 
justified in receiving any price he can obtain: 
for it happens very beautifully, that the effect 
of his efforts to better his fortune is as benefi- 
cial to the public as if their motive had not 
been selfish. The poor are not to be supported, 
in time of famine, by abatement of price on 
the part of the farmer, but by the subscription 
of residentiary canons, archdeacons, and all 
men rich in public or private property; and 
to these subscriptions the farmer should con- 
tribute according to the amount of his fortune. 
To insist that he should take a less price when 
he can obtain a greater, is to insist upon laying 
on that order of men the whole burden of sup- 
porting the poor; a convenient system enough 
in the eyes of a rich ecclesiastic ; and objec- 
tionable only, because it is impracticable, 
pernicious, and unjust.* 

The question of the corn trade has divided 
society into two parts — those who have any 
talents for reasoning, and those who have not. 
We owe an apology to our readers for taking 
any notice of errors that have been so fre- 
quently and so unanswerably exposed ; but 
when they are echoed from the bench and the 
pulpit, the dignity of the teacher may perhaps 
communicate some degree of importance to 
the silliest and most extravagant doctrines. 

No reasoning can be more radically erro- 
neous than that upon which the whole of Mr. 
Nares's sermon is founded. The most bene- 
volent, the most Christian, and the most pro- 
fitable conduct the farmer can pursue, is, to 
sell his fcommodities for the highest price he 
can possibly obtain. This advice, we think, 
is not in any great danger of being rejected : 
we wish we were eq^^ally sure of success in 
counselling the Reverend Mr. Nares to attend, 
in future, to practical rather than theoretical 
questions about provisions. He may be a very 
hospitable archdeacon ; but nothing short of 
a positive miracle can make him an acute 
reasoner. 



* If it is pleasant to notice the intellectual growth of 
an individual, it is still more pleasant to see the public 
growing wiser. This absurdity of attributing the high 
price of corn to the combinations of farmers, was the 
common nonsense talked in the days of my youth. I re- 
member when ten judges out of twelve laid down this 
doctrine in their charges to the various grand juries on 
the circuits. The lowest attorney's clerk is now better 
instructed. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



19 



MATTHEW LEWIS/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



Ai.FO»rso, king of Castile had, many years 
previous to the supposed epoch of the play, 
left his minister and general, Orsino, to perish 
in prison, from a false accusation of treason. 
Csesario, son to Orsino, (who by accident had 
liberated Amelrosa, daughter of Alfonso, from 
the Moors, and who is married to her, unknown 
to the father,) becomes a great favourite with 
the king, and avails himself of the command 
of the armies, with which he is intrusted, to 
gratify his rev€nge for his father's misfor- 
tunes, to forward his own ambitious views, 
and to lay a plot b)^ which he may deprive 
Alfonso of his throne and his life. Marquis 
Guzman, poisoned by his wife Ottilia, in love 
with Ceesario, confesses to the king that the 
papers upon which the suspicion of Orsino's 
guilt was founded were forged by him: and 
the king, learning from his daughter Amel- 
rosa that Orsino is still alive, repairs to his 
retreat in the forest, is received with the most 
implacable hauteur and resentment, and in 
vain implores forgiveness of his injured minis- 
ter. To the same forest Cgesario, informed of 
the existence of his father, repairs and reveals 
his intended plot against the king. Orsino, con- 
vinced of Alfonso's goodness to his subjects, 
though incapable of forgiving him for his un- 
intentional injuries to himself, in vain dis- 
suades his son from the conspiracy; and at 
last, ignorant of their marriage, acquaints 
Amelrosa with the plot formed by her hus- 
band against her father. Amelrosa, already 
poisoned by Ottilia, in vain attempts to pre- 
vent Csesario from blowing up a mine laid 
under the royal palace ; information of which 
she had received from Ottilia, stabbed by Cse- 
sario to avoid her importunity. In the mean 
time, the king had been removed from the 
palace by Orsino to his ancient retreat in the 
forest: the people rise against the usurper 
Csesario; a battle takes place: Orsino stabs 
his own son at the moment the king is in his 
son's power ; falls down from the wounds he 
has received in battle ; and dies in the usual 
dramatic style, repeating twenty-fwo hexame- 
ter verses. Mr. Lewis says in his preface, 

" To the assertion, that my play is stupid, I 
have nothing to object ; if it be found so, even 
let it be so said; but if (as was most falsely 
asserted of Adelmorn) any anonymous writer 
should advance that this Tragedy is immoral, 
I expect him to prove his assertion by quoting 
the objectionable passages. This I demand as 
an act of justice." 

We confess ourselves to have been highly 
delighted with these symptoms of returning, 
or perhaps nascent purity in the mind of Mr. 
Lewis ; a delight somewhat impaired, to be 
sure, at the opening of the play, by the follow- 



* Alfonso, King of Castile. A Traeedv, in five Acts. 
By M. G. Lewis. Price 2s. 6d. 



ing explanation which Ottilia gives of her early 
rising. 
" ACT I. Scene I. — The palace-garden. — Day-break. 
Ottilia enters in a night-dress: her hair flows dishevelled. 
" Ottil. Dews of the morn descend ! Breathe sum- 
mer gales : 
My flushed cheeks woo ye ! Play, sweet wantons, play 
'Mid my loose tresses, fan my panting breast, 
Quench my blood's burning fever ! — Vain, vain prayer ! 
Not Winter throned 'midst Alpine snows, whose will 
Can with one breath, one touch, congeal whole realms, 
And blanch whole seas : not that fiend's self could ease 
This heart, this gulf of flames, this purple kingdom, 
Where passion rules and rages !" 

Ottilia at last becomes quite furious, from 
the conviction that Cgesario has been sleeping 
with a second lady, called Estella ; whereas 
he has really been sleeping with a third lady, 
called Amelrosa. Passing across the stage, 
this gallant gentleman takes an opportunity 
of mentioning to the audience, that he has 
been passing his time very agreeably, meets 
Ottilia, quarrels, makes it up ; and so end the 
first two or three scenes. 

Mr. Lewis will excuse us for the liberty we 
take in commenting on a few passages in his 
play which appear to us rather exceptionable. 
The only information which Caesario, imagin- 
ing his father to have been dead for many 
years, receives of his existence, is in the fol- 
lowing short speech of Melchior. 

"Melch. The Count San Lucar, long thought dead 
but saved, 
It seems, by Amelrosa's care.— Time presses— 
1 must away : farewell." 

To this laconic, but important information, 
Caesario makes no reply ; but merely desires 
Melchior to meet him at one o'clock, under the 
Royal Tower, and for some other purposes. 

in the few cases which have fallen under 
our observation, of fathers restored to life after 
a supposed death of twenty years, the parties 
concerned have, on the first intimation, ap- 
peared a little surprised, and generally ask a 
few questions ; though we do not go the length 
of saying it is natural so to do. This same 
Caesario (whose love of his father is a prin- 
cipal cause of his conspiracy against the 
king) begins criticising the old warrior, upon 
his first seeing him again, much as a virtuoso 
would criticise an ancient statue that wanted 
an arm or a leg. 

" Orsino enters from the cave. 
" C/ESARIO. Now by my life 

A noble ruin!" 

Amelrosa, who imagines her father to have 
banished her from his presence for ever, in the 
first transports of joy for pardon, obtained by 
eai'nest intercessions, thus exclaims : — 

" Lend thy doves, dear Venus, 
That I may send them where Csesario strays : 
And while he smooths their silver wings, and gives them 
For drink the honey of his lips, I'll bid them 
Coo in his ear, his Amelrosa's happy!" 

What judge of human feelings does not re- 



ao 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



cognise in these images of silver wings, doves 
and honey, the genuine language of the pas- 
sions 1 

If Mr. Lewis is really in earnest in pointing 
out the coincidence between his own dramatic 
sentiments,and the Gospel of St. Matthew, such 
a reference (wide as we know this assertion 
to be) evinces a want of judgment, of which 
we did not think him capable. If it proceeded 
from irreligious levity, we pity the man who 
has bad taste enough not to prefer honest dul- 
ness to such paltry celebrity. 

We beg leave to submit to Mr. Lewis, if Al- 
fonso, considering the great interest he has in 
the decision, might not interfere a little in the 
long argument carried on between Caesario 
and Orsino, tipon the propriety of putting him 
to death. To have expressed any decisive 
opinion upon the subject, might perhaps have 
been incorrect ; but a few gentle hints as to 
that side of the question to which he leaned, 
might be fairly allowed to be no very unnatu- 
ral incident. 

This tragedy delights in explosions. Al- 
fonso's empire is destroyed by a blast of gun- 
powder, and restored by a clap of thunder. 
After the death of C^sario, and a short exhor- 
tation to that purpose by Orsino, all the con- 
spirators fall down in a thunder-clap, ask par- 
don of the king, and are forgiven. This 
mixture of physical and moral power is 
beautiful ! How interesting a water-spout 
would appear among Mr. Lewis's kings and 



queens ! We anxiously look forward, in his 
next tragedy, to a fall of snow three or four 
feet deep ; or expect that a plot shall gradually 
unfold itself by means of a general thaw. 

All is not so bad in this play. There is 
some strong painting, which shows, every now 
and then, the hand of a master. The agitation 
which Caesario exhibits upon his first joining 
the conspirators in the cave, previous to the 
blowing up of the mine, and immediately after 
slabbing Ottilia, is very fine. 

"Ca:sARio. Ay, shout, shout, 
And kneeling greet your blood-anoijited king. 
This steel his sceptre ! Tremble, dwarfs in guilt. 
And own your master ! Thou art proof, Henriquez, 
'Gainst pity ; I once saw thee stab in battle 
A page who clasped thy knees : And Melchior th«re 
Made quick work with a brother whom he hated. 
But what did I this night 1 Hear, hear, and reverence ! 
There was a breast, on which my head had rested 
A thousand times ; a breast which loved me fondly 
As heaven loves martyred saints ; and yet this breast 
I stabbed, knave— stabbed it to the heart — Wine '. wine 

there ■? 
For my soul's joyous !" — p. 86. 

The resistance which Amelrosa opposes to 
the firing of the mine, is well wrought out ; 
and there is some good poetry scattered up 
and down the play, of which we should very 
willingly make extracts, if our limits would 
permit. The ill success which it has justly 
experienced, is owing, we have no doubt, to the 
want of nature in the characters, and of proba- 
bility and good arrangement in the incidents ; 
objections of some force. 



AUSTRALIA; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



To introduce an European population, and 
consequently, the arts and civilization of Eu- 
rope, into such an untrodden country as New 
Holland, is to confer a lasting and important 
benefit upon the world. If man be destined for 
perpetual activity, and if the proper objects of 
that activity he the subjugation of physical 
difficulties, and of his own dangerous passions, 
how absurd are those systems which proscribe 
the acquisitions of science and the restraints 
of law, and would arrest the progress of man 
in the rudest and earliest stages of his exist- 
ence ! Indeed, opinions so very extravagant 
in their nature must be attributed rather to the 
wantonness of paradox, than to sober reflec- 
tion and extended inquiry. 

To suppose the savage state permanent, we 
must suppose the numbers of those who com- 
pose it to be stationary, and the various pas- 
sions by which men have actually emerged 
from it to be extinct; and this is to suppose 
man a very different being from what he really 
IS. To prove such a permanence beneficial, 
(if it were possible,) we must have recourse 

* Account of the English Colony of JVejo South Wales. 
By Lieutenant-Colonel Collins of the Royal Marines. 
Vol. ii. 4to. Cadell and Davies, London. 



to matter of fact, and judge of the rude state 
of society, not from the praises of tranquil 
literati, but from the narratives of those who 
have seen it, through a nearer and better me- 
dium than that of imagination. There is an 
argument, however, for the continuation of 
evil, drawn from the ignorance of good ; by 
which it is contended, that to teach men their 
situation can be better, is to teach them that it 
is bad, and to destroy that happiness which 
always results from an ignorance that any 
greater happiness is within our reach. All 
pains and pleasures are clearly by comparison ; 
but the most deplorable savage enjoys a suffi- 
cient contrast of good, to know that the grosser 
evils from which civilization rescues him are 
evils. A New Hollander seldom pas?es a year 
without suffering from famine ; the small-pox 
falls upon him like a plague ; he dreads those 
calamities, though he does not know how to 
avert them ; but, doubtless, would find his 
happiness increased, if they were averted. To 
deny this, is to suppose that men are recon- 
ciled to evils, because they are inevitable; and 
yet hurricanes, earthquakes, bodily decay, and 
death, stand highest in the catalogue of human 
calamities. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



21 



Where civilization gives new birth to new 
comparisons unfavourable to savage life, with 
the information that a greater good is possible, 
it generally connects the means of attaining it. 
The savage no sooner becomes ashamed of his 
nakedness, than the loom is ready to clothe 
him ; the forge prepares for him more perfect 
tools, when he is disgusted with the awkward- 
ness of his own : his weakness is strength- 
ened, and his wants supplied as soon as they 
are discovered ; and the use of the discovery 
is, that it enables him to derive from compari- 
son the best proof of present happiness. A 
man born blind is ignorant of the pleasures of 
which he is deprived. After the restoration of 
his sight, his happiness will be increased from 
two causes ; — from the delight he experiences 
at the novel accession of power, and from the 
contrast he will always be enabled to make 
between his two situations, long after the plea- 
sure of novelty has ceased. For these rea- 
sons it is humane to restore him to sight. 

But, however beneficial to the general inte- 
rests of mankind the civilization of barbarous 
countries may be considered to be, in this par- 
ticular instance of it, the interest of Great 
Britain would seem to have been very little 
consulted. With fanciful schemes of universal 
good we have no business to meddle. Why 
we are to erect penitentiary houses and prisons 
at the distance of half the diameter of the 
globe, and to incur the enormous expense of 
feeding and transporting their inhabitants to 
and at such a distance, it is extremely difficult 
to discover. It certainly is not from any de- 
ficiency of barren islands near our own coast, 
nor of uncultivated wastes in the interior; and 
if we were sufficiently fortunate to be wanting 
in such species of accommodation, we might 
discover in Canada, or the West Indies, or on 
the coast of Africa, a climate malignant 
enough, or a soil sufficiently sterile, to revenge 
all the injuries which have been inflicted on 
society by pickpockets, larcenists, and petty 
felons. Upon the foundation of a new colony, 
and especially one peopled by criminals, there 
is a disposition in Government (where any 
circumstance in the commission of the crime 
affords the least pretence for the commutation) 
to convert capital punishments into transpor- 
tation ; and by these means to hold forth a 
very dangerous, though certainly a very unin- 
tentional, encouragement to offences. And 
when the history of the colony has been atten- 
tively perused in the parish of St. Giles, the 
ancient avocation of picking pockets will cer- 
tainly not become more discreditable from the 
knowledge, that it may eventually lead to the 
possession of a farm of a thousand acres on 
the river Hawkesbury. Since the benevolent 
Howard attacked our prisons, incarceration 
has become not only healthy but elegant ; and 
a county jail is precisely the place to which 
any pauper might wish to retire to gratify his 
taste for magnificence as well as for comfort. 
Upon the same principle, there is some risk 
that transportation will be considered as one 
of the surest roads to honour and to wealth ; 
and that no felon will hear a verdict of " not 
guilty" without considering himself as cut off 
in the fairest career of prosperity. It is fool- 



ishly believed, that the colony of Botany Bay 
unites our moral and commercial interests, 
and that we shall receive hereafter an ample 
equivalent, in bales of goods, for all the vices 
we export. Unfortunately, the expenses we 
have incurred in founding the colony, will not 
retard the natural progress of its emancipa- 
tion, or prevent the attacks of other nations, 
who will be as desirous of reaping the fruit, 
as if they had sown the seed. It is a colony, 
besides, begun under every possible disadvan- 
tage; it is too distant to be long governed, or 
well defended ; it is undertaken, not by the vo- 
luntary association of individuals, but by Go- 
vernment, and by means of compulsory labour. 
A nation must, indeed, be redundant in capital, 
that will expend it where the hopes of a just 
return are so very small. 

It may be a very curious consideration, to 
reflect what we are to do with this colony when 
it comes to years of discretion. Are we to 
spend another hundred millions of money in 
discovering its strength, and to humble our- \ 
selves again before a fresh set of Washingtons \ 
and Franklins 1 The moment after we have \ 
suffered such serious mischief from the es- 
cape of the old tiger, we are breeding up a 
young cub, whom we cannot render less fero- 
cious, or more secure. If we are gradually to 
manumit the colony, as it is more and more 
capable of protecting itself, the degrees of 
emancipation, and the periods at which they 
are to take place, will be judged of very differ- 
ently by the two nations. But we confess our- 
selves not to be so sanguine as to suppose, that 
a spirited and commercial people would, in 
spite of the example of America, ever consent 
to abandon their sovereignty over an import- , 
ant colony, without a struggle. Endless blood I 
and treasure will be exhausted to support a i 
tax on kangaroos' skins ; faithful Commons 
will go on voting fresh supplies to support a 
just and necessary war; and Newgate, then be- ' 
come a quarter of the world, will evince a 
heroism, not unworthy of the great characters 
by whom she was originally peopled. 

The experiment, however, is not less inte- 
resting in a moral, because it is objectionable 
in a commercial point of view. It is an ob- 
ject of the highest curiosity, thus to have the 
growth of a nation subjected to our exami- 
nation ; to trace it by such faithful records, 
from the first day of its existence ; and to ga- 
ther that knowledge of the progress of human 
affairs, from actual experience, which is con- 
sidered to be only accessible to the conjectural 
reflections of enlightened minds. 

Human nature, under very old governments, 
is so trimmed, and pruned, and ornamented, 
and led into such a variety of factitious shapes, 
that we are almost ignorant of the appearance 
it would assume, if it were left more to itself. 
From such an experiment as that now before 
us, we shall be better able to appreciate what 
circumstances of our situation are owing to 
those permanent laws by which all men are 
influenced, and what to the accidental positions 
in which we have been placed. New circum- 
stances will throw new light upon the effects 
of our religious, political, and economical in- 
stitutions, if we cause them to be adopted as 



22 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



models in our rising empire; and if we do not, 
we shall estimate the effects of their presence, 
by observing those which are produced by 
their non-existence. 

The history of the colony is at present, how- 
ever, in its least interesting state, on account 
of the great preponderance of depraved inha- 
bitants, whose crimes and irregularities give 
a monotony to the narrative, which it cannot 
lose, till the respectable part of the community 
come to bear a greater proportion to the cri- 
minal. 

These Memoirs of Colonel Collins resume 
the history of the colony from the period at 
which he concluded it in his former volume, 
September 1796, and continue it down to Au- 
gust 1801. They are written in the style of a 
journal, which, though not the most agreeable 
mode of conveying information, is certainly 
the most authentic, and contrives to banish the 
suspicion (and most probably the reality) of 
the interference of a book-maker — a species 
of gentlemen who are now almost become ne- 
cessary to deliver naval and military authors 
in their literary labours, though they do not 
always atone, by orthography and grammar, 
for the sacrifice of truth and simplicity. Mr. 
Collins's book is written with great plainness 
and candour : he appears to be a man always 
meaning well ; of good, plain common sense ; 
and composed of those well-wearing materials, 
which adapt a person for situations where 
genius and refinement would only prove a 
source of misery and of error. 

We shall proceed to lay before our readers 
an analysis of the most important matter con- 
tained in this volume. 

The natives in the vicinity of Port Jackson 
stand extremely low, in point of civilization, 
when compared with many other savages, 
with whom the discoveries of Captain Cook 
have made us acquainted. Their notions of 
religion exceed even that degree of absurdity 
which we are led to expect in the creed of a 
barbarous people. In politics, they appear to 
have scarcely advanced beyond family-govern' 
ment. Huts they have none ; and, in all their 
economical inventions, there is a rudeness and 
deficiency of ingenuity, unpleasant, when con- 
trasted with the instances of dexterity with 
which the descriptions and importations of 
our navigators have rendered us so familiar. 
Their numbers appear to us to be very small : 
a fact, at once, indicative either of the ferocity 
of manners in any people, or, more probably, 
of the sterility of their country ; but which, 
in the present instance, proceeds from both 
these causes. 

"Gaining every day (says Mr. Collins) some 
further knowledge of the inhuman habits and 
customs of these people, their being so thinly 
scattered through the country ceased to be a 
matter of surprise. It was almost daily seen, 
that from some trifling cause or other, they 
were continually living in a state of warfare : 
to this must be added their brutal treatment of 
their women, who are themselves equally de- 
structive to the measure of population, by the 
horrid and cruel customs of endeavouring to 
cause a miscarriage, which their female ac- 
quaintances effect by pressing the body in such 



a way, as to destroy the infant in the womb;. 
which violence not xxnfrequently occasions the 
death of the unnatural mother also. To this 
they have recourse to avoid the trouble of car- 
rying the infant about when born, which, when 
it is very young, or at the breast, is the duty 
of the woman. The operation for this destruc- 
tive purpose is termed Mee-bra. The burying 
an infant (when at the breast) with the mo- 
ther, if she should die, is another shocking 
cause of the thinness of population among 
them. The fact that such an operation as the ' 
Mee-bri was practised by these wretched peo- 
ple, was communicated by one of the native^ 
to the principal surgeon of the settlement." — \ 
(p. 124, 125.) 

It is remarkable, that the same paucity of 
numbers has been observed in every paVt of 
New Holland which has hitherto been ex- 
plored ; and yet there is not the smallest rea- 
son to conjecture that the population of it has 
been very recent ; nor do the people bear any 
marks of descent from the inhabitants of; the 
numerous islands by which this great conti- 
nent is surrounded. The force of population 
can only be resisted by some great physical 
evils ; and many of the causes of this scarcity 
of human beings, which Mr. Collins refers to 
the ferocity of the natives, are ultimately re- 
ferable to the difficulty of support. We have 
always considered this phenomenon as a symp- 
tom extremely unfavourable to the future des- 
tinies of this country. It is easy to launch out 
into eulogiums of the fertility of nature in par- 
ticular spots ; but the most probable reason 
why a country that has been long inhabited, 
is not well inhabited, is, that it is not calcu- 
lated to support many inhabitants without great 
labour. It is difficult to suppose any other 
causes powerful enough to resist the impetu- 
ous tendency of man, to obey that mandate 
for increase and multiplication, which has 
certainly been better observed than any other 
declaration of the Divine will ever revealed 
to us. 

There appears to be some tendency to civi- 
lization, and some tolerable notions of justice, 
in a practice very similar to our custom of 
duelling; for duelling, though barbarous iu 
civilized, is a highly civilized institution among 
barbarous people : and when compared to as- 
sassination, is a prodigious victory gained 
over human passions. Whoever kills another 
in the neighbourhood of Botany Bay, is com- 
pelled to appear at an appointed day before the 
friends of the deceased, and to sustain the at- 
tacks of their missile weapons. If he is killed, 
he is deemed to have met with a deserved 
death ; if not, he is considered to have expiated 
the crime for the commission of which he was 
exposed to the danger. There is in this in- 
stitution a command over present impulses, a 
prevention of secrecy in the gratification of 
revenge, and a wholesome correction of that 
passion by the effect of public observation, 
which evince such a superiority to the mere 
animal passions of ordinary savages, and form 
such a contrast to the rest of the history of 
this people, that it may be considered as alto- 
gether an anomalous and inexplicable fact^ 
The natives differ very much in the progress 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



23 



they have made in the arts of economy. 
Those to the north of Port Jackson evince a 
considerable degree of ingenuity and con- 
trivance in the structure of their houses, 
which are rendered quite impervious to the 
"weather, while the inhabitants at Port Jackson 
have no houses at all. At Port Dalrymple, in 
Van Diemen's Land, there was every reason 
to believe the natives were unacquainted with 
the use of canoes ; a fact extremely embar- 
rassing to those who indulge themselves in 
speculating on the genealogy of nations ; be- 
cause it reduces them to the necessity of sup- 
posing that the progenitors of this insular 
people swam over from the main land, or that 
they were aboriginal ; a species of dilemma, 
which effectually bars all conjecture upon the 
intermixture of nations. It is pamful to 
learn, that the natives have begun to plunder 
and rob in so very alarming a manner, that it 
has been repeatedly found necessary to fire 
upon them ; and many have, in consequence, 
fallen victims to their rashness. 

The soil is found to produce coal in vast 
abundance, salt, lime, very fine iron ore, tim- 
ber fit for all purposes, excellent flax, and a 
tree, the bark of which is admirably adapted 
for cordage. The discovery of coal (which, 
by the by, we do not believe was ever before 
discovered so near the line) is probably rather 
a disadvantage than an advantage ; because, 
as it lies extremely favourable for sea car- 
riage, it may prove to be a cheaper fuel than 
wood, and thus operate as a discouragement 
to the clearing of lands. The soil upon the 
sea-coast has not been found to be very pro- 
ductive, though it improves in partial spots 
in the interior. The climate is healthy, in 
spite of the prodigious heat of the summer 
months, at which period the thermometer has 
been observed to stand in the shade at 107, 
and the leaves of garden-vegetables to fall into 
dust, as if they had been consumed with fire. 
But one of the most insuperable defects in 
New Holland, considered as the future coun- 
try of a great people, is, the want of large ri- 
vers penetrating very far into the interior, and 
navigable for small crafts. The Hawkesbury, 
the largest river yet discovered, is not acces- 
sible to boats for more than twenty miles. 
This same river occasionally rises above' its 
natural level, to the astonishing height of fifty 
feet; and has swept awa}--, more than once, 
the labours and the hopes of the new people 
exiled to its banks. 

The laborious acquisition of any good we 
have long enjoyed is apt to be forgotten. We 
Avalk and talk, and run and read, without 
remembering the long and severe labour dedi- 
cated to the cultivation of these powers, the 
formidable obstacles opposed to our progress, 
or the infinite satisfaction with which we over- 
came them. He who lives among a civilized 
people, may estimate the labour by which so- 
ciety has been brought into such a state, by read- 
ing these annals of Botany Bay, the account 
of a whole nation exerting itself to new floor 
the government-house, repair the hospital, or 
build a wooden receptacle for stores. Yet the 
time may come, when some Botany Bay Taci- 
tus shall record the crimes of an emperor 



lineally descended from a London pick-pocket, 
or paint the valour with which he has led his 
New Hollanders into the heart of China. At 
that period, when the Grand Lahma is sending 
to supplicate alliance ; when the spice islands 
are purchasing peace with nutmegs ; when 
enormous tributes of green tea and nankeen 
are wafted into Port Jackson, and landed on 
the quays of S3rdney, who will ever remember 
that the sawing of a few planks, and the 
knocking together a few nails, were such a 
serious trial of the energies and resources of 
the nation ? 

The Government of the colony, after enjoy- 
ing some little respite from this kind of labour, 
has begun to turn its attention to the coarsest 
and most necessary species of manufactures, 
for which their wool appears to be well adapt- 
ed. The state of stock in the whole settle- 
ment, in June 1801, was about 7,000 sheep, 
1,300 head of cattle, 250 horses, and 5,000 
hogs. There were under cultivation at the 
same time, between 9 and 10,000 acres of corn. 
Three years and a-half before this, in Decem- 
ber 1797, the numbers were as follows: — 
Sheep, 2,500 ; cattle 350 ; horses, 100 ; hogs, 
4,300 ; acres of land in cultivation, 4,000. 
The temptation to salt pork, and sell it for 
Government store, is probably the reason why 
the breed of hogs has been so much kept 
under. The increase of cultivated lands be- 
tween the two periods is prodigious. It ap- 
pears (p. 319) that the whole number of con- , 
victs imported between January 1788 and j 
June 1801 (a period of thirteen years and a / 
half) has been about 5,000, of whom 1,157 
were females. The total amount of the popu- 
lation on the continent, as well as at Norfolk 
Island, amounted, June 1801, to 6,500 persons ; / 
of these 766 were children Ijorn at Port Jack- { 
son. In the returns from Norfolk Island, 
children are not discriminated from adults. 
Let us add to the imported population of 5,000 
convicts, 500 free people, which (if we consi- 
der that a regiment of soldiers has been kept 
up there) is certainly a very small allowance ; 
then, in thirteen years and a half, the imported 
population has increased only by two-thir- 
teenths. If we suppose that something more 
than a fifth of the free people were women, 
this will make the total of women 1,270 ; of 
whom we may fairly presume that 800 were 
capable of child-bearing; and if we suppose 
the children of Norfolk Island to bear the same 
proportion to the adults as at Port Jackson, 
their total number at both settlements will be 
913; — a state of infantine population which 
certainly does not justify the very high eulo- 
giums which have been made on the fertility 
of the female sex in the climate of New Hol- 
land. 

The Governor, who appears on all occasions 
to be an extremely well-disposed man, is not 
quite so conversant in the best writings on 
political economy as we could wish : and in- 
deed (though such knowledge would be ex- 
tremely serviceable to the interests which this 
Romulus of the Southern Pole is superintend- 
ing), it is rather unfair to exact from a super- \ 
intendent of pick-pockets, that he should be a / 
philosopher. In the 18th page we have the 



24 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



following information respecting the price of 
labour : — 

"Some representations having been made 
to the Governor from the settlers in different 
parts of the colony, purporting that the wages 
demanded by the free labouring people, whom 
they had occasion to hire, were so exorbitant 
as to run away with the greatest part of the 
profit of their farms, it was recommended to 
them to appoint quarterly meetings among 
themselves, to be held in each district, for the 
purpose of settling the rate of wages to la- 
bourers in every different kind of work ; that, 
to this end, a written agreement should be en- 
tered into, and subscribed by each settler, a 
breach of which should be punished by a 
penalty, to be fixed by the general opinion, 
and made recoverable in a court of civil judi- 
cature. It was recommended to them to apply 
this forfeiture to the common benefit; and 
they were to transmit to the head-quarters a 
copy of their agreement, with the rate of 
wages which they should from time to time 
establish, for the Governor's information, hold- 
ing their first meeting as early as possible." 

And again, at p. 24, the following arrange- 
ments on that head are enacted : — 

"In pursuance of the order which was 
issued in January last recommending the set- 
tlers to appoint meetings, at which they should 
fix the rate of wages that it might be proper 
to pay for the different kinds of labour which 
their farms should require, the settlers had 
submitted to the Governor the several resolu- 
tions that they had entered into, by which he 
was enabled to fix a rate that he conceived to 
be fair and equitable between the farmer and 
the labourer. 

" The following prices of labour were now established, 
viz. 

£ s. d. 
Felling forest timber, per acre, - - 9 
Ditto in brushwood, ditto - - 1 10 6 

Burning off open ground, ditto - - 15 
Ditto brush ground, ditto - - 1 10 

Breaking up new ground, ditto - - 14 
Chipping fresh ground, ditto - - 1 12 3 
Chipping in wheat, ditto - - 7 

Breaking up stubble or corn ground, 1 jd. per rod, 

or ditto - - 16 8 

Planting Indian corn, ditto - - 7 
Hilling ditto ditto - - 7 

Reaping wheat, ditto - - 10 

Thrashingditto,pr. bush., ditto - - 9 
Pulling and husking Indian corn, per bushel 6 
Splitting paling of seven feet long, per hundred 3 
Ditto of five feet long, ditto - - - 16 

Sawing plank, ditto - - - 7 

Ditching per rod, three feet wide, and 3 ft. deep 10 
Carriage of wheat, per bushel, per mile - 2 
Ditto Indian corn, neat - - - 3 

Yearly wages for labour, with board - 10 
Wages per week, with provisions, consisting 
of 4 lb. of salt pork, or 6 lb. of fresh, and 21 
lb. of wheat with vegetables - - 6 
A day's wages with board - - - 10 
Ditto without board - . - - 2 6 

A government-man allowed to officers or set- 
tlers in their own time - - - 10 
Price of an axe .... . 020 

New steeling ditto ... . 006 

A new hoe -...- . 019 
A sickle ..... . 016 

Hire of a boat to carry grain, per day - 5 
"The settlers were reminded, that, in order to prevent 
any kind of dispute between the master and servant, 
when they should have occasion to hire a man for any 
length of time, they would find it most convenient to en. 
gage him for a quarter, half-year, or year, and to make 
their agreement in writing; on which, should any dis. 
pute arise, an appeal to the magistrates would settle it." 



This is all very bad ; and if the Governor 
had cherished the intention of destroying the 
colony, he could have done nothing more de- 
trimental to its interests. The high price of 
labour is the very corner-stone on which the 
prosperity of a new colony depends. It ena- 
bles the poor man to live with ease ; and is the 
strongest incitement to population, by render- 
ing children rather a source of riches than of 
poverty. If the same difficulty of subsist- 
ence existed in new countries as in old, it is 
plain that the progress of population would be 
equally slow in each. The veiy circumstances 
which cause the difference are, that, in the lat- 
ter, there is a competition among the labour- 
ers to be employed ; and, in the former, a com- 
petition among the occupiers of land to obtain 
labourers. In the one, land is scarce and men 
plenty ; in the other, men are scarce, and land 
is plenty. To disturb this natural order of 
things (a practice injurious at all times) must 
be particularly so where the predominant dis- 
position of the colonist is an aversion to la- 
bour, produced by a long course of dissolute 
habits. In such cases the high prices of la- 
bour, which the Governor was so desirous of 
abating, bid fair not only to increase the agri- 
cultural prosperity, but to effect the moral re- 
formation of the colony. We observe the same 
unfortunate ignorance of the elementary prin- 
ciples of commerce in the attempts of the Go- 
vernor to reduce the prices of the European 
commodities, by bulletins and authoritative 
interference, as if there were any other mode 
of lowering the price of an article (while the 
demand continues the same) but by increasing 
its quantity. The avaricious love of gain, 
which is so feelingly deplored, appears to us 
a principle which, in able hands, might be 
guided to the most salutary purposes. The 
object is to encourage the love of labour, 
which is best encouraged by the love of money. 
We have very great doubts on the policy of 
reserving the best timber on the estates as go- 
vernment timber. Such a reservation would 
probably operate as a check upon the clearing 
of lands without attaining the object desired; 
for the timber, instead of being immediately 
cleared, would be slowly destroyed, by the neg- 
lect or malice of the settlers whose lands it en- 
cumbered. Timber is such a drug in new coun- 
tries, that it is at any time to be purchased for 
little more than the labour of cutting. To se- 
cure a supply of it by vexatious and invidious 
laws, is surely a work of supererogation and 
danger. The greatest evil which the govern- 
ment has yet to contend with is, the inordinate 
use of spirituous liquors; a passion which 
puts the interests of agriculture at variance 
with those of morals : for a dram-drinker will 
consume as much corn, in the form of alcohol, 
in one day, as would supply him with bread 
for three ; and thus, by his vices, opens an ad- 
mirable market to the industry of a new set- 
tlement. The only mode, we believe, of en- 
countering this evil, is by deriving fropi it such 
a revenue as will not admit of smuggling. 
Beyond this it is almost invincible by autho- 
rity ; and is probably to be cured only by the 
progressive refinement of manners. 

To evince the increasing commerce of the 



WORKS OF THfi REV. SYDNEY : SMITH. 



26 



settlement, a list is subjoined of 140 ships, 
which have arrived there since its first foun- 
dation, forty only of which were from Eng- 
land. The colony at Norfolk Island is repre- 
sented to be in a very deplorable situation, and 
will most probably be abandoned for one about 
to be formed on Van Diemen's Land,* though 
the capital defect of the former settlement has 
been partly obviated, by a discovery of the 
harbour for small craft. 

The most important and curious information 
contained in this volume, is the discovery of 
straits which separate Van Diemen's Land 
(hitherto considered as its southern extremity) 
from New Holland. For this discovery we are 
indebted to Mr. Bass, a surgeon, after whom 
the straits have been named, and who was led 
to a suspicion of their existence by a prodi- 
gious swell which he observed to set in from 
the westward, a,t the mouth of the opening 
which he had reached on a voyage of disco- 
very, prosecuted in a common whale-boat., To 
verify this suspicion^he proceeded afterwards 
in a vessel of 25 tons, accompanied by Mr. 
Flanders, a naval gentleman; and, entering 
the straits between the latitudes of 39° and 
40° south, actually circumnavigated Van Die- 
men's Land. Mr. Bass's ideas of the import- 
ance of this discovery, we shall give from his 
narrative, as reported by Mr. Collins. 

" The most prominent advantage which 
seemed likely to accrue to the settlement 
from this discovery was, the expediting of 
the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to 
Port Jackson : for, although a line drawn from 
the Cape to 44° of south latitude, and to the 
longitude of the South Cape of Van Diemen's 
Land, would not sensibly differ from one 
drawn to the latitude of 40° to the same longi- 
tude ; yet it must be allowed, that a ship will 
be four degrees nearer to Port Jackson in the 
latter situation than it would be in the former. 
But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to 
be gained by making a passage through the 
strait, than the mere saving of four degrees of 
latitude along the coast. The major part of 
the ships that have arrived at Port Jackson 
have met with N. E. winds, on opening the sea 
round the South Cape and Cape Pillar; and 
have been so much retarded by them, that a 
fourteen days' passage to the port is reckoned 
to be a fair one, although the difference of lati- 
tude is but ten degrees, and the most prevail- 
ing winds at the latter place are from S. E. to 
S. in summer, and from W. S. W. to S. in 
winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, these 
N. E. winds can be avoided, which in many 
cases would probably be the case, there is no 
doubt but a week or more would be gained by 
it ; and the expense, with the wear and tear of 
a ship for one week, are objects to most owners, 
more especially when freighted with convicts 
by the run. 



* It is singular that Governments are not more desir- 
ous of pushing their settlements rather to the north than 
the south of Port Jackson. The soil and climate would 
probably improve, in the latitude nearer the equator ; 
and settlements in that position would be more contigu- 
' 0U8 to our Indian colonies. 



"This strait likewise presents another ad- 
vantage. From the prevalence of the N. E. 
and easterly winds of the South Cape, many 
suppose that a passage may be made from 
thence to the westward, either to the Cape of 
Good Hope, or to India ; but the fear of the 
great unknown bight between the South Cape 
and the S. W. Cape of Lewen's Land, lying in 
about 35° south and 113° east, has hitherto 
prevented the trial being made. Now, the 
strait removes a part of this danger, by pre- 
senting a certain place of retreat, should a 
gale oppose itself to the ship in the Srst part 
of the essay : and should the wind come at S. 
W. she need not fear making a good stretch to 
the W. N. W., which course, if made good, is 
within a few degrees of going clear of all. 
There is, besides, King George the Third's 
Sound, discovered by Captain Vancouver, 
situate in the latitude of 35° 30' south, and 
longitude 118° 12' east; and it is to be hoped, 
that a few years will disclose many others 
upon the coast, as well as the confirmation or 
futility of the conjecture that a still larger than 
Bass Strait dismembers New Holland." — (p. 
192, 193.) 

We learn from a note subjoined to this pas- 
sage, that, in order to verify or refute this con- 
jecture, of the existence of other important 
inlets on the west coast of New Holland, Cap- 
tain Flinders has sailed with two ships under 
his command, and is said to be accompanied 
by several professional men of considerable 
ability. 

Such are the most important contents of Mr. 
Collins's book, the style of which we very 
much approve, because it appears to be writ- 
ten by himself; and we must repeat again, 
that nothing can be more injurious to the opi- 
nion the public will form of the authenticity 
of a book of this kind, than the suspicion that 
it has been tricked out and embellished by 
other hands. Such men, to be sure, have ex- 
isted as Julius Caesar ; but, in general, a cor- 
rect and elegant style is hardly attainable by 
those who have passed their lives in action : 
and no one has such a pedantic love of good 
writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to 
rough and ungrammatical truth. The events 
which Mr. Collins's book records, we have 
read with great interest. There is a charm in 
thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, 
rising from a wilderness, where civilized man 
has never set his foot since the creation of the 
world. The contrast between fertility and bar- 
renness, population and solitude, activity and 
indolence, fills the mind with the pleasing 
images of happiness and increase. Man 
seems to move in his proper sphere, while he 
is thus dedicating the powers of his mind and 
body to reap those rewards which the bounti- 
ful Author of all things has assigned to his in- 
dustry. Neither is it any common enjoyment, 
to turn for a while from the memory of those 
distractions which have so recently agitated 
the Old World, and to reflect that its very hor- 
rors and crimes may have thus prepared a 
long era of opulence and peace for a people 
yet involved in the womb of time. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



J. fievee; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1809.] 



Of all the species of travels, that which has 
moral observation for its object is the most 
liable to error, and has the greatest difficulties 
to overcome, before it can arrive at excellence. 
Stones, and roots, and leaves, are subjects 
which may exercise the understanding without 
rousing the passions. A mineralogical travel- 
ler will hardly fall fouler upon the granite and 
the feldspar of other countries than his own ; 
a botanist will not conceal its non-descripts ; 
and an agricultural tourist will faithfully detail 
the average crop per acre ; but the traveller 
who observes on the manners, habits, and 
institutions of other countries, must have 
emancipated his mind from the extensive and 
powerful dominion of association, must have 
extinguished the agreeable and deceitful feel- 
ings of national vanity, and cultivated that 
patient humility which builds general infer- 
ences only upon the repetition of individual 
facts. Every thing he sees shocks some pas- 
sion or flatters it ; and he is perpetually se- 
duced to distort facts, so as to render them 
as;reeable to his system and his feelings ! 
Books of travels are now published in such 
vast abundance, that it may not be useless, 
perhaps, to state a few of the reasons why 
their value so commonly happens to be in the 
inverse ratio of their number. 

1st, Travels are bad, from a want of oppor- 
tunity for observation in those who write them. 
If the sides of a building are to be measured, 
and the number of its windows to be counted, 
a very short space of time may suffice for these 
operations ; but to gain such a knowledge of 
their prevalent opinions and propensities, as 
will enable a stranger to comprehend (what is 
commonly called) the genius of people, re- 
quires a long residence among them, a fami- 
liar acquaintance Avith their language, and an 
easy circulation among their various societies. 
The society into which a transient stranger 
gains the most easy access in any country, is 
not often that which ought to stamp the na- 
tional character; and no criterion can be more 
fallible, in a people so reserved and inaccessi- 
ble as the British, who (even when they open 
their doors to letters of introduction) cannot 
for years overcome the awkward timidity of 
their nature. The same expressions are of so 
different a value in different countries, the 
same actions proceed from such different 
causes, and produce such different effects, 
that a judgment of foreign nations, founded on 
rapid observation, is almost certainly a mere 
tissue of ludicrous and disgraceful mistakes ; 
and yet a residence of a month or two seems 
to entitle a traveller to present the world with 
a picture of manners in London, Paris, or 
Vienna, and even to dogmatize upon the poli- 



* LMrts xur VAngleUrre. Par J. Fievee. 1802. 



tical, religious, and legal institutions, as if it 
were one and the same thing to speak of ab- 
stract effects of such institiations, and of their 
effects combined with all the peculiar circum- 
stances in which any nation may be placed. 

2dly, An affectation of quickness in obser- 
vation, an intuitive glance that requires only 
a moment, and a pari, to judge of a perpetuity, 
and a luhok. The late Mr. Petion, who was 
sent over into this country to acquire a know- 
ledge of our criminal law, is said to have de- 
clared himself thoroughly informed upon the 
subject after remaining precisely two and 
thirty minutes in the Old Bailey. 

3dly, The tendency to found observation on 
a system, rather than a system upon observa- 
tion. The fact is, there are very few original 
eyes and ears. The great mass see and hear 
as they are directed by others, and bring back 
from a residence in foreign countries nothing 
but the vague and customary notions concern- 
ing it, which are carried and brought back for 
half a century, without verification or change. 
The most ordinary shape in which this ten- 
dency to prejudge makes its appearance 
among travellers, is by a disposition to exalt, 
or, a still more absurd disposition to depre- 
ciate their native country. They are incapable 
of considering a foreign people but under one 
single point of view — the relation in which 
they stand to their own ; and the whole narra- 
tive is frequently nothing more than a mere 
triumph of national vanity, or the ostentation 
of superiority to so common a failing. 

But we are wasting our time in giving a 
theory of the faults of travellers, when we 
have such ample means of exemplifying them 
all from the publication now before us, in 
which Mr. Jacob Fievee, with the most sur- 
prising talents for doing wrong, has contrived 
to condense and agglomerate every species of 
absurdity that has hitherto been made known, 
and even to launch out occasionally into new 
regions of nonsense, with a boldness which 
well entitles him to the merit of originality in 
folly, and discovery in impertinence. We con- 
sider Mr. Fievee's book as extremely valuable 
in one point of view. It affords a sort of limit 
or mind-mark, beyond which we conceive it 
to be impossible in future that pertness and 
petulance should pass. It is well to be ac- 
quainted with the boundaries of our nature on 
both sides ; and to Mr. Fievee we are indebted 
for this valuable approach to pessimism. The 
height of knowledge no man has yet scanned ; 
but we have now pretty well fathomed the gulf 
of ignorance. 

We must, however, do justice to Mr. Fievee 
when he deserves it. He evinces, in his pre- 
face, a lurking uneasiness at the apprehen- 
sion of exciting war between the two coun- 
tries, from the anger to which his letters will 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



sr 



give birth in England. He pretends to deny 
that they will occasion a war ; but it is very 
easy to see he. is not convinced by his own 
arguments ; and we confess ourselves ex- 
tremely pleased by this amiable solicitude at 
the probable effusion of human blood. We 
hope Mr. Fievee is deceived by his philan- 
thropy, and that no such unhappy conse- 
quences will ensue, as he ideally believes, 
though he affects to deny them. We dare to 
say the dignity of this country will be satis- 
fied if the publication in question is disowned 
by the French government, or, at most, if the 
author is given up. At all events, we have no 
scruple to say, that to sacrifice 20,000 lives, 
and a hundred millions of money to resent 
Mr. Fievee's book, would be an unjustifiable 
waste of blood and treasure ; and that to take 
him off privately by assassination would be 
an undertaking hardly compatible with the 
dignity of a great empire. 

To show, however, the magnitude of the 
provocation, we shall specify a few of the 
charges which he makes against the English. 
That they do not understand fireworks as well 
as the French ; that they charge a shilling for 
admission to the exhibition ; that they have 
the misfortune of being incommoded by a cer- 
tain disgraceful privilege, called the liberty 
of the press ; that the opera band plays out of 
tune ; that the English are so fond of drinking 
that they get drunk with a certain air called 
the gas of Paradise ; that the privilege of elect- 
ing members of Parliament is so burthensome 
that cities sometimes petition to be exempted 
from it; that the great obstacle to a Parlia- 
mentary reform is the mob ; that women some- 
times have titles distinct from those of their 
husbands, although, in England, any body can 
sell his wife at market, Avith a rope aboiit her 
neck. To these complaints he adds — that the 
English are so far fi'om enjoying that equality 
of which their partisans boast, that none but 
the servants of the higher nobility can carry 
canes behind a carriage ; that the power which 
the French kings had of pardoning before trial 
is much the same thing as the English mode 
of pardoning after trial ; that he should con- 
ceive it to be a good reason for rejecting any 
measure in France that it was imitated from 
the English, who have no family affections, 
and who love money so much that their first 
question, in an inquiry concerning the cha- 
racter of any man, is. as to his degree of for- 
time. Lastly, Mr. Fievee alleges against the 
English, that they have great pleasure in con- 
templating the spectacle of men deprived of 
their reason. And, indeed, we must have the 
candour to allow that the hospitality which 
Mr. Fievee experienced seems to afford some 
pretext for this assertion. 

One of the principal objects of Mr. Fievee's 
book is to combat the Anglomania which has 
raged so long among his countrymen, and 
which prevailed at Paris to such an excess 
that even M. Neckar, a foreigner (incredible 
as it may seem), after having been twice minis- 
ter of France, retained a considerable share of 
admiration for the English government. This 



is quite inexplicable. But this is nothing to 
the treason of the Encyclopedists, who, instead 
of attributing the merit of the experimental 
philosophy and the reasoning by induction to 
a Frenchman, have shown themselves so lost 
to all sense of duty which they owed their 
country, that they have attributed it to an 
Englishman* of the name of Bacon, and this 
for no better reason than that he really was 
the author of it. The whole of this passage 
is written so entirely in the genius of Mr. 
Fievee, and so completely exemplifies that 
very caricature species of Frenchmen from 
which our gross and popular notions of the 
whole people are taken, that we shall give the 
whole passage at full length, cautiously ab- 
staining from the sin of translating it. 

" Quand je reproche aux philosophes d' avoir 
vante I'Angleterre, par haine pour les institu- 
tions qui soutenoient la France, je ne hasarde 
rien, et je fournirai une nouvelle preuve de 
cette assertion, en citant les encyclopedistes, 
chefs avoues de la philosophie moderne. 

" Comment nous ont-ils presents I'Ency- 
clopedie 1 Comme un monument immortel, 
comme le depot precieux de toutes les con- 
noissances huraaines. Sous quel patronage 
I'ont-ils eleve ce monument immortell Est 
ce sous I'egide des ecrivains dont la France 
s'honoroitl Non, ils ont choisi pour maitre 
et pour idole un Anglais, Bacon ; ils lui on 
fait dire tout ce qu'ils ont voulu, parce que cet 
auteur, extraordinairement volumineux, n'etoit 
pas connu en France, et ne Test guere en 
Angleterre que de quelques hommes studieux; 
mais les philosophes sentoient que leur suc- 
ces, pour introduire des nouveautes, tenoit a 
faire croire qu'elles n'etoient pas neuves pour 
les grands esprits ; et comme les grands es- 
prits Frangais, trop connus, ne ce pretoient 
pas a un pareil dessein, les philosophes ont 
eu recours a I'Angleterre. Ainsi, un ouvrage 
fait en France, et offert a I'admiration de I'Eu- 
rope comme I'ouvrage par excellence, fut mis 
par des Frangais sous la protection du genie 
Anglais. Ohonte! Et les philosophes se sont 
dit patriotes, et la France, pour prix de sa de- 
gradation, leur a eleve des statues ! La siecle 
qui commence, plus juste, parce qu'il a le sen- 
timent de la veritable grandeur, laissera ces 
statues et I'Encyclopedie s'ensevelir sous la 
mpme poussiere." 

When to this are added the commendations that 
have been bestowed on Newton, the magnitude 
and the originality of the discoveries which have 
been attributed to him, the admiration which 
the words of Locke have excited, and the ho- 
mage that has been paid to Milton and Shak- 
speare, the treason which lurks at the bottom 
of it all will not escape the penetrating glance 
of Mr. Fievee ; and he will discern that same 
cause from which every good Frenchman 
knows the defeat of Aboukir and of the first 
of June to have proceeded — the monster Pitt, 
and his English guineas. 



* " Gaul was conquered by a person of the name of 
Julius Caesar," is the first phrase in one of Mr. New- 
berry's little books. 



28 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



EDGEWORTH ON BULLS/ 



[EriNBiTR&H Review, 1803.]« 



We hardly know what to say about this 
rambling, scrambling book; but that we are 
quite sure the author, when he began any sen- 
tence in it, had not the smallest suspicion of 
what it was about to contain. We say the 
author; because, in spite of the mixture of 
sexes in the title-page, we are strongly in- 
clined to suspect that the male contributions 
exceed the female in a very great degree. The 
Essay on Bulls is written much with the same 
mind, and in the same manner, as a schoolboy 
takes a walk: he moves on for ten yards on 
the straight road, with surprising persever- 
ance ; then sets out after a butterfly, looks for 
a bird's nest, or jumps backwards and forwards 
over a ditch. In the same manner, this nim- 
ble and digressive gentleman is away after 
every object which crosses his mind. If you 
leave him at the end of a comma, in a steady 
pursuit of his subject, you are sure to find him, 
before the next full stop, a hundred yards to 
the right or left, frisking, capering, and grin- 
ning in a high paroxysm of merriment and 
agility. Mr. Edgeworth seems to possess the 
sentiments of an accomplished gentleman, the 
information of a scholar, and the vivacity of a 
first-rate harlequin. He is fuddled with ani- 
mal spirits, giddy with constitutional joy; in 
such a state he must have written on, or burst. 
A discharge of ink was an evacuation abso- 
lutely necessary, to avoid fatal and plethoric 
congestion. 

The object of the book is to prove, that the 
practice of making bulls is not more imputa- 
ble to the Irish than to any other people ; and 
the manner in which he sets about it, is to 
quote examples of bulls produced in other 
countries. But this is surely a singular way 
of reasoning the question: for there are goitres 
out of Valais, extortioners who do not wor- 
ship Moses, oat cakes out of the Tweed, and 
balm beyond the precincts ofGilead. If nothing 
can be said to exist pre-eminentlj^ and em- 
phatically in one country, which exists at all 
in another, then Frenchmen are not gay, nor 
Spaniards grave, nor are gentlemen of the 
Milesian race remarkable for their disinte- 
rested contempt of wealth in their connubial 
relations. It is probable there is some founda- 
tion for a character so generally diffused; 
though it is also probable that such founda- 
tion is extremely enlarged by fame. If there 
were no foundation for the common opinion, 
we must suppose national characters formed 
by chance ; and that the Irish might, by acci- 
dent, have been laughed at as bashful and 
sheepish; which is impossible. The author 
puzzles himself a good deal about the nature 
of bulls, without coming to any decision about 



* Essay on Irish Bulls. By Richard Lovell Edge- 
vroBTH, and Maria. Edgeworth. London, 1302, 



the matter. Though the question is not a very 
easy one, we shall venture to say, that a bull 
is an apparent congruity, and real incongruity, 
of ideas, suddenly discovered. And if this 
account of bulls be just, they are (as might 
have been supposed) the very reverse of wit; 
for as wit discovers real relations, that are not 
apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that 
are not real. The pleasure arising from wit 
proceeds from our surprise at suddenly disco- 
vering two things to be similar, in which we 
suspected no similarity. The pleasure aris- 
ing from bulls proceeds from our discovering 
two things to be dissimilar, in which a re- 
semblance might have been suspected. The 
same doctrine will apply to wit, and to bulls 
in action. Practical wit discovers connection 
or relation between actions, in which duller 
understandings discover none ; and practical 
bulls originate from an apparent relation be- 
tween two actions, which more correct under- 
standings immediately perceive to have no 
relation at all. 

Louis XIV. being extremely harassed by the 
repeated solicitations of a veteran officer for 
promotion, said one day, loud enough to be 
heard, " That gentleman is the most trouble- 
some officer I have in my service." " That is 
precisely the charge (said the old man) which 
your majesty's enemies bring against me." 

"An English gentleman," (sa3'-s Mr. Edge- 
worth, in a story cited from Joe Millar,) "was 
writing a letter in a coffee-house; and per- 
ceiving that an Irishman stationed behind him 
was taking that liberty which Parmenio used 
with his friend Alexander, instead of putting 
his seal upon the lips of the curious impertinent, 
the English gentleman thought proper to re- 
prove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at 
least with poetical justice. He concluded writ- 
ing his letter in these words : ' I would say 
j more, but a damned tall Irishman is reading 
over my shoulder every word I write.' 

"'You lie, you scoundrel,' said the self- 
convicted Hibernian.' " — (p. 29.) 

The pleasure derived from the first of these 
stories, proceeds from the discovery of the 
relation that subsists between the object he 
had in view, and the assent of the officer to 
an observation so unfriendly to that end. In 
the first rapid glance which the mind throws 
upon his words, he appears, by his acquies- 
cence, to be pleading against himself. There 
seems to be no relation between what he says 
and what he wishes to effect by speaking. 

In the second story, the pleasure is directly 
the reverse. The lie given was apparently the 
readiest means of proving his innocence, and 
really the most effectual way of establishing 
his guilt. There seems for a moment to be a 
strong relation between the means and the ob- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



39 



ject; while, in fact, no irrelation can be so 
complete. 

What connection is there between pelting 
stones at monkeys, and gathering cocoa-nuts 
from lofty trees'? Apparently none. But 
monkeys sit upon cocoa-nut trees; monkeys 
are imitative animals; ,and if you pelt a 
monkey with a stone, he pelts you with a 
cocoa-nut in return. This scheme of gather- 
ing cocoa-nuts is very witty, and would be 
more so, if it did not appear useful : for the 
idea'' of utility is always inimical to the idea 
of wit.* There appears, on the contrary, to 
be some relation between the revenge of the 
Irish rebels against a banker, and the means 
which they took to gratify it, by burning all 
his notes wherever they found them; whereas 
they could not have rendered him a more 
essential service. In both these cases of bulls, 
the one verbal, the other practical, there is an 
apparent congruity, and real incongruity of 
ideas. In both the cases of wit, there is an 
apparent incongruity and a real relation. 

It is clear that a bull cannot depend upon 
mere incongruity alone; for if a man were to 
say that he would ride to London upon a cocked 
hat, or that he would cut his throat with a 
pound of pickled salmon, this, though com- 
pletely incongruous, would not be to make 
bulls, but to talk nonsense. The stronger the 
apparent connection, and the more complete 
the real disconnection of the ideas, the greater 
the surprise, and the better the bull. The less 
apparent, and tlie more complete the relations 
established by wit, the higher gratification 
does it afford. A great deal of the pleasure 
experienced from bulls, proceeds from the 
sense of superiority in ourselves. Bulls which 
we invented, or knew to be invented, might 
please, but in a less degree, for want of this 
additional zest. 

As there must be apparent connection, and 
leal incongruity, it is seldom that a man of 
sense and education finds any form of words 
by which he is conscious that he might have 
been deceived into a bull. To conceive how 
the person has been deceived, he must sup- 
pose a degree of information very different 
from, and a species of character very hete- 



* It must he observed, that all the great passions, and 
many other feelingis, extinguish the relish for wit. Thus 
hjmpha pu'lica Deum vidi.t et erehuit, would be witty, were 
it not bordering on the sublime. The resemblance be- 
tween the sandal tree imparting (while it falls) its aro- 
matic flavour to the edge of the axe, and the benevolent 
man rewarding evil with good, would be witty, did it 
not excite virtuous emotions. There are many mechan- 
ical contrivances which excite sensations very similar 
to wit ; but the attention is absorbed by their utility. 
Some of Merlin's machines, which have no utility at all, 
are quite similar to wit. A small model of a steam- 
engine, or mere squirt, is wit to a child. A man specu- 
lates on the causes of the first, or in its consequences, 
and so loses the feeliugs of wit ; with the latter, he is too 
familiar to be surprised. In short, the essence of every 
species of wit is surprise ; which vi termini, must be 
sudden ; and the sensations which wit has a tendency to 
excite, are impaired or destroyed as often as they are 
mingled with much thought or passion. 



rogcTieous to, his own ; a process which di- 
minishes surprise, and consequently pleasure. 
In the above-mentioned story of the Irishman 
overlooking the man writing, no person of 
ordinary sagacity can suppose himself be- 
trayed into such a mistake; but he can easily 
represent to himself a kind of character that 
might have been so betrayed. There are 
some bulls so extremely fallacious, that any 
man may imagine himself to have been be- 
trayed into them ; but these are rare : and, in 
general, it is a poor, contemptible species of 
amusement; a delight in which evinces a very 
bad taste in wit. 

Whether the Irish make more bulls than 
their neighbours, is, as we have before re- 
marked, not a point of much importance ; but 
it is of considerable importance, that the cha- 
racter of a nation should not be degraded; and 
Mr. Edgeworth has great merit in his very 
benevolent intention of doing justice to the 
excellent qualities of the Irish. It is not pos- 
sible to read his book, without feeling a strong 
and a new disposition in their favour. Whe- 
ther the imitation of the Irish manner be accu- 
rate in his little stories we cannot determine ; 
but we feel the same confidence in the accu- 
racy of the imitation, that is often felt in the 
resemblance of a portrait, of which we have 
never seen the original. It is no very high 
compliment to Mr. Edgeworth's creative pow- 
ers, to say, he could not have formed anything, 
which was not real, so like reality; but such a 
remark only robs Peter to pay Paul; and gives 
every thing to his powers of observation, 
which it takes from those of his imagination. 
In truth, nothing can be better than his imita- 
tion of the Irish manner: It is first-rate painting. 

Edgeworth and Co. have another faculty in 
great perfection. _ They are eminently masters 
of the pathos. The Firm drew tears from us 
in the stories of little Dominick, and of the 
Irish beggar, who killed his sweetheart : Never 
was any grief more natural or simple. The 
first, however, ends in a very foolish way; 

formosa superne 

Desinit in piscem. 

We are extremely glad that our avocations 
did not call its from Bath to London on the day 
that the Bath coach conversation took place. 
We except from this wish the story with which 
the conversation terminates ; for as soon as 
Mr. Edgeworth enters upon a story he excels. 

We must confess we have been much more 
pleased with Mr. Edgeworth in his laughing 
and in his pathetic, than in his grave and rea- 
soning moods. He meant, perhaps, that we 
should ; and it certainly is not very necessary 
that a writer should be profound on the sub- 
ject of bulls. Whatever be the deficiencies 
of the book, they are, in our estimation, amply 
atoned for by its merits ; by none more than 
that lively feeling of compassion which per- 
vades it for the distresses of the wild, kind- 
hearted, blundering poor of Ireland. 



c2 



80 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



TRIMMER AND LANCASTER/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1806.] 



This is a book written by a lady who has 
gained considerable reputation at the corner 
of St. Paul's churchyard ; who flames in the 
van of Mr. Newberry's shop ; and is, upon the 
whole, dearer to mothers and aunts than any 
other author who pours the milk of science 
into the mouths of babes and sucklings. Tired 
at last of scribbling for children, and getting 
ripe in ambition, she has now written a book 
for grown-up people, and selected for her an- 
tagonist as stiff a controversialist as the whole 
field of dispute could well have supplied. Her 
opponent is Mr. Lancaster,f a Quaker, who has 
lately given to the world new and striking 
lights upon the subject of Education, and come 
forward to the notice of his country by spread- 
ing order, knowledge, and innocence among 
the lowest of mankind. 

Mr. Lancaster, she says, wants method in 
his book ; and therefore her answer to him is 
without any arrangement. The same excuse 
must suffice for the desultory observations we 
shall make upon this lady's publication. 

The first sensation of disgust we experienced 
at Mrs. Trimmer's book, was from the patron- 
izing and protecting air with which she speaks 
of some small part of Mr. Lancaster's plan. 
She seems to suppose, because she has dedi- 
cated her mind to the subject, that her opinion 
must necessarily be valuable upon it; forget- 
ting it to be barely possible, that her applica- 
tion may have made her more wrong, instead 
of more right. If she can make out her case, 
that Mr. Lancaster is doing mischief in so im- 
portant a point as that of national education, 
she has a right, in common with every one 
else, to lay her complaint before the public; 
but a right to publish praises must be earned 
by something more dithcult than the writing 
sixpenny books for children. This may be 
very good; though we never remember to have 
seen any one of them ; but if they be no more 
remarkable for judgment and discretion than 
parts of the work before us, there are many 
thriving children quite capable of repaying 
the obligations they owe to their amiable in- 
structress, and of teaching, with grateful reta- 
liation, "the old idea how to shoot." 

In remarking upon the work before us, we 
shall exactly follow the plan of the authoress, 

* A Comparative View of the J^Tew Plan of Education 
■promulgated, by Mr. Joseph Lancaster, in his Tracts con- 
cerning the Instruction of the Children of the Labovrin<r 
Part of the Community ; and of the Si/stem nf Christian 
Education founded by our piou.'i Forefathers for the Initia- 
tion of the Young Members of the Established Church in 
the Principles of the Reformed Religion. By Mrs. Trim- 
mer. 1805. 

f Lancaster invented the new method of education. 
The Church was sorely vexed at his success, endeavour- 
ed to set up Dr. Bell as the discoverer, and to run down 
poor Lancaster. George the Third was irritated by this 
shabby conduct, and always protected Lancaster. He 
was delighted with this Review, and made Sir Herbert 
Taylor read it a second time to him. 1 



and prefix, as she does, the titles of those 
subjects on which her observations are made; 
doing her the justice to presume, that her quo- 
tations are fairly taken from Mr. Lancaster's 
book. 

1. Mr. Lancaster's Preface. — Mrs. Trimmer 
here contends, in opposition to Mr. Lancaster, 
that ever since the establishment of the Pro- 
testant Church, the education of the poor has 
been a national concern in this country; and 
the only argument she produces in support of 
this extravagant assertion, is an appeal to the 
act of uniformity. If there are millions of 
Englishmen who cannot spell their own 
names, or read a sign-post which bids them 
turn to the right or left, is it any answer to 
this deplorable ignorance to say, there is aa 
act of Parliament for public instruction ? — to 
show the very line and chapter where the 
King, Lords, and Commons, in Parliament as- 
sembled, ordained the universality of reading j 
and writing, when, centuries afterwards, the ' 
ploughman is no more capable of the one or' 
the other than the beast which he drives 1 In 
point jf fact, there is no Protestant country in 
the world where the education of the poor has 
been so grossly and infamously neglected as 
in England. Mr. Lancaster has the very high 
merit of calling the public attention to this 
evil, and of calling it in the best way, by new 
and active remedies; and this uncandid and 
feeble lady, instead of using the influence she 
has obtained over the anilit)' of these realms, 
to join that useful remonstrance which Mr. 
Lancaster has begun, pretends to deny that the 
evil exists ; and when you ask where are the 
schools, rods, pedagogues, primers, histories 
of Jack the Giant-killer, and all the usual ap- 
paratus for education, the only thing she can 
produce is the act of uniformity and common 
prayer. 

2. The Principles on which Mr. La7icaster^s 
Institution is conducted. — " Happily for man- 
kind," says Mr. Lancaster, "it is possible to 
combine precept and practice together in the 
education of youth: that public spirit, or gene- 
ral opinion, which gives such strength to vice, 
may be rendered serviceable to the cause of 
virtue ; and in tlius directing it, the whole se- 
cret, the beauty, and simplicity of national edu- 
cation consists. Suppose, for instance, it be 
required to train a youth to strict veracity. 
He has learnt to read at school : he there reads 
the declaration of the Divine will respecting 
liars : he is there informed of the pernicious 
effects that practice produces on society at 
large ; and he is enjoined, for the fear of God, 
for the approbation of his friends, and for the 
good of his school-fellows, never to tell an un- 
truth. This is a most excellent precept ; but 
let it be taught, and yet, if the contrary prac- 
tice be treated with indiflerence by parents, 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



31 



teachers, or associates, i't will either weaken 
or destroy all the good that can be derived 
from it : But if the parents or teachers tender- 
ly nip the rising shoots of vice ; if the asso- 
ciates of youth pour contempt on the liar ; he 
will soon hide his head with shame, and most 
likely leave off the practice." — (p. 24, 25.) 

The objection which Mrs. Trimmer makes 
to this passage, is, that it* is exalting the fear 
of man above the fear of God. This observation 
is as mischievous as it is unfounded. Un- 
doubtedly the fear of God ought to be the para- 
mount principle from the very beginning of 
life, if it were possible to make it so ; but it is 
a feeling which can only be built up by de- 
grees. The awe and respect which a child 
entertains for its parent and instructor, is the 
first scaffolding upon which the sacred edifice of 
religion is reared. A child begins to pray, to act, 
and to abstain, not to please God, but to please 
the parent, who tells him that such is the will of 
God. The religious principle gains ground 
from the power of association and the im- 
provement of reason ; but without the fear of 
man, — the desire of pleasing, and the dread of 
offending those with whom he lives, — it would 
be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to 
cherish it at all in the minds of the children. 
If you tell (says Mr. Lancaster) a child not to 
swear, because it is forbidden by God, and he 
finds everybody whom he lives with addicted 
to that vice, the mere precept will soon be 
obliterated ; which would acquire its just in- 
fluence if aided by the effect of example. Mr. 
Iiancaster does not say that the fear of man 
ever ought to be a stronger motive than the 
fear of God, o;' that, in a thoroughl)'' formed 
character, it ever is : he merely says, that the 
fear of man may be made the most powerful 
mean to raise up the fear of God; and nothing, 
in our opinion, can be more plain, more sen- 
sible, or better expressed, than his opinions 
upon these subjects. In corroboration of this 
sentiment, Mr. Lancaster tells the following 
story : — 

" A benevolent friend of mine," says he, 
"who resides at a village near London, where 
Tie has a school of the class called Stmday 
Schools, recommended several lads to me for 
education. He is a pious mih, and these 
children had the advantage of good precepts 
under his instruction in an eminent degree, but 
had reduced ihem to very little practice. As 
they came to my school from some distance, 
they were permitted to bring their dinners ; 
and, in the interval between morning and" after- 
noon school hours, spent their time with a 
number of lads under similar circumstances in 
a play-ground adjoining the school-room. In 
this play-ground the boys usually enjoy an 
hour's recreation ; tops, balls, races, or what 
best suits their inclination or the season of the 
year; but with this charge, 'Let all be kept in 
innocence.' These lads thought themselves 
very happy at play with their new associates ; 
but on a sudden they were seized and over- 
come by numbers, were brought into school 
just as people in the street would seize a pick- 
pocket, and bring him to the police office. 
Happening at that time to be within, I inquired, 
^ Well, boys, what is all this bustle about 1' — 



' Why, sir,' was the general reply, ' these lads 
have been swearing." This was announced 
with as much emphasis and solemnity as a 
judge would use in passing sentence upon a 
criminal. The culprits were, as may be sup- 
posed, in much terror. After the examination 
of witnesses and proof of the facts, they re- 
ceived admonition as to the offence ; and, on 
promise of better behaviour, were dismissed. 
No more was ever heard of their swearing; 
yet it was observable, that they were better 
acquainted with the theory of Christianity, and 
could give a more rational answer to questions 
from the scripture, than several of the boys who 
had thus treated them, on comparison as con- 
stables would do a thief. I call this," adds Mr. 
Lancaster, "practical religious instruction, and 
could, if needful, give many such anecdotes." 
—(p. 26, 27.) 

AH that Mrs. Trimmer has to observe against 
this very striking illustration of Mr. Lancas- 
ter's doctrine, is, that the monitors behaved to 
the swearers in a very rude and unchristian- 
like manner. She begins with being cruel, 
and ends with being silly. Her first observa- 
tion is calculated to raise the posse comitatus 
against Mr. Lancaster, to get him stoned for 
impiety ; and then, when he produces the most 
forcible example of the effect of opinion to 
encourage religious precept, she says such a 
method of preventing swearing is too rude for 
the gospel. True, modest, unobtrusive reli- 
gion — charitable, forgiving, indulgent Chris- 
tianity, is the greatest ornament and the 
greatest blessing that can dwell in the mind 
of man. But if there is one character more 
base, more infamous, and more shocking than 
another, it is him who, for the sake of some 
paltry distinction in the world, is ever ready 
to accuse conspicuous persons of irreligion — 
to turn common informer for the church — and 
to convert the most beautiful feelings of the 
human heart to the destruction of the good and 
great, by fixing upon talents the indelible 
stigma of irreligion. It matters not how trifling 
and how insignificant the accuser; cry out 
that the church is in danger, and your object is 
accomplished ; lurk in the walk of hypocrisy, 
to accuse your enemy of the crime of Atheism, 
and his ruin is quite certain ; acquitted or 
condemned, is the same thing; it is only suffi- 
cient that he be accused, in order that his 
destruction be accomplished. If we could 
satisfy ourselves that such were the real views 
of Mrs. Trimmer, and that she were capable 
of such baseness, we would have drawn blood 
from her at every line, and left her in a state 
of martyrdom more piteous than that of St. 
Uba. Let her attribute the milk and mildness 
she meets with in this review of her book, to 
the conviction we entertain, that she knew no 
better — that she really did understand Mr. Lan- 
caster as she pretends to understand him — and 
that if she had been aware of the extent of the 
mischief she was doing, she would have tossed 
the manuscript spelling-book in which she 
was engaged into the fire, rather than have 
done it. As a proof that we are in earnest in 
speaking of Mrs. Trimmer's simplicity, we 
must state the objection she makes to one of 
Mr. Lancaster's punishments. " When I meet," 



38 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



says Mr. Lancaster, "with a slovenly boy, I 
put a label upon his breast, I walk him round 
the school with a tin or a paper crown upon 
his head." " Surely," says Mrs. Trimmer (in 
reply to this), " surely it should be remember- 
ed, that the Saviour of the world was crowned 
unth thorns, in derision, and that this is the rea- 
son why crowning is an improper punishment 
f&r a slovenly boy".'!.' 

Rewards and Punishments. — Mrs. Trimmer 
objects to the fear of ridicule being made an 
instrument of education, because it may be 
hereafter employed to shame a boy out of his 
religion. She might, for the same reason, 
object to the cultivation of the reasoning 
faculty, because a boy may hereafter be rea- 
soned out of his religion : she surely does not 
mean to say that she would make boys insen- 
sible to ridicule, the fear of which is one curb 
upon the follies and eccentricities of human 
nature. Such an object it would be impossible 
to effect, even if it were useful : Put a hundred 
boys together, and the fear of being laughed 
at will always be a strong influencing motive 
with every individual among them. If a mas- 
ter can turn this principle to his own use, and 
get boys to laugh at vice, instead of the old 
plan of laughing at virtue, is he not doing a 
very new, a very difficult, and a very laudable 
thing ? 

When Mr. Lancaster finds a little boy with 
a very dirty face, he sends for a little girl, and 
makes her wash off the dirt before the whole 
school: and she is directed to accompany her 
ablutions with a gentle box of the ear. To us, 
this punishment appears well adapted to the 
offence ; and in this, and in most other in- 
stances of Mr. Lancaster's interference in 
scholastic discipline, we are struck with his 
good sense, and delighted that arrangements 
apparently so trivial, really so important, 
should have fallen under the attention of so 
ingenious and so original a man. Mrs. Trim- 
mer objects to this practice, that it destroys 
female modesty, and inculcates, in that sex, a 
habit of giving boxes on the ear. 

" When a boy gets into a singing tone in 
reading," says Mr. Lancaster, " the best mode 
of cure that I have hitherto found effectual is 
by the force of ridicule. — Decorate the offender 
with matches, ballads, (dying speeches if 
needful;) and in this garb send him round the 
school, with some boys before him crjdng 
matches, &c., exactly imitating the dismal 
tones with which such things are hawked 
about London streets, as will readily recur to 
the reader's memory. I believe many boys 
behave rudely to Jews more on account of the 
manner in which they cry ' old clothes,' than 
because they are Jews. I have always found 
excellent effects from treating boys, who sing 
or tone in their reading, in the manner de- 
scribed. It is sure to turn the laugh of the 
whole school upon the delinquent ; it provokes 
risibility, in spite of every endeavour to check 
it, in all but the offender. I have seldom known 
a boy thus punished once, for whom it was 
needful a second time. It is also very seldom 
that a boy deserves both a log and a shackle 
at the same time. Most boys are wise enough, 
when U7ider one punishment, not to transgress 



immediately, lest it should be doubled." — (p.- 
47, 48.) 

This punishment is objected to on the part 
of Mrs. Trimmer, because it inculcates a dis- 
like to Jews, and an indifference about dying 
speeches ! Toys, she says, given as rewards, 
are worldly things ; children are to be taught 
that there are eternal rewards in store for 
them. It is very dangerous to give prints as 
rewards, because prints may hereafter be the 
vehicle of indecent ideas. It is, above all 
things, perilous to create an order of merit in 
the borough school, because it gives the boys 
an idea of the origin of nobility, " especially in 
times (we use Mrs. Trimmer's own words) 
which furnish instances of the extiiiction of a 
race of ancieiit nobility, in a neighbouring na- 
tion, 071 d the elevation of some of the lowest peo- 
ple to the highest stations. Boys accustomed to 
consider themselves the nobles of the school, may, 
in their future lives, form a conceit of their own 
merits (unless they have very sound principles), 
aspire to be nobles of the land, and to take place 
of the hereditary nobility." 

We think these extracts will sufficiently 
satisfy every reader of common sense, of the 
merits of this publication. For our part, when 
we saw these ragged and interesting little 
nobles, shining in their tin stars, we only 
thought it probable that the spirit of emulation 
would make them better ushers, tradesmen, 
and mechanics. We did, in truth, imagine we 
had observed, in some of their faces, a bold 
project for procuring better breeches for keep- 
ing out the blast of heaven, which howled 
through those garments in every direction, and 
of aspiring hereafter to greater strength of 
seam, and more perfect continuity of cloth. 
But for the safety of the titled orders we had 
no fear; nor did we once dream that the black 
rod wiiich whipt these dirty little dukes, would 
one day be borne before them as the emblem 
of legislative dignity, and the sign of noble 
blood. 

Order. — The order of Mr. Lancaster has dis- 
played in the school is quite astonishing. 
Every boy seems to be the cog of a wheel — 
the whole school a perfect machine. This is 
so far from bdng a burden or constraint to 
the boys, that mr. Lancaster has made it quite 
pleasant and interesting to them, by giving to 
it the air of military arrangement ; not fore- 
seeing, as Mrs. Trimmer foresees, that, in 
times of public dangers, this plan furnishes 
the disaffected with the immediate means of 
raising an army ; for what have they to do but 
to send for all the children educated by Mr. 
Lancaster, from the different corners of the 
kingdom into which they are dispersed, — to 
beg it as a particular favour of them to fall 
into the same order as they adopted in the 
spelling class tn-enty-five years ago ; and th© 
rest is all matter of course — 

Jamque faces, et Saxa volant. 

The main object, however, for which this 
book is -^vritten, is to prove that the church es- 
tablishment is in danger, from the increase of 
Mr. Lancaster's institutions. Mr. Lancaster 
is, as we have before observed, a Quaker. As 
a Quaker, he says, I cannot teach your creeds :. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



33 



but I pledge myself not to teach my own. I 
pledge myself (and if I deceive you, desert me, 
and give me up) to confine myself to those 
points of Christianity in which all Christians 
agree. To which Mrs. Trimmer replies, that, 
in the first place, he cannot do this ; and, in 
the next place, if he did do it, it would not be 
enough. But why, we would ask, cannot Mr. 
Lancaster eflect his first object 1 The prac- 
tical and the feeling parts of religion are much 
more likely to attract the attention and provoke 
the questions of children than its speculative 
doctrines. A child is not very likely to put 
any questions at all to a catechising master, 
jind still less likely to lead him into subtle and 
profound disquisition. It appears to us not 
only practicable, but very easy, to confine the 
religious instruction of the poor, in the first 
years of life, to those general feelings and 
principles which are suitable to the estab- 
lished church, and to every sect; afterwards, 
the discriminating tenets of each subdivision 
of Christians may be fixed upon this general 
basis. To say this is not enough, that a child 
should be made an Antisocinian, or an Antipe- 
lagian, in his tenderest years, may be very 
just; but what prevents you from making him 
60 1 Mr. Lancaster, purposely and intention- 
ally, to allay all jealousy, leaves him in a state 
as well adapted for one creed as another. Be- 
gin ; make your pupil a firm advocate for the 
peculiar doctrines of the English church ; dig 
round about him, on every side, a trench that 
shall guard him from every species of heresy. 
la spite of all this clamour you do nothing ; 



you do not stir a single step ; you educate 
alike the swineherd and his hog; and then, 
when a man of real genius and enterprise 
rises up, and says, Let me dedicate my life to 
this neglected object ; I will do every thing but 
that which must necessarily devolve upon you 
alone ; you refuse to do your littk, and compel 
him, by the cry of infidel and Atheist, to leave 
you to your ancient repose, and not to drive 
you, by insidious comparisons, to any system 
of active ufSlity. We deny, again and again, 
that Mr. Lancaster's instruction is any kind of 
impediment to the propagation of the doc- 
trines of the church ; and if Mr. Lancaster 
was to perish with his system to-morrow, these 
boys would positively be taught nothing ; the 
doctrines which Mrs. Trimmer considers pro- 
hibited would not rush in, but there would be 
an absolute vacuum. We will, however, say 
this in favour of Mrs. Trimmer, that if every 
one who has joined in her clamour, had la- 
boured one-hundredth part as much as she has 
done in the cause of national education, the 
clamour would be much more rational, and 
much more consistent, than it now is. By liv- 
ing with a few people as active as herself, she 
is perhaps somehow or another persuaded that 
there is a national education going on in this 
country. But our principal argument is, that 
Mr. Lancaster's plan is at least better than the 
nothing which preceded it. The authoress 
herself seems to be a lady of respectable opi- 
nions, and very ordinary talents ; defending 
what is right without judgment, and believing 
what is holy without charity. 



PARNELL AND IRELAND/ 

[Edinburgh Review, 1807.] 



If ever a nation eihibited symptoms of 
downright madness, or utter stupidity, we con- 
ceive these symptoms may be easily recog- 
nized in the conduct of this country upon the 
Catholic question.f A man has a Avound in 
his great toe, and a violent and perilous fever 
at the same time; and he refuses to take the 
medicines for the fever, because it will discon- 
cert his toe ! The mournful and folly-stricken 
blockhead forgets that his toe cannot survive 
him ; — that if he dies, there can be no digital 
life apart from him ; yet he lingers and fondles 
over this last part of his body, soothing it 
madly with little plasters, and anile fomenta- 
tions, while the neglected fever rages in his 



* Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics. By Wil- 
liam Parnell, Esq. Fitzpatrick, Dublin, 1807. 

fl do not retract orte syllable (or one iota) of what I 
have said or written upon the Catholic question. What 
was wanted for Ireland was emancipation, time and jus- 
tice, abolition of present wrongs ; time for forgetting past 
wrongs, and that continued and even justice which 
would make such oblivion wise. It is now only difficult 
to tranquillize Ireland, before emancipation it wasimpos- 
sible. As to the danger from Catholic doctrines, I must 
leave such apprehensions to the respectable anility of 
these realms. I will not meddle with it. 
5 



entrails, and burns away his whole life. If the 
comparatively little questions of Establish- 
ment are all that this country is capable of 
discussing or regarding, for God's sake let us 
remember, that the foreign conquest which de- 
stroys all, destroys this beloved toe also. Pass 
over freedom, industry, and science — and look 
upon this great empire, by which we are about 
to be swallowed up, only as it affects the man- 
ner of collecting tithes, and of reading the li- 
turgy — still, if all goes, these must go too ; 
and even, for their interests, it is worth while 
to conciliate Ireland, to avert the hostility, and 
to employ the strength of the Catholic popula- 
tion. We plead the question as the sincerest 
friends to the Establishment; — as wishing to 
it all the prosperity and duration its warmest 
advocates can desire, — but remembering al- 
ways, what these advocates seem to forget, 
that the Establishment cannot be threatened 
by any danger so great as the perdition of the 
kingdom in which it is established. 

We are truly glad to agree so entirely with 
Mr. Parnell upon this great question ; we ad- 
mire his way of thinking ; and most cordially 



9i 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



recommend his work to the attention of the 
public. The general conclusion which he at- 
tempts to prove is this; that religious senti- 
ment, however perverted to bigotry or fanati- 
cism, has always a tendency to moderation; 
that it seldom assumes any great portion of 
activity or enthusiasm, except from novelty of 
opinion, or from opposition, contumely and 
persecution, when novelty ceases ; that a go- 
vernment has little to fear from any religious 
sect, except while that sect is ne'u% Give a 
government only time, and, provided it has the 
good sense to trea* folly with forbearance, it 
must ultimately prevail. When, therefore, a 
sect is found, after a lapse of years, to be ill 
disposed to the government, we may be certain 
that government has widened its separation by 
marked distinctions, roused its resentment by 
contumely, or supported its enthusiasm by per- 
secution. 

The particular conclusion Mr. Parnell at- 
tempts to prove is, that the Catholic religion 
in Ireland had sunk into torpor and inactivity, 
till government roused it with the lash : that 
even then, from the respect and attachment, 
which men are always inclined to show to- 
wards government, there still remained a large 
body of loyal Catholics ; that these only de- 
creased in number from the rapid increase of 
persecution ; and that, after all, the effects 
which the resentment of the Roman Catholics 
had in creating rebellions had been very much 
exaggerated. 

In support of these two conclusions, Mr. 
Parnell takes a survey of the history of Ireland 
from the conquest under Henry, to the rebellion 
under Charles the First, passing very rapidly 
over the period which preceded the Reforma- 
tion, and dwelling principally upon the various 
rebellions which broke out in Ireland between 
the Reformation and the grand rebellion in the 
reign of Charles the First. The celebrated 
conquest of Ireland by Henry the Second, ex- 
tended only to a very few counties in Lein- 
ster ; nine-tenths of the whole kingdom were 
left, as he found them, under the dominion of 
their native princes. The influence of ex- 
ample was as strong in this, as in most other 
1 instances ; and great numbers of the English 
settlers who came over under various adven- 
turers, resigned their pretensions to superior 
civilization, cast off their lower garments, and 
lapsed into the nudity and barbarism of the 
Irish. The limit which divided the posses- 
sion^ of the English settler from those of the 
native Irish, was called the pale; and the ex- 
pression of inhabitants loithin pale, and vnth- 
out the pale, were the terms by which the two 
nations were distinguished. It is almost su- 
perfluous to state, that the most bloody and 
pernicious warfare was carried on upon the 
borders— sometimes for something— sometimes 
for nothing — most commonly for cows. The 
Irish, over whom the sovereigns of Eng- 
land affected a sort of nominal dominion, were 
entirely governed by their own laws ; and so 
very little connection had they with the justice 
of the invading country, that it was as lawful 
to kill an Irishman, as it was to kill a badger 
or a fox. The instances are innumerable, 
where the defendant has pleaded that the de- 



ceased was an Irishman, and that therefore 
defendant had a right to kill him; — and upon 
the proof of Hibernicism, acquittal followed 
of course. 

When the English army mustered in any 
great strength, the Irish chieftains would do 
exterior homage to the English Crown; and 
they very frequently, by this artifice, averted 
from their country the miseries of invasion : 
but they remained completely unsubdued, till 
the rebellion which took plaCe in the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth, of which that politic woman 
availed herself to the complete subjugation of 
Ireland. In speaking of the Irish about the 
reign of Elizabeth, or James the First, we must 
not draw our comparisons from England, but 
from New Zealand ; they were not civilized 
men, but savages ; and if we reason about their 
conduct, we must reason of them as savages. 

" After reading every account of Irish his- 
tory," (says Mr. Parnell,)." one great perplexity 
appears to remain: How does it happen, that, 
from the first invasion of the English, till the 
reign of James I., Ireland seems not to have 
made the smallest progress in civilization or 
wealth ■? 

" That it was divided into a number of small 
principalities, which waged constant war on 
each other; or that the appointment of the 
chieftains was elective ; do not appear suffi- 
cient reasons, although these are the only ones 
assigned by those who have been at the trou- 
ble of considering the subject : neither are the 
confiscations of property quite sufficient to 
account for the effect. There have been great 
confiscations in other countries, and still they 
have flourished : the petty states of Greece were 
quite analogous to the chiefries (as they were 
called) in Ireland ; and yet they seemed to 
flourish almost in proportion to their dissen- 
sions. Poland felt the bad efl'ects of an elec- 
tive monarchy more than any other country; 
and yet, in point of civilization, it maintained 
a very respectable rank among the nations of 
Europe ; but Ireland never, for an instant, 
made any progress in improvement till the 
reign of James I. 

" It is scarcely credible, that in a climate like 
that of Ireland, and at a period so far advanced 
in civilization as the end of Elizabeth's reign, 
the greater part of the natives should go naked. 
Yet this is rendered certain by the testimony 
of an eye-witness, Fynes Moryson. 'In the 
remote parts,' he says, ' where the English 
laws and manners are unknown, the very chief 
of the Irish, as well men as women, go naked 
in the winter time, only having their privy 
parts covered with a rag of linen, and their 
bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of 
my own experience; yet remembering that a 
Bohemian Baron coming out of Scotland to us 
by the north parts of the wild Irish, told me in 
great earnestness, that he, coming to the house 
of O'Kane, a great lord amongst them, was 
met at the door by sixteen women all naked, 
excepting their loose mantles, whereof eight 
or ten were very fair ; with which strange 
sight his eyes being dazzled, they led him into 
the house, and then sitting down by the fire 
with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as 
could not but oflTend chaste eyes, desired him 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



35 



to sit down with them, Sooa after, O'Kane, 
the lord of the country, came in all naked, 
except a loose mantle and shoes, which he put 
oflf as soon as he came in ; and, entertaining 
the Baron after his best manner in the Latin 
tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, 
which he thought to be a burden to him, and 
to sit naked. 

"'To conclude, men and women at night, 
going to sleep, lye thus naked in a round cir- 
cle about the fire, with their feet towards it. 
They fold their heads and their upper parts in 
woollen mantles, first steeped in water to keep 
them warm ; for they say, that woollen cloth, 
wetted, preserves heat, (as linen, wetted, pre- 
serves cold,) when the smoke of their bodies 
has warmed the woollen cloth.' 

" The cause of this extreme poverty, and of 
its long continuance, we must conclude, arose 
from the peculiar laws of property, which were 
in force under the Irish dynasties. These laws 
have been described by most writers as similar 
to the Kentish custom of gavelkind ; and in- 
deed so little attention was paid to the subject, 
that were it not for the researches of Sir J. 
Davis, the knowledge of this singular usage 
would have been entirely lost. 

" The Brehon law of property, he tells us, 
was similar to the custom (as the English law- 
yers term it) of hodge-podge. When any one 
of the sept died, his lands did not descend to 
his sons, but were divided among the whole 
sept : and, for this purpose, the chief of the 
sept made a new division of the whole lands 
belonging to the sept, and gave every one his 
part according to seniority. So that no man 
had a property which could descend to his 
children ; and even during his own life, his 
possession of any particular spot was quite 
uncertain, being liable to be constantly shuffled 
and changed by new partitions. The conse- 
quence of this was that there was not a house 
of brick or stone, among the Irish, down to 
the reign of Henry VII.;- not even a garden or 
orchard, or well fenced or improved field, 
neither village or town, or in any respect the 
least provision for posterity. This monstrous 
custom, so opposite to the natural feelings of 
mankind, was probably perpetuated by the 
policy of the chiefs. In the first place, the 
power of partitioning being lodged in their 
hands, made them the most absolute of tyrants, 
being the dispensers of the property as well as 
of the liberty of their subjects. In the second 
place, it had the appearance of adding to the 
number of their savage armies ; for, where 
there was no improvement or tillage, war was 
pursued as an occupation. 

"In the early history of Ireland, we find 
several instances of chieftains discountenanc- 
ing tillage ; and so late as Elizabeth's reign, 
Moryson says, that 'Sir Neal Garve restrained 
his people from ploughing, that they might 
assist him to do any mischief.' " — (p. 98 — 102.) 
These quotations and observations will ena- 
ble us to state a few plain facts for the recol- 
lection of our English readers. 1st. Ireland was 
never subdued till the rebellion in the reign 
of Queen Elizabeth. 2c?. For four hundred 
years before that period, the two nations had 
been almost constantly at war ; and in conse- 



quence of this, a deep and irreconcileable ha- 
tred existed between the people within and 
without the pale. 3d. The Irish, at the acces- 
sion of Queen Elizabeth, were unquestionably 
the most barbarous people in Europe. So 
much for what had happened previous to the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth : and let any man, 
who has the most superficial knowledge of 
human affairs, determine, v/hether national 
hatred, proceeding from such powerful causes, 
could possibly have been kept under by the de- 
feat of one single rebellion ; whether it would 
not have been easy to have foreseen, at that- 
period, that a proud, brave, half-savage people, 
would cherish the memory of their wrongs for 
centuries to come, and break forth into arms 
at every period when they were particularly 
exasperated by oppression, or invited by op- 
portunity. If the Protestant religion had 
spread in Ireland as it did in England, and if 
there never had been any difference of faith 
between the two countries, — can it be believed 
that the Irish, ill-treated, and infamously go- 
verned as they have been, would never have 
made any efforts to shake off the yoke of Eng- 
land 1 Surely there are causes enough to 
account for their impatience of thai yoke, 
without endeavouring to inflame the zeal of 
ignorant people against the Catholic religion, 
and to make that mode of faith responsible for 
all the butchery which the Irish and English, 
for these last two centuries, have exercised 
upon each other. Every body, of course, must 
admit, that if to the causes of hatred already 
specified, there be added the additional cause 
of religious distinction, this last will give 
greater force (and what is of more conse- 
quence to observe, give a name) to the whole 
aggregate motive. But what Mr. Parnell con- 
lends for, and clearly and decisively proves, is, 
that many of those sanguinary scenes attributed 
to the Catholic religion, are to be partly im- 
puted to causes totally disconnected from reli- 
gion ; that the unjust invasion, and the tyran- 
nical, infamous policy of the English, are to 
take their full share of blame with the sophisms 
and plots of Catholic priests. In the reign of 
Henry the Eighth, Mr. Parnell shows, that 
feudal submission was readily paid to him by 
all the Irish chiefs ; that the Reformation was 
received without the slightest opposition ; and 
that the troubles which took place at that 
period in Ireland, are to be entirely attributed 
to the ambition and injustice of Henry. In the 
reign of Queen Mary, there was no recrimi- 
nation upon the Protestants; — a striking proof, 
that the bigotry of the Catholic religion had 
not, at that period, risen to any great height in 
Ireland. The insurrections of the various 
Irish princes were as numerous, during this 
reign, as they had been in the two preceding 
reigns, — a circumstance rather difficult of ex- 
planation, if, as is commonly believed, the Ca- 
tholic religion was at that period the main 
spring of men's actions. 

In the reign of Elizabeth, the Catholic in the 
pale regularly fought against the Catholic out 
of the pale. O'Sullivan, a bigoted Papist, re- 
proaches them with doing so. Speaking of the 
reign of James the First, he says, "And now 
the eyes even of the English Irish" (the Ca- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tholics of the pale) " were opened ; and they 
cursed their former foil}' for helping the here- 
tic." The English government were so sen- 
sible of the loyalty of the Irish English Catho- 
lics, that they entrusted them with the most 
confidential services. The Earl of Kildare 
was the principal instrument in waging war 
against the chieftains of Leix and Offal. Wil- 
liam O'Bourge, another Catholic, was created 
Lord Castle Connel for his eminent services ; 
and MacGully Patrick, a priest, was the state 
spy. We presume that this wise and manly 
conduct of Queen Elizabeth was utterly un- 
known both to the Pastrycook and the Secre- 
tary of State, who have published upon the 
dangers of employing Catholics even against 
foreign enemies; and in those publications 
have said a great deal about the wisdom of our 
ancestors — the usual topic whenever the folly 
of their descendants is to be defended. To 
whatever other of our ancestors they may 
allude, they may spare all compliments to this 
illustrious Princess, who would certainly have 
kept the worthy confectioner to the composition 
of tarts, and most probably furnished him with 
the productions of the Right Honourable Sec- 
retary, as the means of conveying those juicy 
delicacies to an hungry and discerning pub- 
lic. 

In the next two reigns, Mr. Parnell shows 
by what injudicious measures of the English 
government the spirit of Catholic opposition 
was gradually formed ; for that it did produce 
■Dowerful effects at a subsequent period, he 
does not deny ; but contends only (as we have 
before stated),, that these effects have been 
much overrated, and ascribed solely to the 
Catholic religiom, when other causes have at 
least had an equal agency in bringing them 
about. He concludes with some general re- 
marks on the dreadful state of Ireland, and 
the contemptible folly and bigotry of the Eng- 
lish ;* — remarks full of truth, of good sense, 
and of political courage. How melancholy 
to reflect, that there would be still some 
chance of saving England from the general 
wreck of empires, but that it may not be 
saved, because one politician will lose two 
thousand a year by it, and another three thou- 
sand — a third a place in reversion, and a fourth 
a pension for his aunt! — Alas! these are the 



* It would be as well, in future, to say no more of the 
revocation of the edict of Nantz. 



powerful causes which have always settled 
the destiny of great kingdoms, and which may 
level Old England, with all its boasted free- 
dom, and boasted wisdom, to the dust. Nor 
is it the least singular among the political 
phenomena of the present day, that the sole 
consideration which seems to influence the 
unbigoted part of the English people, in thi's 
great question of Ireland, is a regard for the 
personal feelings of the Monarch. Nothing 
is said or thought of the enormous risk to 
which Ireland is exposed, — nothing of the 
gross injustice with which the Catholics are 
treated, — nothing of the lucrative apostasy 
of those from whom they experience this 
treatment : but the only concern by which we 
all seem to be agitated is, that the King must 
not be vexed in his old age. We have a great 
respect for the King; and wish him all the 
happiness compatible with the happiness of 
his people. But these are not times to pay 
foolish compliments to Kings, or the sons of 
Kings, or to any body else : this journal has 
always preserved its character for courage 
and honesty ; and it shall do so to the last. 
If the people of this country are solely occu- 
pied in considering what is personally agree- 
able to the King, without considering what is 
for his permanent good, and for the safety of 
his dominions ; if all public men, quitting the 
common vulgar scramble for emolument, do 
not concur in conciliating the people of Ire- 
land ; if the unfounded alarms, and the com- 
paratively trifling interests of the clergy, are 
to supersede the great question of freedom or 
slavery, it does appear to us quite impossible 
that so mean and so foolish a people can 
escape that destruction which is ready to burst 
upon them ; — a destruction so imminent, that 
it can only be averted by arming all in our 
defence who would evidently be sharers in our 
ruin, — and by such a change of system as 
may save us from the hazard of being ruined 
by the ignorance and cowardice of any gene- 
ral, by the bigotry or the ambition of any 
minister, or by the well-meaning scruples of 
any human being, let his dignity be what it 
may. These minor and domestic dangers we 
must endeavour firmly and temperately to 
avert as we best can ; but, at all hazards, we 
must keep out the destroyer from among us, 
or perish like wise and brave men ill the 
attempt 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



«T 



METHODISM; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1808.] 



This is the production of an honest man, 
possessed of a fair share of understanding. 
He cries out lustily (and not before it is time), 
upon the increase of Methodism ; proposes 
various remedies for the diminution of this 
evil ; and speaks his opinions with a freedom 
which does him great credit, and convinces 
us that he is a respectable man. The clergy 
are accused of not exerting themselves. What 
temporal motive, Mr. Ingram asks, have they 
for exertion 1 Would a curate, who had 
served thirty years upon a living in the most 
exemplary manner, secure to himself, by such 
a conduct, the slightest right or title to promo- 
tion in the church'? What can you expect of 
a whole profession, in which there is no more 
connection between merit and reward, than 
between merit and beauty, or merit and 
strength ? This is the substance of what Mr. 
Ingram says upon this subject; and he speaks 
the truth. We regret, however, that this gen- 
tleman has thought fit to use against the dis- 
senters, the exploded clamour of Jacobinism ; 
or that he deems it necessary to call into the 
aid of the Church, the power of intolerant 
laws, in spite of the odious and impolitic tests 
to which the dissenters are still subjected. 
We believe them to be very good subjects ; 
and we have no doubt but that any further at- 
tempt upon their religious liberties, without 
reconciling them to the Church, would have a 
direct tendency to render them disaffected to 
to the State. 

Mr. Ingram (whose book, by the by, is very 
dull and tedious) has fallen into the common 
mistake of supposing his readers to be as well 
acquainted with his subject as he is himself; 
and has talked a great deal about dissenters, 
without giving us any distinct notions of the 
spirit which pervades these people — the ob- 
jects they have in view — or the degree of 
talent which is to be found among them. To 
remedy this very capital defect, we shall en- 
deavour to set before the eyes of the reader a 
complete section of the tabernacle ; and to 
present him with a near view of those secta- 
ries, who are at present at work upon the de- 
struction of the orthodox churches, and are 
destined hereafter, perhaps, to act as conspi- 
cuous a part in public affairs, as the children 
of Sion did in the time of Cromwell. 

The sources from which we shall derive 
our extracts, are the Evangelical and Metho- 
distical Magazines for the year 1807; — works 
which are said to be circulated to the amount 
of 18,000 or 20,000 each, every month; and 
which contain the sentiments of Arminian 
and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the evan- 
gelical clergymen of the Church of England. 
We shall use the general term of Methodism, 

* Causes of the Increase of Methodism and Dissension. 
By Robert Acklem Ingram, B. D. Hatchard. 



to designate these three classes of fanatics, 
not troubling ourselves to point out the finer 
shades, and nicer discriminations of lunacy, 
but treating them all as in one general conspi- 
racy against common sense, and rational or- 
thodox Christianity. 

In reading these very curious productions, 
we seemed to be in a new world, and to have 
got among a set of beings, of whose existence 
we had hardly before entertained the slightest 
conception. It has been our good fortune to 
be acquainted with many truly religious per- 
sons, both in the Presbyterian and Episcopa- 
lian churches ; and from their manly, rational, 
and serious characters, our conceptions of 
true practical piety have been formed. To 
these confined habits, and to our want of pro- 
per introductions among the children of light 
and grace, any degree of surprise is to be at- 
tributed, which may be excited by the publi- 
cations before us ; which, under opposite cir- 
cumstances, would (we doubt not) have proved 
as great a source of instruction and delight to 
the Edinburgh reviewers, as they are to the 
most melodious votaries of the tabernacle. 

It is not wantonly, or with the most distant 
intention of trifling upon serious subjects, that 
we call the attention of the public to these sort 
of publications. Their circulation is so enor- 
mous, and so increasing, — they contain the 
opinions, and display the habits of so many 
human beings, — that they cannot but be ob- 
jects of curiosity and importance. The com- 
mon and the middling classes of the people 
are the purchasers ; and the subject is reli- 
gion, — though not that religion certainly which 
is established by law, and encouraged by na- 
tional provision. This may lead to unpleasant 
consequences, or it may not ; but it carries 
with it a sort of aspect, which ought to insure 
to it serious attention and reflection. 

It is impossible to arrive at any knowledge 
of a religious sect, by merely detailing the set- 
tled articles of tjieir belief: it may be the 
fashion of such a sect to insist upon some arti- 
cles very slightly ; to bring forward others pro- 
minently ; and to consider some portion of their 
formal creed as obsolete. As the knowledge 
of the jurisprudence of any country can never 
be obtained by the perusal of volumes which 
contain some statutes that are daily enforced, 
and others that have been silently antiquated : 
in the same manner, the practice, the preach- 
ing, and the writing of sects, are comments 
absolutely necessary to render the perusal of 
their creed of any degree of utility. 

It is the practice, we believe, with the ortho- 
dox, both in the Scotch and English churches, 
to insist very rarely, and very discreetly, upoa 
the particular instances of the interference of 
Divine Providence. They do not contend that 
the world is governed only by general laws, — 



38 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



that a Superintending Mind never interferes 
for particular purposes ; but such purposes are 
represented to be of a nature very awful and 
sublime, — when a guilty people are to be de- 
stroyed, when an oppressed nation is to be lift- 
ed up, and some remarkable change introduced 
into the order and arrangement of the world. 
With this kind of theology we can have no 
quarrel ; we bow to its truth ; we are satisfied 
with the moderation which it exhibits ; and we 
have no doubt of the salutary effect which it 
produces upon the human heart. Let us now 
come to those special cases of the interference 
of Providence as they are exhibited in the pub- 
lications before us. 

An interference ivith respect to the Rev. James 
Moody. 

" Mr. James Moody was descended from pious 
ancestors, who resided at Paisley ; — his heart 
was devoted to music, dancing, and theatrical 
amusements; of the latter he was so fond, that 
he used to meet with some men of a similar 
cast to rehearse plays, and used to entertain a 
hope that he should make a figure upon the 
stage. To improve himself in music, he would 
rise very early, even in severely cold weather, 
and practise on the German flute : by his skill 
in music and singing, with his general powers 
of entertaining, he became a desirable com- 
panion : he would sometimes venture to pro- 
fane the day of God, by turning it into a season 
of carnal pleasure : and would join in excur- 
sions on the water, to various parts of the vi- 
cinity of London. But the time was approach- 
ing, when the Lord, who had designs of mercy for 
him, and for many others by his means, was about 
to stop him in his vain career of sin and folly. There 
were two professing servants in the house 
where he lived ; one of these was a porter, who, 
in brushing his clothes, would say, 'Master 
James, this will never do — you must be other- 
wise employed — you must be a minister of the 
gospel.' This worthy man, earnestly wishing 
his conversion, put into his hands that excel- 
lent book which God hath so much owned, 
jllleine's Alarm to the Unconverted. 

" About this time, it pleased God to visit him 
"with a disorder in his eyes, occasioned, as it 
was thought, by his sitting up in the night to 
improve himself in drawing. The apprehen- 
sion of losing his sight occasioned many seri- 
ous reflections ; his mind was impressed with 
the importance and necessity of seeking the 
salvation of his soul, and he was induced to 
attend the preaching of the gospel. The first 
sermon that he heard with a desire to profit, 
was at Spa-fields Chapel ; a place where he had 
formerly frequented, when it was a temple of 
vanity and dissipation. Strong convictions of 
sin fixed on his mind; and he continued to at- 
tend the preached word, paTticularly at Totten- 
ham-court Chapel. Every sermon increased 
his sorrow and grief that he had not earlier 
sought the Lord. It was a considerable time 
before he found comfort from the gospel. He 
has stood in the free part of the chapel, hear- 
ing with such emotion, that the tears have 
flowed from his eyes in torrents ; and, when 
he has returned home, he has continued a great 



part of the night on his knees, praying over 
what he had heard. 

"The change effected by the power of the 
Holy Spirit on his heart now became visible to 
all. Nor did he halt between two opinions, as 
some persons do; he became at once a decided 
character, and gave up for ever all his vain 
pursuits and amusements ; devoting himself 
with as much resolution and diligence to the 
service of God, as he had formerly done to folly." 
Ev. il/ag. p. 194. 

An interference respecting Cards. 

"A clergyman not far distant from the spot 
on which these lines were written, was spend- 
ing an evening — not in his closet wrestling 
with his Divine Master for the communication 
of that grace which is so peculiarly necessary 
for the faithful discharge of the ministerial 
function, — not in his study searching the sacred 
oracles of divine truth for materials wherewith 
to prepare for his public exercises and feed the 
flock under his care, — not in pastoral visits to 
that flock, to inquire into the state of their souls, 
and endeavour, by his pious and affectionate 
conversation, to conciliate their esteem, and 
promote their edification, — but at the card table." 
— After stating that when it was his turn to 
deal, he dropped down dead, " It is worthy of 
remark (says the writer), that within a very 
few years this was the third character in the 
neighbourhood which had been summoned 
from the card table to the bar of God." — Ev. 
Mag p. 262. 

Interference respecting Swearing — a Bee the instru- 
ment. 
" A young man is stung by a bee, upon which 
he buflfets the bees with his hat, uttering at the 
same time the most dreadful oaths and impre- 
cations. In the midst of his fury, one of these 
little combatants stung him upon the tip of that 
unruly member (his tongue), which was then 
employed in blaspheming his Maker. Thus 
can the Lord engage one of the meanest of his 
creatures in reproving the bold transgressor 
who dares to take his name in vain." — Ev. 
Mag. p. 363. 

Interference with respect to David White, who was 
mred of Atheism and Scrofula by one Sermon of 
Mr. Coles. 

This case is too long to quote in the lan- 
guage and with the evidences of the writers. 
The substance of it is what our title implies. — 
David Wright was a man with scrofulous legs 
and atheistical principles; — being with diffi- 
culty persuaded to hear one sermon from Mr. 
Coles, he limped to the church in extreme pain, 
and arrived there after great exertion ;— dur- 
ing church time he was entirely converted, 
walked home with the greatest ease, and never 
after experienced the slightest return of scro- 
fula or infidelity.— ^v. Mag. p. 444. 

The displeasure of Providence is expressed at Cap- 
tain Scott's going to preach in Mr. Romaine's 
Chapel. 
The sign of this displeasure is a violent 

storm of thunder and lightning just as he came 

into town.— -Ev. Mag. p. 537. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, 



39 



Interference with respect to an Innkeeper, who tvas 

destroyed for having appointed a cock'fight at the 

very time that the service was beginning at the 

Methodist Chapel. 

" ' Never mind,' says the innkeeper, ' I'll get a 
greater congregation than the Methodist par- 
son ; — we'll have a cock-fight.' But what is 
man ! how insignificant his designs, how im- 
potent his strength, how ill-fated his plans, when 
opposed to that Being who is infinite in wisdom, 
boundless in power, terrible in judgment, and 
who frequently reverses, and suddenly renders 
abortive, the projects of the wicked ! A few 
days after the avowal of his intention, the inn- 
keeper sickened," &c. &c. And then the nar- 
rator goes on to state, that his corpse was car- 
ried by the meeting-house, " on the day, and 
exactly at the lime, the deceased had fixed for the 
cock-fight."— Me^/i. Mag. p. 126. 

In page 167, Melh. Mag., a father, mother, 
three sons, and a sister, are destroyed by par- 
ticular interposition. 

In page 222, Mcth. Mag., a dancing-master is 
destroyed for irreligion, — another person for 
swearing at a cock-fight, — and a third for pre- 
tending to be deaf and dumb. These are call- 
ed recent and authentic accounts of God's aveng- 
ing providence. 

So much for the miraculous interposition of 
Providence in cases where the Methodists are 
concerned: we shall now proceed to a few spe- 
cimens of the energy of their religious feelings. 

Mr. Roberts's feelings in the month of May, 1793. 
" But, all this time, my soul was stayed upon 
God ; my desires increased, and my mind was 
kept in a sweet praying frame, a going out of 
myself, as it were, and taking shelter in Him. 
Every breath I drew, ended in a prayer. I felt 
myself helpless as an infant, dependent upon 
God for all things. I was in a constant daily 
expectation of receiving all I wanted ; and, on 
Friday, May 31st, under Mr. Rutherford's ser- 
mon, though entirely independent of it, (for I 
could not give any account of what he had 
been preaching about,) I was given to feel that 
God was waiting to be very gracious to me ; 
the spirit of prayer and supplication was given 
me, and such an assurance that I was accepted 
in the Beloved, as I cannot describe, but which 
I shall never forget." — Meth. Mag. p. 35. 

Mrs. Elizabeth Price and her attendants hear sacred 
music on a sudden. 

"A few nights before her death, while some 
neighbours and her husband were sitting up 
with her, a sudden and joyful sound of music 
was heard by all present, although so7ne of them 
were carnal people : at which time she thought 
she saw her crucified Saviour before her, speak- 
ing these words with power to her soul, ' Thy 
sins are forgiven thee, and I love thee freely.' 
After this she never doubted of her acceptance 
■with God ; and on Christmas day following was 
taken to celebrate the Redeemer's birth in the 
Paradise of God. Michakl Cousin." — Meth. 
Mag. p. 137. 

T. L,, a Sailor on board of the Stag frigate has a 
special revelation from our Saviour. 

" October 26th, being the Lord's day, he had 
a remarkable manifestation of God's love to 



his soul. That blessed morning, he was much 
grieved by hearing the wicked use profane 
language, when Jesus revealed himself to him, 
and impressed on his mind those words, 'Fol- 
low Me.' This was a precious day to him." 
Meth. Mag. p. 140. 

The manner in which Mr. Thomas Cook was accus- 
tomed to accost S. B. 
"Whenever he met me in the street, his 
salutation used to be, ' Have you free and 
lively intercourse with God to-day 1 Are you 
giving your whole heart to Godl' I have 
known him on such occasions speak in so 
pertinent a manner, that I have been as- 
tonished at his knowledge of my state. Meet- 
ing me one morning, he said, 'I have been 
praying for you ; you have had a sore conflict, 
though all is well now.' At another time he 
asked, ' Have you been much exercised these 
few days, for I have been led to pray that you 
might especially have suflfering grace.'" — Meth. 
Mag. p. 247. 

Mr. John Kestin on his death-bed. 
" ' Oh, my dear, I am now going to glory, 
happy, happy, happy. I am going to sing 
praises to God and the Lamb ; I am going tc 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I think I can see 
my Jesus without a glass between. I can, I 
feel I can, discern ' my title clear to mansions 
in the skies.' Come, Lord Jesus, come ! why 
are thy chariot- wheels so long delaying 1'" 
Ev. Mag. p. 124. 

TTie Reverend Mr. Mead's soi-roiu for his sins, 
"This wrought him up to temporary despe- 
ration ; his inexpressible grief poured itself 
forth in groans : ' Oh, that I had never sinned 
against God ! I have a hell here upon earth, and 
there is a hell for me in eternity!' One Lord's 
day, very early in the morning, he was awoke by 
a tempest of thunder and lightning; and ima- 
gining it to be the end of the world, his agony 
was great, supposing the great day of divine 
wrath was come, and he unprepared: but hap- 
py to find it not so." — Ev. Mag. p. 147. 

Similar case of Mr. John Robinson. 
"About two hours before he died, he was in 
great agony of body and mind : it appeared 
that the enemy was permitted to struggle with 
him ; and being greatly agitated, he cried out, 
' Ye powers of darkness begone !' This, how- 
ever, did not last long: 'the prey was taken 
from the mighty, and the lawful captive de- 
livered,' although he was not permitted to tell 
of his deliverance, but lay quite still and com- 
posed." — Ev. Mag.Tp. 111. 

The Reverend William Tennant in an heavenly 
trance. 
" ' While I was conversing with my brother,' 
said he, ' on the state of my soul, and the fears 
I had entertained for my future welfare, I found 
myself in an instant, in another state of exist- 
ence, under the direction of a superior being, 
who ordered me to follow him. I was wafted 
along, I know not how, till I beheld at a dis- 
tance an ineffable glory, the impression of 
which on my mind it is impossible to commu- 
nicate to mortal man. I immediately reflected 
on ray happy change ; and thought, Well, 



40 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"blessed be God! I am safe at last, notwith- 
standing all my fears. I saw an innumerable 
host of happy beings surrounding the inex- 
pressible glory, in acts of adoration and joy- 
ous worship ; but I did not see any bodily shape 
or representation in the glorious appearance. 
I heard things unutterable. I heard their songs 
and hallelujahs of thanksgiving and praise, 
with unspeakable rapture. I felt joy unutter- 
able and full of glory. I then applied to my 
conductor, and requested leave to join the 
happy throng.' " — Ev. Mag. p. 251. 

The following we consider to be one of the 
most shocking histories we ever read. God 
only knows how many such scenes take place 
in the gloomy annals of Methodism. > 

" A young man, of the name of S. C , 

grandson to a late eminent Dissenting minister, 
and brought up by him, came to reside at 

K g, about the year 1803. He attended at 

the Baptist place of worship, not only on the 
Lord's day, but frequently at the week-day 
lectures and prayer-meetings. He was sup- 
posed by some to be seriously inclined ; but 
his opinion of himself was, that he had never 
experienced that divine change, without which 
no man can be saved. 

" However that might be, there is reason to 
helieve he had been for some years under 
powerful convictions of his miserable condi- 
tion as a sinner. In June, 1806, these convic- 
tions were observed to increase, and that in a 
more than common degree. From that time 
he went into no company ; but, when he was 
not at work, kept in his chamber, where he 
was employed in singing plaintive hymns, and 
bewailing his lost and perishing state. 

" He had about him several religious peo- 
ple ; but could not be induced to open his mind 
to them, or to impart to any one the cause of 
his distress. Whether this contributed to in- 
crease it or not, it did increase, till his health 
was greatly affected by it, and he was scarce- 
ly able to work at his business. 

" While he was at meeting on Lord's day, 
September 14th, he was observed to labour 
under very great emotion of mind, especially 
when he heard the following words : ' Sinner, 
if you die without an interest in Christ, you 
will sink into the regions of eternal death.' 

" On the Saturday evening following, he in- 
timated to the mistress of the house where he 
lodged, that some awful judgment was about 
to come upon him ; and as he should not be 
able to be at meeting next day, requested that 
an attendant might be procured to stay with 
him. She replied, that she would herself stay 
at home, and wait upon him ; which she did. 

" On the Lord's day he was in great agony 
of mind. His mother was sent for, and some 
religious friends visited him ; but all was of 
no avail. That night was a night dreadful 
beyond conception. The horror which he en- 
dured brought on all the symptoms of raging 
madness. He desired the attendants not to 
come near him, lest they should be burnt. He 
said that 'the bed-curtains were in flames, — 
that he smelt the brimstone, — that devils were 
come to fetch him, — that there was no hope 
for him, for that he had sinned against light 



and conviction, and that he should certainly 
go to hell.' It was with difficulty he| could be 
kept in bed. 

" An apothecary being sent for, as soon as 
he entered the house, and heard his dreadful 
bowlings, he inquired if he had not been bitten 
by a mad dog. His appearance, likewise, 
seemed to justify such a suspicion, his coun- 
tenance resembling that of a wild beast more 
than of a man. 

" Though he had no feverish heat, yet his 
pulse beat above 150 in a minute. To abate 
the mania, a quantity of blood was taken from 
him, a blister was applied, his head was shaved, 
cold water was copiously poured over him, 
and fox-glove was administered. By these 
means his fury was abated ; but his mental 
agony continued, and all the symptoms of 
madness which his bodily strength, thus re- 
duced, would allow, till the following Thurs- 
day. On that day he seemed to have recovered 
his reason, and to be calm in his mind. In 
the evening he sent for the apothecary; and 
wished to speak with him by himself. The 
latter, on his coming, desired every one to 
leave the room, and thus addressed him: 

' C , have you not something on your 

mindV 'Ay,' answered he, ' thai is it .'' He 
then acknowledged that, early in the month 
of June, he had gone to a fair in the neigh- 
bourhood, in company with a number of wicked 
young men : that they drank at a public-house 
together till he was in a measure intoxicated ; 
and that from thence they went into other com- 
pany, where he was criminally connected with 
a harlot. ' I have been a miserable creature,' 
continued he, ' ever since ; but during the last 
three days and three nights, I have been in a 
§tate of desperation.' He intimated to the 
apothecary, that he could not bear to tell this 
story to his minister : ' But,' said he, ' do you 
inform him that I shall not die in despair ; for 
light has broken in upon me ; I have been led 
to the great Sacrifice for sin, and I now hope 
in him for salvation.' 

" From this time his mental distress ceased, 
his countenance became placid, and his con- 
versation, instead of being taken up as before 
with fearful exclamations concerning devils 
and the wrath to come, was now confined to 
the dying love of Jesus ! The apothecary was 
of opinion, that if his strength had not been so 
much exhausted, he would now have been in 
a state of religious transport. His nervous 
system, however, had received such a shock, 
that his recovery was doubtful ; and it seemed 
certain, that if he did recover, he would sink 
into a state of idiocy. He survived this inter- 
view but a few days."— -Bt>. Mag. p. 412, 413. 

A religious observer stands at a turnpike 
gate on a Sunday, to witness the profane crowd 
passing by ; he sees a man driving very clum- 
sily in a gig ; the inexperience of the driver 
provokes the following pious observations. 

" ' What (said I to myself) if a single un- 
toward circumstance should happen ! Should 
the horse take fright, or the wheel on either 
side get entangled, or the gig upset, — in either 
case what can preserve themi And should a 
morning so fair and promising bring on evil 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



41 



before night, — should death on his pale horse 
■appear, — what follows 1 My mind shuddered 
at the images I had raised.' " — Ev. Mag. p. 558, 
559. 

Miss Louisa Cooke's rapturous state. 
" From this period she lived chiefly in retire- 
ment, either in reading the sacred volume on 
her knees, or in pouring out her soul in prayer 
to God. While thus employed, she was not 
unfrequently indulged with visits from her 
gracious Lord ; and sometimes she felt herself 
to be surrounded, as it were, by his glorious 
presence. After her return to Bristol, her frame 
of mind became so heavenly, that she seemed 
often to be dissolved in the love of God her 
Saviour." — Ev. Mag. p. 576, 577. 

Objection to Almanacks. 

" Let those who have been partial to such 
vain productions, only read Isaiah xlvii. 13, 
. and Daniel ii. 27 ; and they will here see what 
they are to be accounted of, and in what com- 
pany they are to be found; and let them learn 
to despise their equivocal and artful insinua- 
tions, which are too frequently blended with 
profanity ; for is it not profanity in them to at- 
tempt to palm their frauds xtpon mankind by 
Scripture quotations, which they seldom fail to 
do, especially Judges v. 20, and Job xxxviii. 
31 1 neither of which teaches nor warrants 
any such practice. Had Baruch or Deborah 
consulted the stars 1 No such thing." — Ev. 
Mag. p. 600. 

This energy of feeling will be found occa- 
sionally to meddle with, and disturb the ordi- 
nary occupations and amusements of life, and 
to raise up little qualms of conscience, which, 
instead of exciting respect, border, we fear, 
somewhat too closely upon the ludicrous. 

A Methodist Footman. 
" A gentleman's servant, who has left a good 
place because he was ordered to deny his mas- 
ter when actually at home, wishes something 
on this subject may be introduced into this 
work, that persons who are in the habit of 
denying themselves in the above manner may 
be convinced of its evil." — Ev. Mag. p. 72. 

Doubts if it is right to take aiiy ititerest for 
money. 
" Usury. — Sir, I beg the favour of you to in- 
sert the following case of conscience. I fre- 
quently find in Scripture, that Usury is parti- 
cularly condemned; and it is represented as 
the character of a good man, that ' he hath not 
given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any 
increase,' Ezek. xviii. 8, &c. I wish, there- 
fore, to know how such passages are to be un- 
derstood ; and whether the taking of interest 
for money, as it is universally practised among 
us, can be reconciled with the word and will 
of God? q:'—Ev. Mag. p. 74. 

Dancing ill suited to a creature on trial for 
eternity 
" If dancing be a waste of time ; if the pre- 
cious hours devoted to it may be better em- 
ployed; if it be a species of trifling ill suited 
to a creature on trial for eternity, and hasten- 
ing towards it on the swift wings of time ; if it 
.'he incompatible with genuine renentance, true 
6 



faith in Christ, supreme love to God, and a 
state of genuine devotedness to him, — then 
is dancing a practice utterly opposed to the 
whole spirit and temper of Christianity, and 
subversive of the best interests of the rising 
generation." — Meth. Mag. p. 127, 128. 

The Methodists consider themselves as con- 
stituting a chosen and separate people, living 
in a land of atheists and voluptuaries. The 
expressions by which they designate their own 
sects, are the dear people — the elect — the people 
of God. The rest of mankind are carnal peo- 
ple, the people of this world, &c. «&c. The chil- 
dren of Israel were not more separated, through 
the favour of God, from the Egyptians, than 
the Methodists are, in their own estimation, 
from the rest of mankind. We had hitherto 
supposed that the disciples of the Established 
churches in England and Scotland had been 
Christians ; and that, after baptism, duly per- 
formed by the appointed minister, and partici- 
pation in the customary worship of these two 
churches, Christianity was the religion of 
which they were to be considered as mem- 
bers. We see, however, in these publications, 
men of twenty or thirty years of age first called 
to a knowledge of Christ tmder a sermon by the 
Rev. Mr. Venn, — or first admitted into the 
church of Christ under a sermon by the Rev. 
Mr. Romaine. The apparent admission turns 
out to have been a mere mockery; and the 
pseudo-christian to have had no religion at all, 
till the business was really and efiectually done 
under these sermons by Mr. Venn and Mr. 
Romaine. 

An aioful and general departure from the Christian 
Faith in the Church of England. 
"A second volume of Mr. Cooper's sermons 
is before us, stamped with the same broad seal 
of truth and excellence as the former. Amidst 
the awful and general departure from the faith, 
as once delivered to the saints, in the Church 
of England, and sealed by the blood of our 
Reformers, it is pleasing to observe that there 
is a remnant, according to the election of grace, 
who continue rising up to testify the gospel of 
the grace of God, and to call back their fellows 
to the consideration of the great and leading 
doctrines on which the Reformation was built, 
and the Church of England by law established. 
The author of these sermons, avoiding all 
matters of more doubtful disputation, avowedly 
attaches himself to the great fundamental 
truths ; and on the two substantial pillars, the 
Jachin and Boaz of the living temple, erects 
his superstructure. 1. Justification by faith, 
without works, free and full, by grace alone, 
through the redemption which is in Jesus 
Christ, stands at the commencement of the 
first volume ; and on its side rises in the beauty 
of holiness," &c. — Ev. Mag. p. 79. 

Mr. Robinson called to the knowledge of Christ under 
Mr. Venn's Sermon. 
" Mr. Robinson was called in early life to the 
knowledge of Christ, under a sermon at St. 
Dunstan's, by the late Rev. Mr. Venn, from 
Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 26 ; the remembrance of which 
greatly refreshed his soul upon his death- 
bed."— Er. Mag p. 176. 

D 2 



42 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Christianity intrndvced into the Parish of Launton, 
near Bicester, in the year 1807. 

"Avery general spirit of inquiry having ap- 
peared for some time in the village of Launton, 
near Bicester, some serious persons were ex- 
cited to communicate to them the word of life." 
Ev. Mag. p. 380. 

We learn in page 128, Meth. Mag., that twelve 
months had elapsed from the time of Mrs. 
Cocker's joining the people of God, before she 
obtained a clear sense of forgiveness. 

A religi(m.s Hoy sets off every week for Margate. 
"Religious Passengers accommodated. — To the 
Editor. — Sir, it afforded me considerable plea- 
sure to see upon the cover of your Magazine 
for the present month, an advertisement, an- 
nouncing the establishment of a packet, to sail 
weekly between London and Margate, during 
the season ; which appears to have been set on 
foot for the accommodation of religious cha- 
racters; and in which 'no profane conversa- 
tion is to be allowed.' 

" To those among the followers of a crucified 
Redeemer, who are in the habit of visiting the 
Isle of Thanet in the summer, and who, for the 
sea air, or from other circumstances, prefer 
travelling by water, such a conveyance must 
certainly be a desideratum, especially if they 
have experienced a mortification similar to that 
of the writer, in the course of the last summer, 
when shut up in a cabin with a mixed multi- 
tude, who spake almost all languages but that 
of Canaan. Totally unconnected with the con- 
cern, and personally a stranger to the worthy 
owner, I take the liberty of recommending this 
vessel to the notice of my fellow-Christians ; 
persuaded that they will think themselves bound 
to patronise and encourage an undertaking that 
has the honour of the dear Redeemer for its 
professed object. It ought ever to be remem- 
bered, that every talent we possess, whether 
large or small, is given us in trust to be laid 
out for God ; — and I have often thought that 
Christians act inconsistently with their high 
profession, when they omit, even in their most 
common and trivial expenditures, to give a 
decided preference to the friends of their Lord. 
I do not, however, anticipate any such ground 
of complaint in this instance ; but rather believe 
that the religious world in general will cheer- 
fully unite with me, while I most cordially wish 
success to the Princess of Wales Yacht, and 
pray that she may ever sail under the divine 
protection and blessing ;— that the humble fol- 
lowers of Him who spoke the storm into a 
calm, when crossing the lake of Gennesareth, 
may often feel their hearts glowing with sacred 
ardour, while in her cibins they enjoy sweet 
communion with their Lord and with each 
other; — and that strangers, who may be provi- 
dentially brought among them, may see so much 
of the beauty and excellency of the religion of 
Jesus exemplified in their conduct and conver- 
sation, that they may be constrained to say, 
' We will go with you, for we perceive that 
God is with you. — Your God shall be our God, 
and his people shall henceforth be our chosen 
companions and associates.' I am, Mr. Editor, 
your obliged friend and sister in the gospel, 
E. T."—Ev. Mag. p. 268. 



A religion? neu-spaper is announced in the Ev. M. 
for September. — It is said of common newspa- 
pers, " That they are absorbed in temporal concerns, 
while the consideration of those which are eternal is 
postponed ; the business of this life has super- 
seded the claims of immortality; and the 
monarchs of the world have engrossed an at- 
tention which would have been more properly 
devoted to the Saviour of the universe." It is 
then stated, " that the columns of this paper 
{The Instructoi-, price 6rf.) will be supplied by 
pious reflections ; suitable comments to im- 
prove the dispensations of Providence will be 
introduced ; and the whole conducted with an 
eye to our spiritual, as well as temporal, wel- 
fare. The work will contain the latest news 
up to fcur o'clock on the day of publication, 
together with the most recent religious occur- 
rences. The prices of stock, and correct 
market-tables, will also be accurately detailed." 
Ev. Mag. September Advertisement. The Eclectic 
Review is also understood to be carried on upon 
Methodistical principles. 

Nothing can evince more strongly the influ- 
ence which Methodism now exercises upon 
common life, and the fast hold it has got of the 
people, than the advertisements which are cir- 
culated every month in these very singular 
publications. On the cover of a single num- 
l3er, for example, we have the following : — 

" Wanted, by Mr. Turner, shoemaker, a 
steady apprentice ; he will have the privilege 
of attending the ministry of the gospel ; — a 
premium expected, p. 3. — Wanted, a serious 
young woman, as servant of all work, 3. — 
Wanted, a man of serious character, who can 
shave, 3. — Wanted, a serious woman to assist 
in a shop, 3. — A young person in the millinery 
line wishes to be in a serious family, 4. — Wants 
a place, a young man who has brewed in a se- 
rious family, 4. — Ditto, a young woman of 
evangelical principles, 4. — Wanted, an active 
serious shopman, 5. — To be sold, an eligible 
residence, with sixty acres of land; gospel 
preached in three places within half a mile, 5. — 
A single gentleman may be accommodated 
with lodging in a small serious family, 5. — To 
let, a genteel first floor in an airy situation near 
the Tabernacle, 6. — Wanted, a governess, of 
evangelical principles and corresponding cha- 
racter, 10." 

The religious vessel we have before spoken 
of, is thus advertised : — 

" The Princess of Wales Yacht, J. Chapman, 
W. Bourn, master, by divine permission, will 
leave Ralph's Quay every Friday, 11," &c.&c. 
— July Ev. Mag. 

After the specimens we have given of these 
people, any thing which is said of their activity 
can very easily be credited. The army and 
navy appear to be particular objects of their 
attention. 

" British Navy. — It is with peculiar pleasure 
we insert the following extract of a letter from 
the pious chaplain of a man-of-war, to a gen- 
tleman at Gosport, intimating the power and 
grace of God manifested towards our brave 
seamen. " Off Cadiz, Nov. 26, 1806.— My dear 
friend — A fleet for England found us in the 
night, and is just going away. I have only to 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



48 



tell you that the work of God seems to prosper. 
Many are under convictions ; — some, I trust, 
are converted. I preach every night, and am 
obliged to have a private meeting afterwards 
with those who wish to speak about their souls. 
But my own health is suffering much, nor shall 
I probably be able long to bear it. The ship is 
like a tabernacle; and really there is much 

external reformation. Capt. raises no 

objection. I have near a hundred hearers 
every night at six o'clock. How unworthy am 
I !_Pray for us.' "—Ev. Mag. 84. 

TTie Testimony of a profane Officer to the tcorth of 
Pious Sailors. 

"Mr. Editor — In the mouth of two or three 
witnesses a truth shall be established. I re- 
cently met with a pleasing confirmation of a 
narrative, stated sometime since in your Maga- 
zine. I was surprised by a visit from an old 
acquaintance of mine the other day, who is 
now an officer of rank in his Majesty's navy. 
In the course of conversation, I was shocked 
at the profane oaths that perpetually interrupted 
his sentences; and took an opportunity to 
express my regret that such language should 
be so common among so valuable a body of 
men. 'Sir,' said he, still interspersing many 
solemn imprecations, 'an officer cannot live at 
sea without swearing; — not one of my men 
would mind a word without an oath ; it is com- 
mon sea-language. If we were not to swear, 
the rascals would take us for lubbers, stare in 
our faces, and leave us to do our commands 
ourselves. I never knew but one exception; 
and that was extraordinary. I declare, believe 
me 'tis true (suspecting that I might not credit 
it), there was a set of fellows called Methodists, 
on board the Victory, Lord Nelson's ship (to 
be sure he was rather a religious man him- 
self!), and those men never wanted swearing 
at. The dogs were the best seamen on board. 
Every man knew his duty, and every man did 
his duty. They used to meet together and sing 
hymns; and nobody dared molest them. The 
commander would not have suffered it, had 
they attempted it. They were allowed a mess 
by themselves ; and never mixed with the other 
men. I have often heard them singing away 
myself; and 'tis true, I assure you, but not one 
of them was either killed or wounded at the 
battle of Trafalgar, though they did their duty 
as well as any men. No, not one of the psalm- 
singing gentry was even hurt ; and there the 
fellows are swimming away in the Bay of Bis- 
cay at this very time, singing like the d . 

They are now under a new commander; 'but 
still are allowed the same privileges, and mess 
by themselves. These were the only fellows 
that ever I knew do their duty without swear- 
ing ; and I will do them the justice to say they 
do it.' J. C."—Ev.Mag. p. 119, 120. 

These people are spread over the face of the 
whole earth in the shape of missionaries. — 
Upon the subject of missions we shall say very 
little or nothing at present, because we reserve 
it for another article in a subsequent Number. 
But we cannot help remarking the magnitude 
of the collections made in favour of the mis- 
sionaries at the Methodistical chapels, when 
compared with the collections for any common 



object of charity in the orthodox churches and 

chapels. 

" Religious Tract Society. — A most satisfac- 
tory report was presented by the committee ; 
from which it appeared that, since the com- 
mencement of the institution in the year 1799, 
upwards of four millions of religious tracts 
have been issued under the auspices of the 
society; and that considerably more than one- 
fourth of that number have been sold during 
the last year." — Ev. Mag. p. 284. 

These tracts are dropped in villages by the 
Methodists, and thus every chance for con- 
version afforded to the common people. There 
is a proposal in One of the numbers of the 
volumes before us, that travellers, for every 
pound they spend on the road, should fling one 
shilling's worth of these tracts out of the chaise 
window; — thus taxing his pleasures at 5 per 
cent, for the purposes of doing good. 

"Every Christian who expects the protec- 
tion and blessing of God ought to take with 
him as many shillings' worth, at least, of 
cheap tracts to throw on the road, and leave 
at inns, as he takes out pounds to expend on 
himself and family. This is really but a tri- 
fling sacrifice. It is a highly reasonable one ; 
and one which God will accept." — Ev. Mag. 
p. 405. 

It is part of their policy to have a great change 
of Ministers. 

" Same day, the Rev. W. Haward, from Hox- 
ton Academy, was ordained over the Indepen- 
dent church at Rendham, Suffolk. Mr. Pic- 
kles, of Walpole, began with prayer and read- 
ing; Mr. Price, of Woodbridge, delivered the in- 
troductory discourse, and asked the questions; 
Mr. Dennant, of Halesworth, offered the ordi- 
nation prayer ; Mr. Shufflebottom, of Bungay, 
gave the charge from Acts xx. 28 ; Mr. Vincent, 
of Deal, the general prayer; and Mr. Walford, 
of Yarmouth, preached to the people from 
2 Phil. ii. \Q."—Ev. Mag. p. 429. 

Chapels opened. — "Hambledon, Bucks, Sept, 
22. — Eighteen months ago this parish was des- 
titute of the gospel ; the people have now one 
of the Rev. G. Collison's students, the Rev. 
Mr. Eastmead, settled among them. Mr. Eng- 
lish, of Wooburn, and Mr. Frey, preached on 
the occasion ; and Mr. Jones, of London, Mr. 
Churchill, of Henley, Mr. Redford, of Windsor, 
and Mr. Barratt, now of Petersfield, prayed." — 
Ev. Mag. p. 533. 

Methodism in his Majesty's ship Tonnant — A 
Letter from the Sail-maker. 
" It is with great satisfaction that I can now 
inform you God has deigned, in a yet greater 
degree, to own the weak efforts of his servant 
to turn many from Satan to himself. Many 
are called here, as is plain to be seen by their 
pensive looks and deep sighs. And if they 
would be obedient to the heavenly call, in- 
stead of grieving the Spirit of grace, I dare 
say we should soon have near half the ship's 
company brought to God. I doubt not, how- 
ever, but, as I have cast my bread upon the 
waters, it will be found after many days. Our 
13 are now increased to upwards of 30. Surely 



44 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the Lord delighteth not in the death of him 
that dieXh:'—Meth. Mag. p. 188. 

It appears, also, from p. 193, Meth. Mag., 
that the same principles prevail on board his 
Majesty's ship Sea-horse, 44 guns. And in 
one part of Evan. Mag. great hopes are enter- 
tained of the 25th regiment. We believe this 
is the number; but we quote this fact from 
memory. 

We must remember, in addition to these 
trifling specimens of their active disposition, 
that the Methodists have found a powerful 
party in the House of Commons, who, by the 
neutrality which they affect, and partly adhere 
to, are courted both by ministers and opposi- 
tion ; that they have gained complete posses- 
sion of the India-House ; and under the pre- 
tence, or perhaps with the serious intention 
of educating young people for India, will take 
care to introduce (as much as they dare with- 
out provoking attention) their own particular 
tenets. In fact, one thing must always be 
taken .for granted respecting these people, — 
that wherever they gain a footing, or whatever 
be the institutions to which they give birth, 
proselytism will be their main object; every 
thing else is a mere instrument — this is their 
principal aim. When every pi'oselyte is not 
only an addition to their temporal power, but 
■when the act of conversion which gains a vote, 
saves (as they suppose) a soul from destruc- 
tion, — it is quite needless to state, that every 
faculty of their minds will be dedicated to this 
most important of all temporal and eternal 
concerns. 

Their attack upon the Church is not merely 
confined to publications ; it is generally under- 
stood that they have a very considerable fund 
for the purchase of livings, to which, of course, 
ministers of their own profession are always 
presented. 

Upon the foregoing facts, and upon the spi- 
rit evinced by these extracts, we shall make a 
few comments. 

1. It is obvious that this description of 
Christians eiitertain very erroneous and dan- 
gerous notions of the present judgments of 
God. A belief that Providence interferes in all 
the little actions of our lives, refers all merit 
and demerit to bad and good fortune; and 
causes the successful man to be always con- 
sidered as a good man, and the unhappy man 
as the object of divine vengeance. It fur- 
nishes ignorant and designing men with a 
power which is sure to be abused : — the cry 
of a judgment, a judgment, it is always easy 
to make, but not easy to resist. It encourages 
the grossest superstitions; for if the Deity 
rewards and punishes on every slight occa- 
sion, it is quite impossible, but that such an 
helpless being as man will set himself at work 
to discover the will of Heaven in the appear- 
ances of outward nature, to apply all the phe- 
nomena of thunder, lightning, wind, and every 
striking appearance to the regulation of his 
conduct ; as the poor Methodist, when he rode 
into Piccadilly in a thunder storm, and ima- 
gined tliat all the uproar of the elements was 
a mere hint to him not to preach at Mr. Ro- 
maine's chapel. Hence a great deal of error, 



and a great deal of secret misery. This doc- 
trine of a theocracy must necessarily place an 
excessive power in the hands of the clergy: 
it applies so instantly and so tremendously to 
men's hopes and fears, that it must make the 
priest omnipotent over the people, as it always 
has done where it has been established. It 
has a great tendency to check human exer- 
tions, and to prevent the employment of those 
secondary means of effecting an object which 
Providence has placed in our power. The 
doctrine of the immediate and perpetual inter- 
ference of Divine providence is not true. If 
two men travel the same road, the one to rob, 
the other to relieve a fellow-creature who is 
starving; will any but the most fanatic con- 
tend that they do not both run the same chance 
of falling over a stone and breaking their legs'! 
and is it not matter of fact, that the robber 
often returns safe, and the just man sustains 
the injur}'? Have not the soundest divines, of 
both churches, always urged this unequal dis- 
tribution of good and evil, in the present state, 
as one of the strongest natural arguments for 
a future state of retribution 1 Have not they 
contended, and well, and admirably contend- 
ed, that the supposition of such a state is ab- 
solutely necessary to our notion of the justice 
of God, — absolutely necessary to restore order 
to that moral confusion which we all observe 
and deplore in the present world 1 The man 
who places religion upon a false basis is the 
greatest enemy to religion. If victory is al- 
ways to the just and good, — how is the fortune 
of impious conquerors to be accounted fori 
Why do they erect dynasties and found fami- 
lies which last for centuries 1 The reflecting 
mind whom you have instructed in this man- 
ner, and for present effect only, naturally 
comes upon you hereafter with difficulties of 
this sort ; he finds he has been deceived ; and 
you will soon discover that, in breeding up a 
fanatic, you have unwittingly laid the founda- 
tion of an atheist. The honest and the ortho- 
dox method is to prepare young people for the 
world as it actually exists ; to tell them that 
they will often find vice perfectly successful, 
virtue exposed to a long train of afilictions ; 
that they must bear this patiently, and look to 
another world for its rectification. 

2. The second doctrine which it is neces- 
sary to notice among the Methodists, is the 
doctrine of inward impulse and emotions, 
which, it is quite plain, must lead, if univer- 
sally insisted upon, and preached among the 
common people, to every species of folly and 
enormity. When an human being believes 
that his internal feelings are the monitions of 
God, and that these monitions must govern his 
conduct ; and when a great stress is purposely 
laid upon these inward feehngs in all the dis- 
courses from the pulpit; it is impossible to 
say to what a pitch of extravagance mankind 
may not be carried, under the influence of 
such dangerous doctrines. 

3. The Methodists hate pleasure and amuse- 
ments ; no theatre, no cards, no dancing, no 
Punchinello, no dancing dogs, no blind fid- 
dlers; — all the amusements of the rich and 
of the poor must disappear wherever these 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



45 



gloomy people get a footing. It is not the 
abuse of pleasure which they attack, but the 
interspersion of pleasure, however much it is 
guarded by good sense and moderation ; — it is 
not only wicked to hear the licentious plays 
of Congreve, but wicked to hear Henry the 
Vth, or the School for Scandal : — it is not only 
dissipated to run about to all the parties in 
London and Edinburgh, — but dancing is not 
Jit for a being who is preparing himself fm- 
Eternity. Ennui, wretchedness, melancholy, 
groans and sighs, are the offerings which 
these unhappy men make to a Deity who 
has covered the earth with gay colours, and 
scented it with rich perfumes ; and shown us, 
by the plan and order of his works, that he 
has given to man something better than a 
bare existence, and scattered over his creation 
a thousand superfluous joys, which are totally 
unnecessary to the mere support of life. 

4. The Methodists lay very little stress upon 
practical righteousness. They do not say to 
their people, do not be deceitful ; do not be 
idle ; get rid of your bad passions ; or at least 
(if they do say these things) they say them 
very seldom. Not that they preach faith with- 
out works ; for if they told the people that the}^ 
might rob and murder M^ith impunity, the civil 
magistrate must be compelled to interfere with 
such doctrine ': — but they say a great deal 
about faith, and very little about works. What 
are commonly called the mysterious parts of 
our religion, are brought into the foreground 
much more than the doctrines which lead to 
practice ; — and this among the lowest of the 

■ community. 

The Methodists have hitherto been accused 
of dissenting from the Church of England. 
This, as far as it relates to mere subscription 
to articles, is not true ; but they differ in their 
choice of the articles upon which they dilate 
and expand, and to which they appear to give 
a preference, from the stress which they place 
upon them. There is nothing heretical in say- 
ing, that God sometimes intervenes with his 
special providence ; but these people differ 
from the Established Church, in the degree in 
which they insist upon this doctrine. In the 
hands of a man of sense and education, it is 
a safe doctrine; — in the management of the 
y Methodists, we have seen how ridiculous and 
degrading it becomes. In the same manner, a 
clergyman of the Church of England would 
not do his duty, if he did not insist upon the 
necessity of faith, as M^ell as of good works; 
but as he believes that it is much more easy to 
give credit to doctrines than to live well, he 
labours most in those points where human 
nature is the most liable to prove defective. Be- 
cause he does so, he is accused of giving up 
the articles of his faith, by men who have 
their partialities also in doctrine; but parties, 
not founded upon the same sound discretion, 
and knowledge of human nature. 

5. The Methodists are always desirous of 
making men more religious than it is possible, 
from the constitution of human nature, to make 
them. If they could succeed as much as they 
wish to succeed, there would be at once an end 
of delving and spinning, and of every exertion 
of human industry. Men must eat, and drink, 



and work; and if you wish to fix upon them 
high and elevated notions, as the ordinary fur- 
niture of their minds, you do these two things : 
you drive men of warm temperaments mad, — 
and you introduce in the rest of the world, a 
low and shocking familiarity with words and 
images, which every real friend to religion 
would wish to keep sacred. The friends of the 
dear Redeemer, who are in the habit of visiting 
the Isle of Thanet — (as in the extract we have 
quoted) — Is it possible that this mixture of the 
most awful with the most familiar images, so 
common among Methodists now, and with the 
enthusiasts in the time of Cromwell, must not, 
in the end, divest religion of all the deep and 
solemn impressions which it is calculated to 
produce 1 In a man of common imagination 
(as we have before observed), the terror, and 
the feeling which it first excited, must neces- 
sarily be soon separated: but, where the fer- 
vour of impression is long preserved, piety 
ends in Bedlam. Accordingly, there is not a 
mad-house in England, where a considerable 
part of the patients have not been driven to 
insanity by the extravagance of these people. 
We cannot enter such places without seeing 
a number of honest artisans, covered with 
blankets, and calling themselves angels and 
apostles, who, if they had remained contented 
with the instruction of men of learning and 
education, would have been sound masters of 
their oAvn trade, sober Christians, and useful 
members of society. 

6. It is impossible not to observe how di- 
rectly all the doctrine of the Methodists is cal- 
citlated to gain power among the poor and 
ignorant. To say, that the Deity governs this 
world by general niles, and that we must wait 
for another and a final scene of existence, be- 
fore vice meets with its merited punishment, 
and virtue with its merited reward; to preach 
this up daily, would not add a single votary to 
the Tabernacle, nor sell a Number of the 
Methodistical Magazine : — but to publish an 
account of a man who was cured of scrofula by 
a single sermon — of Providence destroying the 
innkeeper at Garstang for appointing a cock- 
fight near the Tabernacle ; — this promptness 
of judgment and immediate execution is so 
much like human justice, and so much better 
adapted to vulgar capacities, that the system 
is at once admitted as soon as any one can be 
found who is impudent or ignorant enough to 
teach it ; and being once admitted, it produces 
too strong an effect upon the passions to be 
easily relinquished. The case is the same 
with the doctrine of inward impulse, or, as 
they term it, experience. If you preach up 
to ploughmen and artisans, that every singular 
feeling which comes across them is a visita- 
tion of the Divine Spirit — can there be any 
difficulty, under the influence of this nonsense, 
in converting these simple creatures into ac- 
tive and mysterious fools, and making them 
your slaves for life ? It is not possible to 
raise up any dangerous enthusiasm, by telling 
men to be just, and good, and charitable ; but 
keep this part of Christianity out of sight — 
and talk long and enthusiastically before igno- 
rant people, of the mysteries of our religion, 
and you will not fail to attract a crowd of fol- 



46 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



lowers :^verily the Tabernacle loveth not that ! 
which is simple, intelligible, and leadeth to 
good sound practice. 

Having endeavoured to point out the spirit 
which pervades these people, we shall say a 
few words upon the causes, the eflfects, and 
the cure of this calamity. — The fanaticism so 
prevalent in the present day, is one of those 
evils from which society is never wholly ex- 
empt ; but which bursts out at different periods, 
with peculiar violence, and sometimes over- 
whelms every thing in its course. The last 
eruption took place about a century and a 
half ago, and destroyed both Church and 
Throne with its tremendous force. Though 
irresistible, it was short; enthusiasm spent its 
force — the usual reaction took place ; and 
England was deluged with ribaldry and inde- 
cency, because it had been worried with fana- 
tical restrictions. By degrees, however, it was 
found out that orthodoxy and loyalty might be 
secured by other methods than licentious con- 
duct and immodest conversation. The public 
morals improved ; and there appeared as 
much good sense and moderation upon the 
subject of religion as ever can be expected 
from mankind in large masses. Still, hovv'- 
ever, the mischief which the Puritans had 
done was not forgotten ; a general suspicion 
prevailed of the dangers of religious enthusi- 
asm ; and the fanatical preacher wanted his 
accustomed power among a people recently 
recovered from a religious war, and guarded 
by songs, proverbs, popular stories, and the 
general tide of humour and ojiinion, against 
all excesses of that nature. About the middle 
of the last century, however, the character of 
the genuine fanatic was a good deal forgotten, 
and the memory of the civil wars worn away; 
the field was clear for extravagance in piety; 
and causes, which must always produce an 
immense influence upon the mind of man, 
were left to their own unimpeded operations. 
Religion is so noble and powerful a consider- 
ation — it is so buoyant and so insubmergi- 
ble — that it may be made, by fanatics, to carry 
with it any degree of error and of perilous 
absurdity. In this instance Messrs. Whitefield 
and Wesley happened to begin. They were 
men of considerable talents ; they observed the 
common decorums of life ; they did not run 
naked into the streets, or pretend to the pro- 
phetical character ; — and therefore they were 
not committed to Newgate. They preached 
with great energy to weak people ; who first 
stared — then listened — then believed — then felt 
the inward feeling of grace, and became as 
foolish as their teachers could possibly wish 
them to be ; — in short, folly ran its ancient 
course, — and human nature evinced itself to 
be what it always has been under similar cir- 
cumstances. The great and permanent cause, 
therefore, of the increase of Methodism, is the 
cause which has given birth to fanaticism in 
all ages, — the facility of mingling human errors 
with the fundamental truths of religion. The 
formerly impei'fect residence of the clergy 
may, perhaps, in some trifling degree, have 
aided this source of Methodism. But unless 
a man of education, and a gentleman, could 
stoop to such disingenuous arts as the Metho- 



dist preachers, unless he hears heavenly music 
all of a sudden, and enjoys sweet experiences, — 
it is quite impossible that he can contend 
against such artists as these. More active 
than they are at present the clergy might per- 
haps be : but .the calmness and moderation of 
an Establishment can never possibly be a 
match for sectarian activity. — If the common 
people are ennui'd with the fine acting of Mrs. 
Siddons, they go to Sadler's Wells. The sub- 
ject is too serious for ludicrous comparisons : 
— but the Tabernacle really is to the Church, 
what Sadler's Wells is to the Drama. There 
popularity is gained by vaulting and tumbling, 
— by low arts, which the regular clergy are 
not too idle to have recourse to, but too digni- 
fied : their institutions are chaste and severe, — 
they endeavour to do that which, tcpon the 
whole, arid for a great number of years, will be 
found to be the most admirable and the most 
useful: it is no part of their plan to descend 
to small artifices for the sake of present popu- 
larity and effect. The religion of the common 
people under the government of the Church 
may remain as it is for ever; — enthusiasm 
must be progressive, or it will expire. 

It is probable that the dreadful scenes 
which have lately been acted in the world, and 
the dangers to which we are exposed, have 
increased the numbers of the Methodists. To 
what degree will Methodism extend in this 
country] — This question is not easy to an- 
swer. That it has rapidly increased within 
these few years, we have no manner of doubt ; 
and we confess we cannot see what is likely 
to impede its progress. The party which it 
has formed in the legislature ; and the artful 
neutrality with which they give respectability 
to their small number, the talents of some of 
this party, and the unimpeached excellence of 
their characters, all make it probable that 
fanaticism will increase rather than diminish. 
The Methodists have made an alarming inroad 
into the Church, and they are attacking the 
army and navy. The principality of Wales, 
and the East India Company, they have already 
acquired. All mines and subterraneous places 
belong to them ; they creep into hospitals and 
small schools, and so work their way upwards. 
It is the custom of the religious neutrals to beg 
all the little livings, particularly in the north 
of England, from the minister for the time 
being ; and from these fixed points they make 
incursions upon the happiness and common 
sense of the vicinage. We most sincerely 
deprecate such an event; but it will excite in 
us no manner of surprise, if a period arrives 
when the churches of the sober and orthodox 
part of the English clergy are completely de- 
serted by the middling and lower classes of 
the community. We do not prophesy any 
such event ; but we contend that it is not im- 
possible, — hardly improbable. If such, in fu- 
ture, should be the situation of this country, it 
is impossible to say what political animosities 
may not be ingrafted upon this marked and 
dangerous division of mankind into the godl^/ 
and the ungodly. At all events, we are quite 
sure that happiness will be destroyed, reason 
degraded, sound religion banished from the 
world ; and that when fanaticism becomes too 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



47 



foolish and too prurient to be endured, (as is 
at last sure to be the case,) it will be suc- 
ceeded by a long period of the grossest immo- 
rality, atheism, and debauchery. 

We are not sure that this evil admits of any 
cure, — or of any considerable palliation. We 
most sincerely hope that the government of 
this country will never be guilty of such in- 
discretion as to tamper with the Toleration 
Act, or to attempt to put down these follies by 
the intervention of the law. If experience has 
taught us any thing, it is the absurdity of con- 
trolling men's notions of eternity by acts of 
Parliament. Something may perhaps be 
done, in the way of ridicule, towards turning 
the popular opinion. It may be as well to ex- 
tend the privileges of the dissenters to the 
members of the Church of England; for, as the 
law now stands, any man who dissents from 
the established church may open a place of 
worship where he pleases. No orthodox cler- 
gyman can do so, without the consent of the 
parson of the parish, — who always refuses, 
because he does not choose to have his mono- 
poly disturbed ; and refuses in parishes where 
there are not accommodations for one half of 
the persons who wish to frequent the Church 
of England, and in instances where he knows 
that the chapels from which he excludes the 
established worship will be immediately oc- 



cupied by sectaries. It may be as well to en- 
courage in the early education of the clergy, 
as Mr. Ingram recommends, a better and more 
animated method of preaching; and it may be 
necessary, hereafter, if the evil gets to a great 
height, to relax the articles of the English 
Church, and to admit a greater variety of 
Christians within the pale. The greatest and 
best of all remedies is perhaps the education 
of the poor ; — we are astonished, that the Es- 
tablished Church of England is not awake to 
this mean of arresting the progress of Method- 
ism. Of course, none of these things will be 
done ; nor i^s it dear, if they were done, they 
would do much good. Whatever happens, we 
are for common sense and orthodoxy. Inso- 
lence, servile politics, and the spirit of perse-' 
cution, we condemn and attack, whenever we 
observe them ; — but to the learning, the mode- 
ration, and the rational piety of the Establish- 
ment, we most earnestly wish a decided vic- 
tory over the nonsense, the melancholy, and 
the madness of the Tabernacle.* 

God send that our wishes be not in vain. 



* There is one circumstance to which we have neglect- 
ed to advert in the proper place, — the dreadful pillage of 
the earnings of the poor which is made by the Methodists. 
A case is mentioned in ope of the Numbers of these two 
magazines for 1807, of a poor man with a family, earn- 
ing only twenty-eight shillings a week, who has made 
Ubo donations of ten guineas each to the missionary fund I 



48 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



INDIAN MISSIONS.* 



(Edinburgh Review, 1808.) 



At two o'clock in the morning, July the 10th, 
1806, the European barracks, at Vellore, con- 
taining then four complete companies of the 
69th regiment, were surrounded by two battal- 
ions of Sepoys in the Company's service, who 
poured in an heavy fire of musketry, at every 
door and window, upon the soldiers: at the 
same time the European sentries, the soldiers 
at the main-guard, and the sick in the hospital, 
were put to death; the officers' houses were 
ransacked, and every body found in them mur- 
dered. Upon the arrival of the 19th Light 
Dragoons under Colonel Gillespie, the Sepoys 
were immediately attacked ; 600 cut down upon 
the spot; and 200 taken from their hiding 
places, and shot. There perished, of the four 
European companies, about 164, besides offi- 
cers ; and many British officers of the native 
troops were murdered by the insurgents. 

Subsequent to this explosion, there was a 
mutiny at Nundydroog ; and, in one day, 450 
Mahomedan Sepoys were disarmed, and turned 
out of the fort, on ihe ground of an intended 
massacre. It appeared, also, from the infor- 
mation of the commanding officer at Tritchi- 
nopoly, that, at that period, a spirit of disaffec- 
tion had manifested itself at Bangalore, and 
other places; and seemed to gain ground in 
every direction. On the 3d of December, 1806, 
the government of Madras issued the follow- 
ing proclamation : — 

«A Proclamation. — The Right Hon. the 
Governor in Council, having observed that, in 
some late instances, an extraordinary degree 
of agitation has prevailed among several 
corps of the native army of this coast, it has 
been his Lordship's particular endeavour to 
ascertain the motives which may have led to 
conduct so different from that which formerly 
distinguished the native army. From this 
inquiry, it has appeared that many persons of 
evil intention have endeavoured, for malicious 
purposes, to impress upon the native troops a 
belief that it is the wish of the British govern- 



* Considerations ore the Policy of communicating the 
Knowledge of Christianity to the J^atioes in India. By 
a late Resident in Benffal. London. Hatchard, 1807. 

.471 Address to the Chairman of the East India Com- 
pany occasioned by Mr Tmining^a Letter to that Oenlle- 
man. By tlie Kev. John Owen. London. Hatchard. 

j9 Letter to the Chairman of the East India Company, 
on the Danger of interfering in the religious Opinions of 
the JVatives of India. By Thomas Twining. London. 
Ridgeway. 

Vindication of the Hindoos. By a Bengal Officer. 
London. Rodwell 

Letter to John Scott Waring. London. Hatchard. 

Cunningham'' s Christianity in India. London. Hatch- 
ard. 

Answer to Major Scott Waring. Extracted from the 
Christian Observer. 

Observations on the Present State of the East India 
Company. By Major Scott Waring. Ridgeway. Lon- 
don. 



ment to convert them by forcible means to 
Christianity ; and his Lordship in Council has 
observed with concern, that such malicious 
reports have been believed by many of the 
native troops. 

" The Right Hon. the Governor in Council, 
therefore, deems it proper, in this public man- 
ner, to repeat to the native troops his assur- 
ance, that the same respect which has been 
invariably shown by the British government 
for their religion and for their customs, will be 
always continued; and that no interruption 
will be given to any native, whether Hindoo 
or Mussulman, in the practice of his religious 
ceremonies. 

" His Lordship in Council desires that the 
native troops will not give belief to the idle 
rumours which are circulated by enemies of 
their happiness, who endeavour, with the basest 
designs, to weaken the confidence of the troops 
in the British government. His Lordship in 
Council desires that the native troops will re- 
member the constant attention and humanity 
which have been shown by the British govern- 
ment, in providing for their comfort, by aug- 
menting the pay of the native officers and 
Sepoys ; by allowing liberal pensions to those 
who have done their duty faithfully; by mak- 
ing ample provisions for the families of those 
who may have died in battle ; and by receiving 
their children into the service of the Honour- 
able Company, to be treated with the same care 
and bounty as their fathers had experienced. 

"The Right Hon. the Governor in Council 
trusts, that the native troops, remembering 
these circumstances, will be sensible of the 
happiness of their situation, which is greater 
than what the troops of any other part of the 
world enjoy; and that they will continue to 
observe the same good conduct for which they 
were distinguished in the days of Gen. Law- 
rence, of Sir Eyre Coote, and of other renowned 
heroes. 

" The native troops must at the same time 
be sensible, that if they should fail in the duties 
of their allegiance, and should show themselves 
disobedient to their officers, their conduct will 
not fail to receive merited punishment, as the 
British government is not less prepared to 
punish the guilty, than to protect and distin- 
guish those who are deserving of its favour. 

"It is directed that this paper be translated 
with care into the Tamul, Telinga, and Hin- 
doostany languages; and that copies of it be 
circulated to each native battalion, of which 
the European officers are enjoined and ordered 
to be careful in making it known to every na- 
tive officer and Sepoy under his command. 

" It is also directed, that copies of the paper 
be circulated to all the magistrates and collect- 
ors under this government, for the purpose of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



49 



being fully understood in all parts of the 
country. 

" Published by order of the Right Hon. the 
Governor in Council. 

«G. BucHAN, Chief Secretary to Government. 
"Dated in Fort St. George, 3d Dec. 1806." 

Scott Waring' s Preface, iii — v. 

So late as March 1807, three months after 
the date of this proclamation, so universal was 
the dread of a general revolt among the native 
troops, that the British officers attached to the 
native troops constantly slept with loaded pis- 
tols under their pillows. 

It appears that an attempt had been made 
by the military men at Madras, to change the 
shape of the Sepoy turban into something 
resembling the helmet of the light infantry of 
Europe, and to prevent the native troops from 
wearing, on their foreheads, the marks cha- 
racteristic of their various castes. The sons 
of the late Tippoo, with many noble Mussul- 
men deprived of office at that time, resided in 
the fortress of Vellore, and in all probability 
contributed very materially to excite, or to 
inflame those suspicions of design against 
their religion, which are mentioned in the pro- 
clamation of. the Madras government, and 
generally known to have been a principal 
cause of the insurrection at Vellore. It was 
this insurrection which first gave birth to the 
question upon missions to India; and before 
we deliver any opinion upon the subject itself, 
it will be necessary to state what had been 
done in former periods towards disseminating 
the truths of the gospel in India, and what new 
exertions had been made about the period at 
which this event took place. 

More than a century has elapsed since the 
first Protestant missionaries appeared in India. 
Two young divines, selected by the University 
of Halle, were sent out in this capacity by the 
king of Denmark, and arrived at the Danish 
settlement of Tranquebar in 1706. The mis- 
sion thus begun, has been ever since continued, 
and has been assisted by the Society for the 
Promotion of Christian Knowledge established 
in this country. The same Society has, for 
many years, employed German missionaries, 
of the Lutheran persuasion, for propagating the 
doctrines of Christianity among the natives of 
India. In 1799, their number was six; it is 
now reduced to five. 

The Scriptures translated into the Tamulic 
language, which is vernacular in the southern 
parts of the peninsula, have, for more than 
half a century, been printed at the Tranquebar 
press, for the use of Danish missionaries and 
their converts. A printing press, indeed, was 
established at that place by the two first Danish 
missionaries ; and, in 1714, the Gospel of St. 
Matthew, translated into the dialect of Malabar, 
was printed there. Not a line of the Scriptures, 
in any of the languages current on the coast, 
had issued from the Bengal press on September 
, 13, 1806. 

It does appear, however, about the period of 
the mutiny at Vellore, and a few years previous 
to it, that the number of the missionaries on 
the coast had been increased. In 1804, the 
Missionary Society, a recent institution, sent a 
new mission to the coast of Coromandel ; from 
7 



whose papers, we think it right to lay before 
our readers the following extracts.* 

" March 3lst, 1805 Waited on A. B. He 

says, Government seems to be very uxilling to for- 
ward our views. We may stay at Madras as 
long as we please ; and when we intend to go 
into the country, on our application to the 
governor by letter, he would issue orders for 
granting us passports, which would supersede 
the necessity of a public petition. — Lord's 
Day." — Trans, of Miss. Society, H. p. 365. 

In a letter from Brother Ringletaube to Bro- 
ther Cran, he thus expresses himself; — 

" The passports Government has promised 
you are so valuable, that I should not think a 
journey too troublesome to obtain one for my- 
self, if I could not get it through your inter- 
ference In hopes that your application will 
suffice to obtain one for me, I enclose you my 
Gravesend passport, that will give you the par- 
ticulars concerning my person." — Trans, of 
Miss. Society, II. p. 369. 

They obtain their passports from Govern- 
ment: and the plan and objects of their mis- 
sion are printed, free of expense, at the Gov- 
ernment press. 

« 1805, June 27, Dr. sent for one of us 

to consult with him on particular business. 
He accordingly went. The Doctor told him, 
that he had read the publications which the 
brethren lately brought from England, and was 
so much delighted with the report of the 
Directors, that he wished 200 or more copies 
of it were printed, together with an introduction, 
giving an account of the rise and progress of 
the Missionary Society, in order to be distri- 
buted in the different settlements in India. He 
offered to print them at the Government press free 
of expense. On his return, we consulted with 
our two brethren on the subject, and resolved 
to accept the Doctor's favour. We have begun 
to prepare it for the press." — Trans, of Miss. 
Society, II. p. 394. 

In page 89th of the 18th Number, Vol. III., 
the Missionaries write thus to the Society in 
London, about a fortnight before the massacre 
at Vellore. 

"Every encouragement is oflfered us by the 
established government of the country. Hi- 
therto they have granted us every request, 
whether solicited by ourselves or others. Their 
permission to come to this place ; their allow- 
ing us an acknowledgment for preaching in the 
fort, which sanctions us in our work; together 
with the grant which they have lately given us 
to hold a large spot of ground every way suited 
for missionary labours, are objects of the last 
importance, and remove every impediment 
which might be apprehended from this source. 
We trust not to an arm of flesh ; but when we 
reflect on these things, we cannot but behold 
the loving kindness of the Lord." 



* There are six societies in England for converting 
Heathens in the Christian religion. 1. Society for Mis- 
sions to Jifrica and tite East ; of whicii Messrs. Wiltier- 
force, Grant, Parry, and Thorntons, are the principal 
encouragers. 2. Methodist Society for Missions. 3. 
Anabaptist Society for Missions. 4. Missionary Soci- 
ety. 5. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 
6. Moravian Missions. They all publish their proceed- 
ings. ^ 



50 



WORKS OF THE 



In a letter of the same date, we learn, from 
Brother Ringletaube. the following fact :— 

« The Dewan ot Travancore sent me word, 
that if I despatched one of our Christians to 
him, he would give me leave to build a church 
at Magilandy. Accordingly, I shall send in a 
short time. For this important service, our 

society is indebted alone to Colonel , 

without whose determined and fearless interposition, 
none of their missionaries would have been able to 
set afoot in that country." 

In page 381, "Vol. II., Dr. Kerr, one of the 
chaplains on the Madras establishment, bap- 
tizes a Mussulman who had applied to him for 
that purpose ; upon the first application, it 
appears that Dr. Kerr hesitated ; but upon the 
Mussulman threatening to rise against him on 
the day of judgment. Dr. Kerr complies. 

It appears that in the Tinevelly district, 
about a year before the massacre of Vellore, 
not only riots, but very serious persecutions of 
the converted natives had taken place, from 
the jealousy evinced by the Hindoos and Mus- 
sulmen at the progress of the gospel. 

" ' Rev. Sir, — I thought you sufficiently ac- 
quainted with the late vexations of the Chris- 
tians in those parts, arising from the blind zeal 
of the Heathens and Mahometans ; the latter 
viewing with a jealous eye the progress of the 
gospel, and trying to destroy, or at least to clog 
it, by all the crafty means in their power. I 
therefore did not choose to trouble you ; but as 
no stop has been put to these grievances, things 
go on from bad to worse, as you will see from 
what has happened at Hickadoe. The Catechist 
has providentially escaped from that outra- 
geous attempt, by the assistance of ten or 
twelve of our Christians, and has made good 
his flight to Palamcotta ; whilst the exasperated 
mob, coming from Padeckepalloe, hovered 
round the village, plundering the houses of the 
■Christians, and ill-treating their families, by 
kicking, flogging, and other bad usage ; these 
monsters not even forbearing to attack, strip, 
rob, and miserably beat the Catechist Jesuadian, 
who, partly from illness and partly through 
fear, had shut himself up in his house. I have 
heard various accounts of this sad event; but 
yesterday the Catechist himself called on me, 
and told me the truth of it. From what he 
says, it is plain that the Manikar of Wayrom 
(a Black peace-officer ol that p\ace) has con- 
trived the whole affair, with a view to vex the 
Christians. I doubt not that these facts have 
been reported to the Rev. Mr. K. by the country- 
priest ; and if I mention them to you, it is with 
a view to show in what a forlorn state the poor 
Christians hereabout are, and how desirable 
a thing it would be, if the Rev. Mr. Ringle- 
taube were to come hither as soon as possible ; 
then tranquillity would be restored, and future 
molestations prevented. I request you to com- 
municate this letter to him with my compli- 
ments. I am, sir, &c. Manapaar, June 8, 1805.' 

" This letter left a deep impression on my 
mind, especially when I received a fuller ac- 
count of the troubles of the Christians. By the 
Black underlings of the Collectors, they are 
frequently driven from their homes, put in the 
stocks, and exposed for a fortnight together to 



REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 

\ 
the heat of the raging sun, and the chilling 
dews of the night, all because there is no 
European Missionary to bring their ocmplaints 
to the ear of Government, who, I am happy to 
add, have never been deficient in their duty of 
procuring redress, where the Christians have 
had to complain of real injuries. One of the 
most trying cases, mentioned in a postscript of 
the above letter, is that of Christians being 
flogged till they consent to hold the torches to 
the Heathen idols. The letter says ' the Cat- 
echist of Collesigrapatuam has informed me, 
that the above Manikar has forced a Christian, 
of the Villally caste, who attends at our church, 
to sweep the temple of the idol. A severe flog- 
ging was given on this occasion.' — From such 
facts, the postscript continues, ' You may 
guess at the deplorable situation of our fellow- 
believers, as long as every Manikar thinks he 
has a right to do them what violence he 
pleases.' 

" It must be observed, to the glory of the Sa- 
viour who is strong in weakness, that many of 
the Neophytes in that district have withstood 
all these fiery trials with firmness. Many also, 
it is to be lamented, have fallen off in the evil 
day, and at least so far yielded to the importu- 
nity of their persecutors, as again to daub 
their faces with paint and ashes, after the man- 
ner of the Heathen. How great this falling 
off has been I am not yet able to judge. But 
I am happy to add, that the Board of Revenue 
has issued the strictest orders against all un- 
provoked persecution." — Trans, of Miss. Society, 
11.431, 433. 

The following quotations evince how far from 
indifferent the natives are to the progress of 
the Christian religion in the East. 

" 1805. Oct. 10. — A respectable Brahmin in 
the Company's employ called on us. We endea- 
voured to point out to him the important object 
of our coming to India, and mentioned some 
of the great and glorious truths of the gospel, 
which we wished to impart in the native lan- 
guage. He seemed much hurt, and told us 
the Gentoo religion was of a divine origin as 
well as the Christian ; — that heaven was like 
a palace which had many doors, at which peo- 
ple may enter ; — that variety is pleasing to God, 
&c. — and a number of other arguments which 
we hear every day. On taking leave, he said, 
' the Company has got the country, (for the 
English are very clever,) and, perhaps, they 
may succeed in depriving the Brahmins of 
their power, and let you have it.' " 

" November \&th. Received a letter from the 
Rev. Dr. Taylor; we are happy to find he is 
safely arrived at Calcutta, and that our Baptist 
brethren are labouring with increasing success. 
The natives around us are astonished to hear 
this news. It is bad news to the Brahmins, 
who seem u*able to account for it ; they say 
the world is going to ruin." — Trans, of Miss. So- 
ciety, II. 422 & 426. 

" While living in the town, our house was 
watched by the natives from morning to night, 
to see if any person came to converse about 
religion. This prevented many from coming 
who have been very desirous of hearing of 
the good way." — Trans, of Miss. Society, No. 16, 
p. 87. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



51 



"If Heathen, of great influence and connec- 
tions, or Brahmins, were inclined to join the 
Christian church, it would probably cause 
commotions and even rebellions, either to pre- 
vent them from it, or to endanger their life. In 
former years, we had some instances of this 
kind at Tranquebar ; where they were protect- 
ed by the assistance of government If such 
instances should happen now in our present 
times, we don't know what the consequence 
would be." — Trans, of Miss. Society, II. 185. 

This last extract is contained in a letter from 
Danish Missionaries at Tranquebar, to the 
Directors of the Missionary Society at London. 

It is hardly fair to contend, after these ex- 
tracts, that no symptoms of jealousy upon the 
subject of religion had been evinced on the 
coast, except in the case of the insurrection at 
Vellore ; or that no greater activity than com- 
mon had prevailed among the missionaries. 
We are very far, however, from attributing that 
insurrection exclusively, or even principally, 
to any apprehensions from the zeal of the mis- 
sionaries. The rumor of that zeal might pro- 
bably have more readily disposed the minds of 
the troops for the corrupt influence exercised 
upon them ; but we have no doubt that the 
massacre was principally owing to the adroit 
use made by the sons of Tippoo, and the high 
Mussulmen living in the fortress, of the abomi- 
nable military foppery of our people. 

After this short sketch of what has been 
laiely passing on the coast, we shall attempt to 
give a similar account of the missionary pro- 
ceedings in Bengal ; and it appears to us, it 
will be more satisfactory to do so as much as 
possible in the words of the missionaries them- 
selves. In our extracts from their publications, 
we shall endeavour to show the character and 
style of the men employed in these missions, 
the extent of their success, or rather of their 
failure, and the general impression made upon 
the people by their efforts for the dissemination 
of the gospel. 

It will be necessary to premise, that the mis- 
sions in Bengal, of which the public have 
heard so much of late years, are the mis- 
sions of Anabaptist dissenters, whose peculiar 
and distinguishing tenet it is, to baptize the 
members of their church by plunging them 
into the water when they are grown up, instead 
of sprinkling them with water when they are 
young. Among the subscribers to this society, 
we perceive the respectable name of the De- 
puty Chairman of the East India Company, 
who, in the common routine of office, will suc- 
ceed to the chair of that Company at the en- 
suing election. The Chairman and Deputy 
Chairman of the East India Company, are also 
both of them trustees to another religious so- 
ciety for missions to .Africa and the East. 

The first number of the .Anabaptist Missions 
informs us that the origin of the societv will be 
found in the workings of Brother Carey^s mind, 
whose heart appears to have been set upon the con- 
version of the Heathen in 1786, before he came to re- 
side at Moulton. (No. I. p. 1.) These workings 
produced a sermon at Northampton, and the 
sermon a subscription to convert 420 millions 
of Pagans. Of the subscription we have the 
following account : " Information has come 



from Brother Carey that a gentleman from 
Northumberland had promised to send him 30i. 
for the Society, and to subscribe four guineas 
annually." 

" At this meeting at Northampton two other 
friends subscribed, and paid two guineas apiece, 
two more one guinea each, and another half a 
guinea, making six guineas and a half in all. 
And such members as were present of the first 
subscribers, paid their subscriptions into the 
hands of the treasurer; who proposed to put 
the sum now received into the hands of a 
banker, who will pay interest for the same.** 
—Bapt. Mis. Soc. No. I. p. 5. 

In their first proceedings they are a good deal 
guided by Brother Thomas, who has been in 
Bengal before, and who lays before the Society 
an history of his life and adventures, from 
which we make the following extract : — 

" On my arrival in Calcutta, I sought for re- 
ligious people, but found none. At last, how 
was I rejoiced to hear that a very religious 
man was coming to dine with me at a house in 
Calcutta ; a man who would not omit his closet 
hours, of a morning or evening, at sea or on land, 
for all the world. I concealed my impatience 
as well as I could, till the joyful moment came : 
and a moment it was, for I soon heard him take 
the Lord's name in vain, and it was like a cold 
dagger, with which I received repeated stabs 
in the course of half an hour's conversation; 
and he was ready to kick me when I spoke of 
some things commonly believed by other hypo- 
crites, concerning our Lord Jesus Christ; and 
with fury put an end to our conversation, by 
saying I was a mad enthusiast, to suppose that 
Jesus Christ had any thing to do in the creation 
of the world, who was born only seventeen 
hundred years ago. When I returned, he went 
home in the same ship, and I found hira a 
strict observer of devotional hours, but an 
enemy to all religion, and horribly loose, vain, 
and intemperate in his life and conversation. 

" After this I advertised for a Christian: and 
that I may not be misunderstood, I shall sub- 
join a copy of the advertisement, from the 
Indian Gazette of November 1, 1783, which 
now lies before me." — Bapt. Mis. Soc. No. I. p. 
14, 15. 

Brother Thcnnas relates the Conversion of an 
Hindoo on the Malabar Coast to the Society. 
"A certain man, on the Malabar coast, had 
inquired of various devotees and priests, how 
he might make atonement for his sins; and at 
last he was directed to drive iron spikes, suf- 
ficiently blunted, through his sandals, and on 
these spikes he was to place his naked feet, 
and walk (if I mistake not) 250 coss, that is 
about 480 miles. If, through loss of blood, or 
weakness of body, he was obliged to halt, he 
might wait for healing and strength. He un- 
dertook the journey ; and while he halted under 
a large shady tree where the gospel was some- 
times preached, one of the missionaries came, 
and preached in his hearing from these words, 
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanselh from all sin. 
While he was preaching, the man rose up, 
threw off his torturing sandals, and cried out 
aloud, ' This is what I want !' " — Bapt, Mis. Soc. 
No. L p. 29. 



52 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



On June 13, 1793, the missionaries set sail, 
carrying with them letters to three supposed 
converts of Brother Thomas, Parbotee, Ram 
Ram Boshoo, and Mohun Chund, Upon their 
arrival in India, they found, to their inexpres- 
sible mortification, that Ram Ram had relapsed 
into paganism: and we shall present our 
readers with a picture of the present and 
worldly misery to which an Hindoo is subject- 
ed, who becomes a convert to the Christian re- 
ligion. Every body knows that the population 
of Hindostan is divided into castes, or classes 
of persons ; and that when a man loses his 
caste, he is shunned by his wife, children, 
friends, and relations ; that it is considered as 
an abomination to lodge or eat with him ; and 
that he is a wanderer and an outcast upon the 
earth. Caste can be lost by a variety of means, 
and the Protestant missionaries have always 
made the loss of it a previous requisite to ad- 
mission into the Christian church. 

" On our arrival at Calcutta, we found poor 
Ram Boshoo waiting for us : but, to our great 
grief, he has been bowing down to idols again. 
When Mr. T. left India, he went from place to 
place ; but, forsaken by the Hindoos, and ne- 
glected by the Europeans, he was seized with 
a flux and fever. In this state, he says, 'I had 
nothing to support me or my family ; a relation 
offered to save me from perishing for want of 
necessaries, on condition of my bowing to the 
idol; I knew that the Roman Catholic Chris- 
tians worshipped idols ; I thought they might 
be commanded to honour images in some part 
of the Bible which I had not seen ; I hesitated, 
and complied; but I love Christianity still.'" 
—Bapt. Mis. Soc. Vol. I. p.' 64, 65. 

"Jan. 8, 1794. We thought to write to you 
long before this, but our hearts have been bur- 
thened with cares and sorrows. It was very 
afflicting to hear of Ram Boshoo's great perse- 
cution and fall. Deserted by Englishmen, and 
persecuted by his own countrymen, he was 
nigh unto death. The natives gathered in 
bodies, and threw dust in the air as he passed 
along the streets in Calcutta. At last one of 
his relations offered him an asylum on condi- 
tion of his bowins down to their idols." — Bapt. 
Mis. Soc. Vol. I. p.^78. 

Brother Carey's Piety at Sea. 
" Brother Carey, while very sea-sick, and 
leaning over the ship to relieve his stomach 
from that very oppressive complaint, said his 
mind was even then filled with consolation in 
contemplating the wonderful goodness of God." 
—Ibid. p. 76.' 

Extracts from Brother Carey's and Brother Tho- 
mas's Journals, at sea and by land. 

" 1793. June 16. Lord's Day. A little recovered 
from my sickness; met for prayer and exhorta- 
tion in my cabin ; had a dispute with a French 
deist." — ibid. p. 158. 

" 30. Lord's Day. A pleasant and pro- 
fitable day : our congregation composed of ten 
persons." — Ibid. p. 159. 

" July 7. Another pleasant and profitable 
Lord's day; our congregation increased with 
one. Had much sweet enjoyment with God." — 
Md. 



"1794. Jan. 26. Lord's Day. Found much 
pleasure in reading Edwards' Sermon on the Jut- 
tice of God in the damnation of Sinners." — lb. p. 1 66. 

" .^pril 6. Had some sweetness to-day, espe- 
cially in reading Edwards' Sermon." — Ibid. p. 
171. 

" Jtme 8. This evening reached Bowlea, 
where we lay to for the Sabbath. Felt thankful 
that God had preserved us, and wondered at 
his regard for so mean a creature. I was un- 
able to wrestle with God in prayer for many of 
my dear friends in England." — Ibid. p. 179. 

" 16. This day I preached twice at 

Malda, where Mr. Thomas met me. Had much 
enjoyment ; and though our congregation did 
not exceed sixteen, yet the pleasure I felt ia 
having my tongue once more set at liberty, I 
can hardly describe. Was enabled to be faith- 
ful, and felt a sweet affection for immortal 
souls." — Ibid. p. 180. 

« 1796. Feb. 6. I am now in my study; and 
oh, it is a sweet place, because of the presence 
of God with the vilest of men. It is at the top 
of the house ; I have but one window in it." — 
Ibid. p. 295. 

" The work to which God has set his hand 
will infallibly prosper. Christ has begun to 
bombard this strong and ancient fortress, and 
will assuredly carry it." — Bapt. Miss. Vol. I. p. 
328. 

" More missionaries I think absolutely neces- 
sary to the support of the interest. Should any 
natives join us, they would become outcast im- 
mediately, and must be consequently supported 
by us. The missionaries on the coast are to 
this day obliged to provide for those who join 
them, as I learn from a letter sent to brother 
Thomas by a son of one of the missionaries." 
—Ibid. p. 334. 

In the last extract our readers will perceive 
a new difficulty attendant upon the progress of 
Christianity in the East. The convert must 
not only be subjected to degradation, but his 
degradation is so complete, and his means of 
providing for himself so entirely destroyed, 
that he must be fed by his instructor. The 
slightest success in Hindostan would eat up 
the revenues of the East India Company. 

Three years after their arrival these zealous 
and most active missionaries give the follow- 
ing account of their success. 

" I bless God, our prospect is considerably 
brightened up, and our hopes are more en- 
larged than at any period since the commence- 
ment of the mission, owing to very pleasing 
appearances of the gospel having been made 
effectual to four poor labouring Mussulmen, 
who have been setting their faces towards Zion 
ever since ihe month of August last. I hope 
their baptism will not be much longer deferred; 
and that might encourage Mohun Chund, Par- 
bottee, and Cassi Naut (who last year appeared 
to set out in the ways of God), to declare for 
the Lord Jesus Christ, by an open profession 
of their faith in him. Seven of the natives, toe 
hope, are indeed converted." — Bapt. Miss. Vol. L 
p. 345, 346. 
Effects of Preaching to an Hindoo Congregation. 

'• I then told them, that if they could not teU 
me, I would tell them,- and that God, who had 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



S3 



^permitted the Hindoos to sink into a sea of 
darkness, had at length commiserated them; 
and sent me and my colleagues to preach life 
to them. I then told them of Christ, his death, 
his person, his love, his being the surety of 
sinners, his power to save, &c., and exhorted 
them earnestly and affectionately to come to 
him. Effects were various; one man came 
before I had well done, and wanted to sell 
stockings to me."—Bapt. Miss. Vol. I. p. 357. 

Extracts from Journals. 

"After worship, I received notice that the 
printing-press was just arrived at the Ghat from 
Calcutta. Retired, and thanked God for fur- 
nishing us with a press." — Ibid. p. 469. 

Success in the Sixth Year. 
" We lament that several who did run well 
are now hindered. We have faint hopes of a 
few, and pretty strong hopes of one or two; but 
if I say more, it must either be a dull recital 
of our journeying to one place or another to 
preach the gospel, or something else relating 
to ourselves, of which I ought to be the last to 
speak."— 16id p. 488. 

Extracts fhom Mr. Ward's Journai,, a new 
Anabaptist Missionary sent out in 1799. 

Mr. Ward admires the Captain. 
" Several of our friends who have been sick 
begin to look up. This evening we had a most 
precious hour at prayer. Captain Wickes read 
from the 12th verse of the 33d of Exodus, and 
then joined in prayer. Our hearts were all 
warmed. We shook hands with our dear 
captain, and, in design, clasped him to our 
bosoms."— /6irf. Vol. II. p. 2. 

Mr. Ward is frightened by a Privateer. 
" June 1 1. Held our conference this evening. 
A vessel is still pursuing us, which the Cap- 
tain believes to be a Frenchman. I feel some 
alarm : considerable alarm. Oh Lord, be thou 
our defender ! the vessel seems to gain upon 
us. (Quarter past eleven at night.) There is 
no doubt of the vessel being a French priva- 
teer : when we changed our tack, she changed 
hers. We have, since dark, changed into our 
old course, so that possibly we shall lose her. 
Brethren G. and B. have engaged in prayer: 
we have read Luther's psalm, and our minds 
are pretty well composed. Our guns are all 
loaded, and the captain seems very low. All 
hands are at the guns, and the matches are 
lighted. I go to the end of the ship. I can 
just see the vessel, though it is very foggy. A 
ball whizzes over my head, and makes me 
tremble. I go down, and go to prayer with our 
friends." — Bapt. Miss. Vol. II. p. 3, 4. 

Mr. Ward feels a regard for the Sailms. 
"July 12. I never felt so much for any men 
as for our sailors ; a tenderness which could 
weep over them. Oh, Jesus ! let thy blood 
cover some of them ! A sweet prayer meeting. 
Verily God is here." — Ibid. p. 7. 

Mr. Ward sees an American Vessel, and longs to 
preach to the Sailors. 
" Sept. 27. An American vessel is along-side, 



and the captain is speaking to their captain 
through his trumpet. How pleasant to talk to 
a friend ! I have been looking at them through 
the glass ; the sailors sit in a group, and are 
making iheir obser\'^ations upon us. I long to 
go and preach to them." — Ibid. p. 11 . 

Feelings of the Natives upon hearing their Religion 
attacked. 

« 1800. Feb. 25. Brother C. had some cob- 
versation with one of the Mussulmen, who 
asked, upon his denying the divine mission of 
Mahommed, what was to become of Mussul- 
men and Hindoos ! Brother C. expressed his 
fears that they would all be lost. The man 
seemed as if he would have torn him to 
pieces." — Ibid, p. 51. 

« Mar. 30. The people seem quite anxious 
to get the hymns which we give away. The 
Brahmins are rather uneasy. The Governor 
advised his Brahmins to send their children to 
learn English. They replied, that we seemed 
to take pains to make the natives Christians ; 
and they were afraid that, their children being 
of tender age, would make them a more easy 
conquest." — Ibid. p. 158. 

"j3pril2'7. Lord's Day. One Brahmin said, 
he had no occasion for a hymn, for ihey were 
all over the country. He could go into any 
house and read one." — Ibid. p. 61. 

" May 9. Brother Fountain was this even- 
ing at Buddabarry. At the close, the Brahmins 
having collected a number of boys, they set up 
a great shout, and followed the brethren out of 
the village with noise and shoutings." — Ibid. 

"May 16. Brother Carey and I were at Bud- 
dabarry this evening. No sooner had we be- 
gun, than a Brahmin went round to all the rest 
that were present, and endeavoured to pull 
them away." — Bapt. Miss. Vol. II. p. 62. 

« 30. This evening at Buddabarry, the 

man mentioned in my journal of March 14th 
insulted Brother Carey. He asked why we 
came ; and said, if we could employ the natives 
as carpenters, blacksmiths, &c. it would be 
very well ; but that they did not want our holi- 
ness. In exact conformity with this sentiment, 
our Brahmin told Brother Thomas when here, 
that he did not want the favour of God." — Ibid. 
p. 63. 

" June 22. Lord^s Day. A Brahmin has been 
several times to disturb the children, and to 
curse Jesus Christ ! Another Brahmin com- 
plained to Brother Carey that, by our school 
and printing, we were now teaching the gospel 
to their children from their infancy."— /6uf. 
p. 65. 

" June 29. Lord^s Day. This evening a 
Brahmin went round amongst the people who 
were collected to hear Brother Carey, to per- 
suade them not to accept of our papers. Thus 
' darkness struggles with the light.' " — Ibid. p. 
66. 

"It was deemed advisable to print 2000 
copies of the New Testament, and also 500 
additional copies of Matthew, for immediate 
distribution; to which are annexed some of 
the most remarkable prophecies in the Old 
Testament respecting Christ. These are now 
distributing, together with copies of several 
evangelical hymns, and a very earnest and 
1:2 



M 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pertinent address to the natives, respecting the 
gospel. It was written by Ram Boshoo, and 
contains a hundred lines in Bengalee verse. 
We hear that these papers are read with much 
attention, and that apprehensions are rising in 
the minds of some of the Brahmins whereunto 
these things may grow." — Ibid. p. 69. 

" We have printed several small pieces in 
Bengalee, which have had a large circulation." 
—Ibid. p. 77. 

Mr. Fountain's gratitude to Hervey, 

" When I was about eighteen or nineteen 
years of age, Hervey's Meditations fell into my 
hands. Till then I had read nothing but my 
Bible and the prayer book. This ushered me 
as it were into a new world ! It expanded my 
mind, and excited a thirst after knowledge : 
and this was not all ; I derived spiritual as 
well as intellectual advantages from it. I shall 
bless God for this book while I live upon earth, 
and when I get to heaven, I will thank dear Hervey 
himself."— Bapt. Miss. Vol. II. p. 90. 

Hatred of the Natives to the Gospel. 

"Jan. 27. The inveterate hatred that the 
Brahmins every where show to the gospel, and 
the very name of Jesus, in which they are 
joined by many lewd fellows of the baser sort, 
requires no common degree of self-possession, 
caution, and prudence. The seeming failure 
of some we hoped well of is a source of con- 
siderable anxiety and grief." — Ibid. p. 110. 

"Aug. 31. Lord's Day. We have the honour 
of printing the first book that was ever printed 
in Bengalee ; and this is the first piece in which 
Brahmins have been opposed, perhaps for thoir- 
sands of years. All their books are filled with 
accounts to establish Brahminism, and raise 
Brahmins to the seat of God. Hence they are 
believed to be inferior gods. All the waters 
of salvation in the country are supposed to 
meet in the foot of a Brahmin. It is reckoned 
they have the keys of heaven and hell, and 
have power over sickness and health, life and 
death. pray that Brahminism may come 
down !" — Ibid. p. 111. 

" Oct. 3. Brother Marshman having directed 
the children in the Bengalee school to write 
out a piece written by Brother Fountain (a 
kind of catechism), the schoolmaster reported 
yesterday that all the boys would leave the 
school rather than write it ; that it was de- 
signed to make them lose caste, and make them 
Fcringas ; that is, persons who have descended 
from those who were formerly converted by 
the papists, and who are to this day held in 
the greatest contempt by the Hindoos. PVom 
this you may gather how much contempt a 
converted native would meet with." — Ibid. p. 
113, 114. 

" Oct. 26. Lord's Day. Bharratt told Brother 
Carey to-day what the people talked among 
themselves — ' Formerly,' say they, ' here were 
no white people amongst us. Now the English 
have taken the country, and it is getting full 
of whites. Now also the white man's shaster 
is publishing. Is it not going to be fulfilled 
which is written in our shasters, that all shall 
be of one caste ,- and will not this caste be the 
gospel]' "— 26w/. p. 115. 



"Nov. 7. He also attempted repeatedly tO' 
introduce Christ and him crucified; but they 
would immediately manifest the utmost dislike 
of the very name of him. Nay, in their turn 
they commended Creeshnoo, and invited Bro- 
ther C. to believe in him."— /6irf. p. 118. 

" Dec. 23. This forenoon Gokool came to 
tell us that Kristno and his whole family were 
in confinement ! Astonishing news ! It seems 
the whole neighbourhood, as soon as it was 
noised abroad that these people had lost caste, 
was in an uproar. It is said that two thou- 
sand people were assembled pouring their 
anathemas on these new converts." — Bapt. 
Miss. Vol. II. p. 12.5. 

"Jan. 12. The Brahmins and the young 
people show every degree of contempt; and 
the name of Christ is become a by-word, like 
the name methodist in England formerly." — Ibid. 
p. 130. 

" Sept. 2.5. I then took occasion to tell them 
that the Brahmins only wanted their money, 
and cared nothing about their salvation. To 
this they readily assented." — Ibid. p. 134. 

" Noiu 23. Lord's Day. Went with Brother 
Carey to the new pagoda, at the upper end of 
the town. About ten Brahmins attended. They 
behaved in the most scofling and blasphemous 
manner, treating the name of Christ with the 
greatest scorn ; nor did they discontinue their 
ridicule while Brother Carey prayed with them. 
No name amongst men seems so offensive to 
them as that of our adorable Redeemer !" — 
Ibid. p. 138. 

" Dec. 24. The Governor had the goodness 
to call on us in the course of the day, and de- 
sired us to secure the girl, at least within our 
walls, for a few days, as he was persuaded the 
people round the country were so exasperated 
atKristno's embracing the gospel, that he could 
not answer for their safety. A number of the 
mob might come from twenty miles distant in 
the night, and murder them all, without the per- 
petrators being discovered. He believed, that 
had they obtained the girl, they would have 
murdered her before the morning, and thought 
they had been doing God service !" — Ibid. p. 
143, 144. 

" Jan. 30. After speaking about ten minutes, 
a rude fellow began to be very abusive, and, 
with the help of a few boys, raised such a cla- 
mour that nothing could be heard. At length, 
seeing no hope of their becoming quiet, I re- 
tired to the other part of the town. They fol- 
lowed, hallooing, and crying, ' Hurree boll !' 
(an exclamation in honour of Veeshno). They 
at last began to pelt me with stones and dirt. 
One of the men, who knew the house to which 
Brother Carey was gone, advised me to accom- 
pany him thither, saying, that these people 
would not hear our words. Going with him, I 
met Brother C. We were not a little pleased 
that the devil had begun to bestir himself, in- 
ferring from hence that he suspected danger." 
—Ibid. p. 148, 149. 

Feelings of an Hindoo Boy upon the eve of Con- 
veraum. 

"Nov. 18. One of the boys of the school, 
called Benjamin, is under considerable con- 
cern • indeed there is a general stir amongst 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



55 



are children, which affords us great encourage- 
ment. The following are some of the expres- 
sions used in prayer by poor Benjamin .• — 

"'Oh Lord, the day of judgment is coming: 
the sun, and moon, and stars will all fall down. 
Oh, what shall I do in the day of judgment ! 
Thou wilt break me to pieces, [literal.] The 
Lord Jesus Christ was so good as to die for us 
poor souls : Lord, keep us all this day ! Oh 
hell! gnashing, and beating, and beating ! One 
hour weeping, another gnashing ! We shall 
stay there for ever! I am going to hell I am 
going to hell ! O Lord, give me a new heart; 
give me a new heart ; and wash away all my 
sins ! Give me a new heart, that I may praise 
Him, that 1 may obey Him, that I may speak 
the truth, that I may never do evil things ! Oh, 
I have many times sinned against thee, many 
times broken thy commandments, oh, many 
times ; and what shall I do in the day of judg- 
ment !"'—J5ajjf. Miss. Vol. n. p. 162, 163. 

jjlarm of the Natives at the preaching of the Gos- 
pel. 

"From several parts of Calcutta he hears 
of people's attention being excited by reading 
the papers which we have scattered among 
them. Many begin to wonder that they never 
heard these things before, since the English 
have been so long in the country." — Ibid. p. 223. 

" Many of the. natives have expressed their 
astonishment at seeing the converted Hindoos 
sit and eat with Europeans. It is what they 
thought would never come to pass. The priests 
are much alarmed for their tottering fabric, and 
rack their inventions to prop it up. They do 
not like the institution of the college in Cal- 
cutta, and that their sacred shasters should be 
explored by the unhallowed eyes of Euro- 
peans." — Ibid. p. 233. 

" Indeed, by the distribution of many copies 
of the Scriptures, and of some thousands of 
small tracts, a spirit of inquiry has been ex- 
cited to a degree unknown at any former 
TperioA."— Ibid. p. 236. 

"As he and Kristno walked through the 
street, the natives cried out, ' What will this 
joiner do ? (meaning Kristno.) Will he de- 
stroy the caste of us all 1 Is this Brahmin 
going to be a Feringa V " — Ibid. p. 245. 

.Account of success in 1802. — Tenth year of the 
Mission. 
«W"herever we have gone we have uni- 
formly found, that so long as people did not un- 
derstand the report of our message, they appeared to 
listen; but the moment they understood something of 
it, they either became indifferent, or began to ridi- 
cule. This in general has been our reception." — 
Bapt. Miss. Vol. L p. 273. 

Hatred of the Natives. 
" Sept. 27. This forenoon three of the peo- 
ple arrived from Ponchetalokpool, who seemed 
very happy to see us. They inform us that 
the Brahmins had raised a great persecution 
against them ; and when they set out on their 
journey hither, the mob assembled to hiss 
them away. After Brother Marshman had 
left that part of the country, they hung hira in 
effigy, and some of the printed papers which 
he had distributed amongst them." — Ibid. p. 314. 



Difficulty which the Mission experiences from not 
being able to get Converts shaved. 
"Several persons there seemed willing to be 
baptized; but if they should, the village barber, 
forsooth, will not shave them ! When a na- 
tive loses his caste, or becomes unclean, his 
barber and his priest will not come near him; 
and as they are accustomed to shave the head 
nearly all over, and cannot well perform this 
business themselves, it becomes a serious in- 
convenience." — Ibid. p. 372. 

Hatred of the Natives. 
"Jlpr. 24. Lord's Day. Brother Chamberlain 
preached at home, and Ward at Calcutta; Bro- 
ther Carey was amongst the brethren, and 
preached at night. Kristno Prisaud, Ram Ro- 
teen and others, were at Buddabatty, where they ^ 
met with violent opposition. They were set 
upon as Feringas, as destroyers of the caste, 
as having eaten fowls, eggs, &c. As they at- 
tempted to return, the mob began to beat them, 
putting their hands on the back of their necks, 
and pushing them forward ; and one man, even 
a civil officer, grazed the point of a spear 
against the body of Kristno Prisaud. When 
they saw that they could not make our friends 
angry by such treatment, they said, You salla; 
you will not be angry, will you 7 They then in- 
sulted them again, threw cow-dung mixed in 
gonga water at them; talked of making them 
a necklace of old shoes ; beat Neeloo with 
Ram Roteen's shoe, &c.; and declared that if 
they ever came again, they would make an end 
of them."— 5ap^' JUm. Vol. IL p. 378. 
Apian for procuring an order from Government to 
shave the Converts. 
" After concluding with prayer, Bhorud 
Ghose, Sookur, and Torribot Bichess, took me 
into the field, and told me that their minds 
were quite decided; there was no necessity for 
exhorting them. There was only one thing 
that kept them from being baptized in the name 
of Jesus Christ. Losing caste in a large town 
like Serampore, was a very different thing from 
losing caste in their village. If they declared 
themselves Christians, the barber of their vil- 
lage would no longer shave them ; and, without 
shaving their heads and their beards, they 
could not live. If an order could be obtained 
from the magistrate of the district for the bar- 
ber to shave Christians as well as others, they 
would be immediately baptized." — Ibid. p. 397. 
We meet in these proceedings with the ac- 
count of two Hindoos who had set up as gods, 
Dulol and Ram Dass. The missionaries, con- 
ceiving this schism from the religion of the 
Hindoos to be a very favourable opening for 
them, wait upon the two deities. With Dulol, 
who seems to have been a very shrewd fellow, 
they are utterly unsuccessful ; and the follow- 
ing is an extract from the account of their con- 
ference with Ram Dass : — 

"After much altercation, I told him he might 
put the matter out of all doubt as to himself; 
he had only to come as a poor, repenting, sup- 
pliant sinner, and he would be saved, whatever 
became of others. To this he gave no other 
answer than a smile of contempt. I then ask- 
ed him in what way the sins of these his fol 



56 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



lowers would be removed ; urging it as a mat- 
ter of the last importance, as he knew that 
they were all sinners, and must stand before 
the righteous bar of God 1 After much eva- 
sion, he replied that he had fire in his belly, 
which would destroy the sins of all his follow- 
ers."— £ap<. Miss. Vol. II. p. 401, 

^Brahmin Converted. 

" Dec. 11. Lord's day. A Brahmin came from 
Nuddea. After talking with him about the gos- 
pel, which he said he was very willing to em- 
brace, we sent him to Kristno's. He ate with 
them without hesitation, but discovered such a 
thirst for Bengalee rum, as gave them a dis- 
gust." 

"Dec. 13. ThismomiDg the Brahmin decamped 
suddenly," — Bapt. Miss. Vol. II. p. 424. 
Extent of Printing. 

" Sept. 12. We are building an addition to our 
printing office, where we employ seventeen 
printers and five book-binders. The Brahmin 
from near Bootan gives some hope that he has 
received the truth in love." — Ibid. p. 483 

" The news of Jesus Christ, and of the church 
at Serampore, seems to have gone much fur- 
" iher than I expected ; it appears to be known 
-to a few in most villages." — Ibid. p. 487. 

Hatred to the Gospel. 
" The caste (says Mr. W.) is the great mill- 
stone round the necks of these people. Roteen 
wants shaving ; but the barber here will not do 
it. He is run away lest he should be compel- 
led. He says he will not shave Yesoo Kreesl's 
people ! "—Ibid. p. 493. 

Success greater by importunity in prayer. 

" With respect to their success, there are seve- 
ral particulars attending it worthy of notice. 
One is, that it was preceded by a spirit of importu- 
nate prayer. The brethren had all along com- 
mitted their cause to God ; but in the autumn 
of 1800, they had a special weekly prayer- 
meeting for a blessing on the work of the mis- 
sion. At these assemblies, Mr. Thomas, who 
was then present on a visit, seems to have been 
more than usually strengthened to wrestle for 
a blessing ; and writing to a friend in America, 
he speaks of ' the holy unction appearing on 
all the missionaries, especially of late ; and of 
•times of refreshing from the presence of the 
Lord, being solemn, frequent and lasting.' In 
connecting these things, we cannot but remem- 
ber that previous to the outpouring of the 
Spirit in the days of Pentecost, the disciples 
'continued with one accord in prayer and sup- 
plication.' "—Bapt. Miss. Pref. Vol. III. p. vii. 

What this success is, we shall see by the fol- 
lowing extract: 

" The whole number baptized in Bengal since 
the year 1795, is forty-eight. Over many of 
these we rejoice with great joy ; for others we 
tremble ; and over some we are compelled to 
'weep."— Bapt. Miss. Vol. III. p. 21, 22. 

Hatred to the Gospel. 
" April 2. This morning, several of our chief 
printing servants presented a petition, desiring 
they might have some relief, as they were com- 
pelled, in our Bengalee worship, to hear so 
many blasphemies against their gods ! Brother 



Carey and I had a strong contention with them 
in the printing-office, and invited them to argue 
the point with Petumber, as his sermon had 
given them offence; but they declined it; 
though we told them that they were ten, and 
he was only, one; that they were Brahmins, 
and he was only a sooder !" — Ibid. p. 36. 

" The enmity against the gospel and its pro- 
fessors is universal. One of our baptized 
Hindoos wanted to rent a house : after going 
out two or three days, and wandering all the 
town over, he at last persuaded a woman to let 
him have a house Pbut though she was herself 
a Feringa, yet when she heard that he was a 
Brahmin who had become a Christian, she in- 
sulted him, and drove him away : so that we 
are indeed made the offscouring of all things." 
—Ibid. p. 38. 

" I was sitting among our native brethren, at 
the Bengalee school, hearing them read and 
explain a portion of the word in turn, when an 
aged, gray-headed Brahmin, well-dressed, came 
in ; and standing before me, said, with joined 
hands, and a supplicating tone of voice, 'Sa- 
hib ! I am come to ask an alms." Beginning 
to weep, he repeated these words hastily ; ' I am 
come to ask ... an alms.' He continued standing, 
with his hands in a supplicating posture, weep- 
ing. I desired him to say what alms; and told 
him, that by his looks, it did not seem as if he 
wanted any relief. At length, being pressed, 
he asked me to give him his son, pointing with 
his hand into the midst of our native brethren. 
I asked him which was his son ? He pointed 
to a young Brahmin, named Soroop ; and set- 
ting up a plaintive cry, said, that was his son. 
We tried to comfort him, and at last prevailed 
upon him to come and sit down upon the ve- 
randa. Here he began to weep again; and 
said that the young man's mother was dying 
with grief." — Bapt. Miss. Vol. III. p. 43. 

"This evening Buxoo, a brother, who is 
servant with us, and Soroop, went to a market 
in the neighbourhood, where they were disco- 
vered to be Yesoo Khreestare Loke (Jesus Christ's 
people). The whole market was in a hubbub: 
they clapped their hands, and threw dust at 
them. Buxoo was changing a rupee for cow- 
ries, when the disturbance began ; and in the 
scuffle, the man ran away with the rupee with- 
out giving the cowries." — Ibid. p. 55. 

"Nov. 24. This day Hawnye and Ram 
Khunt returned from their village. They re- 
late that our brother Fotick, who lives in the 
same village, was lately seized by the chief Ben- 
galee man there; dragged from^his house; his 
face, eyes and ears clogged with cow-dung — 
his hands tied — and in this state confined seve- 
ral hours. They also tore to pieces all the 
papers, and the copy of the Testament, which 
they found in Fotick's house. A relation of 
these persecutors being dead, they did not mo- 
lest Hawnye and Ram Khunt ; but the towns- 
folk would not hear about the gospel: they 
only insulted them for becoming Christians." 
—Ibid. p. 57. 

" Cutwa on the Ganges, Sept. 3, 1804. This place 
is about seventy miles from Serampore, by the 
Hoogley river. Here I procured a spot of 
ground, perhaps about two acres, pleasantly 
situated by two tanks, and a fine grove of man- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



67 



go trees, at a small distance from the town. It 
was with difficulty I procured a spot. I was 
forced to leave one, after I had made a begin- 
ning, through the violent opposition of the 
people* Coming to this, opposition ceased; 
and therefore I called itREHOBOTH; for Jehovah 
hath made room for us. Here I have raised a 
spacious bungalo." — Ibid. p. 59. 

It would perhaps be more prudent to leave 
the question of sending missions to India to the 
effect of these extracts, which appear to us to be 
quite decisive, both as to the danger of insurrec- 
tion from the prosecution of the scheme, the ut- 
ter unfitness of the persons employed in it, and 
the complete hopelessness of the attempt while 
pursued under such circumstances as now ex- 
ist. But, as the Evangelical party who have 
got possession of our eastern empire have 
brought forward a great deal of argument upon 
the question, it may be necessary to make it 
some sort of reply. 

We admit it to be the general duty of Chris- 
tian people to disseminate their religion among 
the pagan nations who are subjected to their 
empire. It is true they have not the aid of 
miracles ; but it is their duty to attempt such 
conversion by the earnest and abundant em- 
ployment of the best human means in their 
power. We believe that we are in possession 
of a revealed religion ; that we are exclusively 
in possession of a revealed religion ; and that 
the possession of that religion can alone confer 
immortality, and best confer present happiness. 
This religion, too, teaches us the duty of general 
benevolence : and how, under such a system, the 
conversion of heathens can be a matter of indif- 
ference, we profess not to be able to understand. 

So much for the general rule : — now for the 
exceptions. 

No man (not an Anabaptist) will, we pre- 
sume, contend that it is our duty to preach the 
natives into an insurrection, or to lay before 
them, so fully and emphatically, the scheme of 
the gospel, as to make them rise up in the dead 
of the night and shoot their instructors through 
the head. If conversion be the greatest of all 
objects, the possession of the country to be 
converted is the only mean, in this instance, 
by which that conversion can be accomplished ; 
for we have no right to look for a miraculous 
conversion of the Hindoos ; and it would be 
little short of a miracle, if General Oudinot was 
to display the same spirit as the serious part 
of the Directors of the East India Company. 
Even for missionary purposes, therefore, the 
utmost discretion is necessary ; and if we wish 
to teach the natives a better religion, we must 
take care to do it in a manner which will not 
inspire them with a passion for political change, 
or we shall inevitably lose our disciples alto- 
gether. To us it appears quite clear, from the 
extracts before us, that neither Hindoo nor Ma- 
homedan is at all indifferent to the attacks 
made upon his religion ; the arrogance and 
the irritability of the Mahomedan are univer- 
sally acknowledged ; and we put it to our read- 
ers, whether the Brahmins seem in these ex- 
tracts to show the smallest disposition to behold 
the encroachments upon their religion with 
j)assivenes« and unconcern. A missionary 
who converted only a few of the refuse of so- 
8 



ciety, might live for ever in peace in India, and 
receive his salary from his fanatical masters 
for pompous predictions of universal conver- 
sion, transmitted by the ships of the season ; 
but, if he had any marked success among the 
natives, it could not fail to excite much more 
dangerous specimens of jealousy and discon- 
tent than those which we have extracted from 
the Anabaptist Journal. How is it in human 
nature that a Brahmin should be indifferent to 
encroachments upon his religion 1 His repu- 
tation, his dignity, and in great measure his 
wealth, depend upon the preservation of the 
present superstitions ; and why is it to be sup- 
posed that motives which are so powerful with 
all other human beings, are inoperative with 
him alone ? If the Brahmins, however, are 
disposed to excite a rebellion in support of their 
own influence, no man, who knows any thing 
of India, can doubt that they have it in their 
power to effect it. 

It is in vain to say, that these attempts to 
diffuse Christianity do not originate from the 
government in India. The omnipotence of 
government in the East is well known to the 
natives. If government does not prohibit, it 
tolerates ; if it tolerates the conversion of the 
natives, the suspicion may be easily formed 
that it encourages that conversion. If the 
Brahmins do not believe this themselves, they 
may easily persuade the common people that 
such is the fact ; nor are there wanting, besides 
the activity of these new missionaries, many 
other circumstances to corroborate such a ru- 
mor. Under the auspices of the College at 
Fort William, the Scriptures are in a course 
of translation into the languages of almost the 
whole continent of Oriental India, and we per- 
ceive, that in aid of this object the Bible So- 
ciety has voted a very magnificent subscription. 
The three principal chaplains of our Indian 
settlements are (as might be expected) of prin- 
ciples exactly corresponding with the enthusi- 
asm of their employers at home; and their 
zeal upon the subject of religion has shone 
and burnt with the most exemplary fury. These 
circumstances, if they do not really impose 
upon the minds of the leading natives, may 
give them a very powerful handle for misre- 
presenting the intentions of government to the 
lower orders. 

We see from the massacre of Vellore, what 
a powerful engine attachment to religion may 
be rendered in Hindostan. The rumors might 
all have been false ; but that event shows they 
were tremendously powerful when excited. 
The object, therefore, is not only not to do any 
thing violent and unjust upon subjects of re- 
ligion, but not to give any stronger colour to 
jealous and disaffected natives for misrepre 
senting your intentions. 

All these observations have tenfold force 
when applied to an empire which rests so en- 
tirely upon opinion. If physical force could 
be called in to stop the progress of error, we 
could afford to be misrepresented for a season ; 
but 30,000 white men living in the midst of 
70 million sable subjects, must be always in 
the right, or at least never represented as 
grossly in the wrong. Attention to the preju- 
dices of the subject is wise in all governments, 



58 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



but quite indispensable in a government con- 
stituted as our empire in India is constituted; 
where an uninterrupted series of dexterous 
conduct is not only necessary to our prosperity, 
but to our existence. 

These reasonings are entitled to a little more 
consideration, at a period when the French 
threaten our existence in India by open force, 
and by every species of intrigue with the 
native powers. In all governments, every 
thing lakes its tone from the head ; fanaticism 
has got into the government at home ; fanati- 
cism will lead to promotion abroad. The 
civil servant in India will not only not dare to 
exercise his own judgment, in checking the 
indiscretions of ignorant missionaries ; but he 
will strive to recommend himself to his holy 
masters in Leadenhall Street, by imitating Bro- 
ther Cran and Brother Ringletaube, and by 
every species of fanatical excess. Methodism 
at home is no unprofitable game to play. In 
the East it will soon be the infallible road to 
promotion. This is the great evil ; if the man- 
agement was in the hands of men who were as 
discreet and wise in their devotion as they are 
in matters of temporal welfare, the desire of 
putting an end to missions might be premature 
and indecorous. But the misfortune is, the 
men who wield the instrument, ought not, in 
common sense and propriety, to be trusted with 
it for a single instant. Upon this subject, they 
are quite insane and ungovernable ; they would 
deliberately, piously, and conscientiously ex- 
pose our whole Eastern empire to destruction, 
for the sake of converting half a dozen Brah- 
mins, who, after stufiing themselves with rum 
and rice, and borrowing money from the mis- 
sionaries, would run away and cover the gospel 
and its possessors with every species of im- 
pious ridicule and abuse. 

Upon the whole, it appears to us hardly pos- 
sible to push the business of proselytism in 
India to any length without incurring the 
utmost risk of losing our empire. The danger 
is more tremendous, because it may be so sud- 
den ; religious fears are very probable causes 
of disaffection in the troops ; if the troops are 
generally disaffected, our Indian empire may be 
lost to us as suddenly as a frigate or a fort ; 
and that empire is governed by men who, we 
are very much afraid, would feel proud to lose 
it in such a cause. 

"But I think it my duty to make a solemn 
appeal to all who still retain the fear of God, 
and who admit that religion and the course of 
conduct which it prescribes are not to be ban- 
ished from the affairs of nations — now when 
the political sky, so long overcast, has become 
more lowering and black than ever — whether 
this is a period for augmenting the weight of 
our national sins and provocations, by an ex- 
clusive Tovs.B.KTioTx of idolatry ; a crime which, 
unless the Bible be a forgery, has actually 
drawn forth the heaviest denunciations of ven- 
geance, and the most fearful inflictions of 
Divine displeasure." — Considerations, ^c. p. 98. 

Can it be credited that this is an extract from 
a pamphlet generally supposed to be written by 
a noble Lord at the Board of Control, from 

hose official interference the public might 



have expected a corrective to the pious temer-- 
ity of others 7 

The other leaders of the party, indeed, make 
at present great professions of toleration, and 
express the strongest abhorence of using vio- 
lence to the natives. This does very well for 
a beginning; but we have little confidence in . 
such declarations. We believe their fingers 
itch to be at the stone and clay gods of the 
Hindoos ; and that, in common with the noble • 
Controller, they attribute a great part of our 
national calamities to these ugly images of 
deities on the one side of the world. We again 
repeat, that upon such subjects, the best and 
ablest men, if once tinged by fanaticism, are 
not to be trusted for a single inoment. 

2(%, Another reason for giving up the task, 
of conversion, is the want of success. In 
India, religion extends its empire over the 
minutest actions of life. It is not merely a law 
for moral conduct, and for occasional worship; 
but it dictates to a man his trade, his dress, his 
food, and his whole behaviour. His religion 
also punishes a violation of its exactions, not 
by eternal and future punishments, but by pre- 
sent infamy. If an Hindoo is irreligious, or, 
in other words, if he loses his caste, he is 
deserted by father, mother, wife, child, and kin- 
dred, and becomes instantly a solitary wan-- 
derer upon the earth ; to touch him, to receive 
him, to eat with him, is a pollution producing a 
similar loss of caste ; and the state of such a 
degraded man is worse than death itself. To 
these evils an Hindoo must expose himself 
before he becomes a Christian ; and this diffi- 
culty must a missionary overcome, before he 
can expect the smallest success ; a difficulty 
which, it is quite clear, they themselves, after 
a short residence in India, consider to be insu- 
perable. 

As a proof of the tenacious manner, in 
which the Hindoos cling to their religious 
prejudices, we shall state two or three very 
short anecdotes, to which any person who has 
resided in India might easily produce many 
parallels. 

"In the year 1766, the late Lord Clive and 
Mr. Verelst employed the whole influence of 
Government to restore a Hindoo to his caste, 
who had forfeited it, not by any neglect of his 
own, but by having been compelled, by a most 
unpardonable act of violence, to swallow a 
drop of cow broth. The Brahmins, from the 
peculiar circumstances of the case, were very 
anxious to comply with the wishes of Govern- 
ment ; the principal men among them met once 
at Kishnagur, and once at Calcutta ; but after 
consultations, and an examination of their 
most ancient records, they declared to Lord 
Clive, that as there was no precedent to justify 
the act, they found it impossible to restore the 
unfortunate man to his caste, and he died soon 
after of a broken heart." — Scott Warin^s Pre- 
face, p. Ivi. 

It is the custom of the Hindoos to expose 
dying people upon the banks of the Ganges. 
There is something peculiarly holy in that 
river; and it soothes the agonies of death to 
look upon its waters in the last moments. A 
party of English were coming down in a boat, 
and perceived upon the bank a pious Hindoo, 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



5g 



in a state of the last imbecility — about to be 
drowned by the rising of the tide, after the 
most approved and orthodox manner of their 
religion. They had the curiosity to land; and 
as they perceived some more signs of life than 
were at first apparent, a young Englishman 
poured down his throat the greatest part of a 
bottle of lavender water, which he happened 
to have in his pocket. The effects of such a 
stimulus, applied to a stomach accustomed to 
nothing stronger than water, were instantane- 
ous and powerful. The Hindoo revived suffi- 
ciently to admit of his being conveyed to the 
boat, was carried to Calcutta, and perfectly re- 
covered. He had drunk, however, in the com- 
pany of Europeans ; — no matter whether vo- 
luntary or involuntary, — the offence was com- 
mitted: he lost caste, was turned away from 
his home, and avoided, of course, by every re- 
lation and friend. The poor man came before 
the police, making the bitterest complaints upon 
being restored to life ; and for three years the 
burden of supporting him fell upon the mis- 
taken Samaritan who had rescued him from 
death. During that period, scarcely a day 
elapsed in which the degraded resurgent did 
not appear before the European, and curse 
him with the bitterest curses — as the cause of 
all his misery and desolation. At the end of 
that period he fell ill, and of course was not 
again thwarted in his passion for dying. The 
writer of this article vouches for the truth of 
this anecdote ; and many persons who were at 
Calcutta at the time must have a distinct recol- 
lection of the fact, which excited a great deal 
of conversation and amusement, mingled with 
compassion. 

It is this institution of castes which has pre- 
served India in the same state in which it ex- 
isted in the days of Alexander ; and which 
would leave it ■vyithout the slightest change in 
habits and manners, if we were to abandon the 
country to-morrow. We are astonished to ob- 
serve the late resident in Bengal speaking of the 
fifteen millions of Mahomedans in India as 
converts from the Hindoos; an opinion, in 
support of which he does not offer the shadow 
of an argument, except by asking, whether the 
Mahomedans have the Tartar face 1 and if not, 
how they can be the descendants of the first 
conquerors of India 1 Probably not altogether. 
But does this writer imagine, that the Mahome- 
dan empire could exist in Hindostan for 700 
years without the intrusion of Persians, Ara- 
isians, and every species of Mussulmen adven- 
turers from every part of the East, which had 
embraced the religion of Mahomed 1 And let 
them come from what quarter they would, 
could they ally themselves to Hindoo women 
without producing in their descendants an ap- 
proximation to the Hindoo features'? Dr. 
Robertson, who has investigated this subject 
with the greatest care, and looked into all the 
authorities, is expressly of an opposite opinion ; 
and considers the Mussulman inhabitants of 
Hindostan to be merely the descendants of 
Mahomedan adventurers, and not converts 
from the Hindoo faith. 

"The armies" (says Orme) "which made 
the first conquests for the heads of the respect- 
ive dynasties, or for other invaders, left behind 



them numbers of Mahomedans, who, seduced 
by a finer climate, and a richer country, forgot 
their own. 

" The Mahomedan princes of India naturally 
gave a preference to the service of men of 
their own religion, who, from whatever country 
they came, were of a more vigorous constitu- 
tion than the stoutest of the subjected nation. 
This preference has continually encouraged 
adventurers from Tartary, Persia, and Arabia, 
to seek their fortunes under a government from 
which they M'ere sure of receiving greater en- 
couragement than they could expect at home. 
From these origins, time has formed in India a 
mighty nation of near ten millions of Mahome- 
dans." — Orme's Indostan, I. p. 24. 

Precisely similar to this is the opinion of Dr. 
Robertson, Note xl. — Indian Disquisition. 

As to the religion of the Ceylonese, from 
which the Bengal resident would infer the faci- 
lity of making converts of the Hindoos, it is to 
be observed, that the religion of Boudhou, in 
ancient times, extended from the north of Tar- 
tary to Ceylon, from the Indus to Siam, and (if 
Foe and Boudhou are the same persons) over 
China. That of the two religions of Boudhou 
and Brama, the one was the parent of the other, 
there can be very little doubt ; but the compa- 
rative antiquity of the two is so very disputed 
a point, that it is quite unfair to state the case 
of the Ceylonese as an instance of conversion 
from the Hindoo religion to any other : and 
even if the religion of Bramd is the most an- 
cient of the two, it is still to be proved, that the 
Ceylonese professed that religion before they 
changed it for their present faith. In point of 
fact, however, the boasted Christianity of the 
Ceylonese is proved by the testimony of the 
missionaries themselves, to be little better than 
nominal. The following extract from one of 
their own communications, dated Columbo^ 
1805, will set this matter in its true light: — 

" The elders, deacons, and some of the mem- 
bers of the Dutch congregation, came to see us, 
and we paid them a visit in return, and made a 
little inquiry concerning the state of the church 
on this island, which is, in one word, miserable! 
One hundred thousand of those who are called 
Christians (because they are baptized) need 
not go back to heathenism, for they never have 
been any thing else but heathens, worshippers of 
Budda: they have been induced, for worldly 
reasons, to be baptized. O Lord have mercy 
on the poor inhabitants of this populous island!'^ 
—Trans. Miss. Soc. II. 265. 

What success the Syrian Christians had in 
making converts ; in what degree they have 
gained their numbers by victories over the 
native superstition, or lost their original num- 
bers by the idolatrous examples to which for 
so many centuries they have been exposed ; are 
points wrapt up in so much obscurity, that no 
kind of inference, as to the facility of convert- 
ing the natives, can be drawn from them. Their 
present number is supposed to be about 
150,000. 

It would be of no use to quote the example 
of Japan and China, even if the progress of the 
faith in these empires had been much greater 
than it is. We do not say it is difficult to con- 
vert the Japanese, or the Chinese ; but the 



60 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Hindoos. We are not saying it is difficult to 
convert human creatures; but difficult to con- 
vert human creatures with such institutions. 
To mention the example of other nations who 
have them not, is to pass over the material ob- 
jection, and to answer others which are merely 
imaginary, and have never been made. 

3dly, The duty of conveusion is less plain, 
and less imperious, when conversion exposes 
the convert to great present misery. An Afri- 
can or an Otaheite proselyte might not perhaps 
be less honoured by his countrymen if he be- 
came a Christian ; an Hindoo is instantly sub- 
jected to the most perfect degradation. A 
change of faith might increase the immediate 
happiness of any other individual ; it annihi- 
lates for ever all the human comforts which an 
Hindoo enjoys. The eternal happiness which 
you proffer him, is therefore less attractive to 
him than to any other heathen, from the life of 
misery by which he purchases it. 

Nothing is more precarious than our empire 
in India. Suppose we were to be driven out 
of it to-morrow, and to leave behind us twenty 
thousand converted Hindoos, it is most proba- 
ble they would relapse into heathenism; but 
their original station in society could not be 
regained. The duty of making converts, 
therefore, among such a people, as it arises 
from the general duty of benevolence, is less 
strong than it would be in many other cases ; 
because, situated as we are, it is quite certain 
•we shall expose them to a great deal of misery, 
and not quite certain we shall do them any 
future good. 

4:thly, Conversion is no duty at all, if it mere- 
ly destroys the old religion, without really and 
effectually teaching the new one. Brother 
Ringletaube may write home that he makes a 
Christian, when, in reality, he ought only to 
state that he has destroyed an Hindoo. FooMsh 
and imperfect as the religion of an Hindoo is, 
it is at least some restraint upon the intemper- 
ance of human passions. It is better a Brah- 
min should be respected, than that nobody 
should be respected. An Hindoo had better 
believe that a deity with an hundred legs and 
arms, will reward and punish him hereafter, 
than that he is not to be punished at all. Now, 
when you have destroyed the faith of an Hin- 
doo, are you quite sure that you will graft upon 
his mind fresh principles of action, and make 
him any more than a nominal Christian ? 

You have 30,000 Europeans in India, and 
60 millions of other subjects. If proselytism 
were to go on as rapidly as the most visionary 
Anabaptist could dream or desire, in what man- 
ner are these people to be taught the genuine 
truths and practices of Christianity 1 Where 
are the clergy to come from 1 Who is to de- 
fray the expense of the establishment 1 and 
who can foresee the immense and perilous dif- 
ficulties of bending the laws, manners, and in- 
stitutions of a country to the dictates of a new 
religion 1 If it were easy to persuade the Hin- 
doos that their own religion was folly, it would 
be indefinitely difBlcult effectually to teach them 
any other. They would tumble their own idols 
into the river, and you would build them no 
churches : you would destroy all their present 
motives for doing right and avoiding wrong, 



without being able to fix upon their minds the 
more sublime motives by which you profess to 
be actuated. What a missionary will do here- 
after with the heart of a convert, is a matter of 
doubt and speculation. He is quite certain, 
however, that he must accustom the man to see 
himself considered infamous ; and good prin- 
ciples can hardly be exposed to a ruder shock. 
Whoever has seen much of Hindoo Christians 
must have perceived, that the man who bears 
that name is very commonly nothing more than 
a drunken reprobate, who conceives himself 
at liberty to eat and drink anything he pleases, 
and annexes hardly any other meaning to the 
name of Christianity. Such sort of converts 
may swell the list of names, and gratify the 
puerile pride of a missionary ; but what real, 
discreet Christian can wish to see such Chris- 
tianity prevail 1 But it will be urged, if the 
present converts should become worse Hindoos, 
and very indifferent Christians, still the next 
generation will do better ; and by degrees, and 
at the expiration of half a century, or a century, 
true Christianity may prevail. We may apply 
to such sort of Jacobin converters what Mr. 
Burke said of the Jacobin politicians in his 
time, — " To such men a whole generation of 
human beings are of no more consequence than 
a frog in an air-pump." For the distant pros- 
pect of doing what most probably after all, 
they will never be able to effect, there is no de- 
gree of present misery and horror to which 
they will not expose the subjects of their expe- 
riment. 

As the duty of making proselytes springs 
from the duty of benevolence, there is a priority 
of choice in conversion. The greatest zeal 
should plainly be directed to the most desperate 
misery and ignorance. Now, in comparison to 
many other nations who are equally ignorant 
of the truths of Christianity, the Hindoos are a 
civilized and a moral people. That they have 
remained in the same state for so many centu- 
ries, is at once a proof that the institutions 
which established that state could not be highly 
unfavourable to human happiness. After all 
that has been said of the vices of the Hindoos, 
we believe that an Hindoo is more mild and 
sober than most Europeans, and as honest and 
chaste. In astronomy the Hindoos have cer- 
tainly made very high advances ; — some, and 
not an unimportant progress in many sciences. 
As manufacturers, they are extremely in- 
genious — and as agriculturists, industrious. 
Christianity would improve them ; (whom 
would it not improve 1) but if Christianity can- 
not be extended to all, there are many other na- 
tions who want it more.* 

The Hindoos have some very savage cus- 
toms, which it would be desirable to abolish. 
Some swing on hooks, some run knives through 
their hands, and widows burn themselves to 
death : but these follies (even the last) are quite 
voluntary on the part of the sufferers. We dis- 
like all misery, voluntary or involuntary ; but 
the difference between the torments which a 
man chooses, and those which he endures from 

* We are here, of course, arguing the question only 
in a worldly point of view. This is one point of view 
in which it must be placed, though certainly the lowest 
and least important. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



61 



the choice of others, is very great. It is a con- 
siderable wretchedness that men and women 
should be shut up in religious houses -, bm it is 
only an object of legislative interference, when 
such incarceration is compulsory. Monasteries 
and nunneries with us would be harmless in- 
stitutions ; because the moment a devotee found 
he had acted like a fool, he might avail himself 
of the discovery and run away ; and so may an 
Hindoo, if he repents of his resolution of run- 
ning hooks into his flesh. 

The duties of conversion appear to be of less 
importance, when it is impossible to procure 
proper persons to undertake them, and when 
such religious embassies, in consequence, de- 
volve upon the lowest of the people. Who 
wishes to see scrofula and atheism cured by a 
single sermon in Bengal 1 who wishes to see 
the religious hoy riding at anchor in the Hoogly 
river ] or shoals of jumpers exhibiting their 
nimble piety before the learned Brahmins of 
Benares 1 This madness is disgusting and 
dangerous enough at home : — Why are we to 
send out little detachments of maniacs to spread 
over the fine regions of the world the most un- 
just and contemptible opinion of the gospel 1 
The wise and rational part of the Christian 
ministry find they have enough to do at home 
to combat with passions unfavourable to human 
happiness, and to make men act up to their 
professions. But if a tinker is a devout man, 
he infallibly sets oif for the East. Let any 
man read the Anabaptist missions : — can he do 
so without deeming such men pernicious and 
extravagant in their own country, — and with- 
out feeling that they are benefiting us much 
more by their absence, than the Hindoos by 
their advice 1 

It is somewhat strange, in a duty which is 
stated by one party to be so clear and so indis- 
pensable, that no man of moderation and good 
sense can be found to perform it. And if no 
other instruments remain but visionary enthu- 
siasts, some doubt may be honestly raised 
whether it is not better to drop the scheme en- 
tirely. 

Shortly stated, then, our argument is this : — 
We see not the slightest pros-pect of success ; — 
we see much danger in making the attempt; — 
and we doubt if the conversion of the Hindoos 
would ever be more than nominal. If it is 
a duty of general benevolence to convert the 
Heathen, it is less a duty to convert the Hin- 
doos than any other people, because they are 
already highly civilized, and because you must 
infallibly subject them to infamy and present 
degradation. The instruments employed for 
these purposes are calculated to bring ridicule 
and disgrace upon the gospel ; and in the dis- 
cretion of those at home, whom we consider as 
their patrons, we have not the smallest reli- 
ance ; but, on the contrary, we are convinced 
they would behold the loss of our Indian em- 
pire, not with the humility of men convinced of 
erroneous views and projects, but with the 
pride, the exultation, and the alacrity of martyrs. 

Of the books which have handled this sub- 
ject on either side, we have little to say. Ma- 
jor Scott Waring's book is the best against the 
Missions ; but he wants arrangement and pru- 



dence. The late resident writes well ; but is 
miserably fanatical towards the conclusion. 
Mr. Cunningham has been diligent in looking 
into books upon the subject : and though an 
evangelical gentleman, is not uncharitable to 
those who differ from him in opinion. There 
is a passage in the publication of his reverend 
brother, Mr. Owen, which, had we been less 
accustomed than we have been of late to this 
kind of writing, would appear to be quite in- 
credible. 

" I have not pointed out the comparative in- 
difl!"erence, upon Mr. Twining's principles, be- 
tween one religion and another, to the welfare 
of a people ; nor the impossibility, on those 
principles, of India being Christianized by any 
human means, so long as it shall remain under 
the dominion of the Company ; nor the alterna- 
tive to which Providence is by consequence reduced, 
of either givitig up that country to everlasting su- 
perstition, or of ivorking some miracle in order to 
accomplish its co7iversionJ" — Owen^s Mdress, p. 28. 

This is really beyond any thing we ever re- 
member to have read. The hoy, the cock-fight, 
and the religious newspaper, are pure reason 
when compared to it. The idea of reducing 
Providence to an alternative ! ! and, by a motion 
at the India House, carried by ballot ! We 
would not insinuate, in the most distant man- 
ner, that Mr. Owen is not a gentleman of the 
most sincere piety ; but the misfortune is, all 
extra superfine persons accustom themselves to 
a familiar phraseology upon the most sacred 
subjects, which is quite shocking to the com- 
mon and inferior orders of Chiistians. Provi- 
dence reduced to an alternative ! ! ! ! ! Let it be 
remembered, this phrase comes from a member 
of a religious party, who are loud in their com- 
plaints of being confounded with enthusiasts 
and fanatics. 

We cannot conclude without the most pointed 
reprobation of the low mischief of the Christian 
Observer ; a publication which appears to have 
no other method of discussing a question fairly 
open to discussion, than that of accusing their 
antagonists of infidelity. No art can be more 
unmanly, or, if its consequences are foreseen, 
more wicked. If this publication had been the 
work of a single individual, we might have 
passed it over in silent disgust; but as it is 
looked upon as the organ of a great political 
religious party in this country, we think it right 
to notice the very unworthy manner in which 
they are attempting to extend their influence. 
For ourselves, if there were a fair prospect of 
carrying the gospel info regions where it was 
befq^-e unknown, — if such a project did not 
expose the best possessions of the country 
to extreme danger, and if it was in the hands of 
men who were discreet, as well as devout, we 
should consider it to be a scheme of true piety, 
benevolence, and wisdom : but the baseness and 
malignity of fanaticism shall never prevent us 
from attacking its arrogance, its ignorance, and 
its activity. For what vice can be more tre- 
mendous than that which, while it wears the 
outward appearance of religion, destroys the 
happiness of man, and dishonours the name of 
GodT 



«2 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



CATHOLICS.* 



[Edinbuegh Review, 1808.] 



The various publications which have issued ] 
from the press in favour of religious liberty, 
fiave now nearly silenced the arguments of 
their opponents ; and, teaching sense to some, 
and inspiring others with shame, have left 
those only on the field who can neither learn 
nor blush. 

But, though the argument U given up, and the 
justice of the Catholic cause admitted, it seems 
to be generally conceived, that their case, at 
present, is utterly hopeless ; and that, to advo- 
cate it any longer, will only irritate the op- 
pressed, without producing any change of 
opinion in those by whose influence and autho- 
rity that oppression is continued. To this 
opinion, unfortunately too prevalent, we have 
many reasons for not subscribing. 

We do not understand what is meant in this 
country by the notion, that a measure, of con- 
summate wisdom and imperious necessity, is 
to be deferred for any time, or to depend upon 
any contingency. Whenever it can be made 
clear to the understanding of the great mass 
of enlightened people, that any system of poli- 
tical conduct is necessary to the public welfare, 
every obstacle (as it ought) will be swept away 
before it; and as we conceive it to be by no 
means improbable, that the country may, ere 
long, be placed in a situation where its safety 
or ruin will depend upon its conduct towards 
the Catholics, we sincerely believe we are 
doing our duty ift throwing every possible light 
on this momentous question. Neither do we 
understand where this passive submission to 
ignorance and error is to end. Is it confined 
to religion 1 or does it extend to war and peace, 
as well as religion 1 Would it be tolerated, if 
any man were to say, " Abstain from all argu- 
ments in favour of peace ; the court have 
resolved upon eternal war ; and, as you cannot 
have peace, to what purpose urge the necessity 
of if?" We answer, — that courts must be pre- 
sumed to be open to the influence of reason ; 
or, if they were not, to the influence of pru- 
dence and discretion, when ihey perceive the 
public opinion to be loudly and clearly against 
them. To lie by in timid and indolent silence, 
— to suppose an inflexibility, in which no court 
ever CQuld, under pressing circumstances, per- 
severe — and to neglect a regular and vigorous 
appeal to public opinion, is to give up all 
chance of doing good, and to abandon the 
only instrument by which the few are ever 
prevented from ruining the many. 

It is folly to talk of any other ultimatum in 
government than perfect justice to the fair 
claims of the subject. The concessions to the 
Irish Catholics in 1792 were to be the ne plus 
ultra. Every engine was set on foot to induce 



* Hiftory of the Penal Laics against the Irish Catho- 
lics, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Union. By 
Henry Parnell Esq. M.P. 



the grand juries in Ireland to petition against 
further concessions; and, in six months after- 
wards, government were compelled to intro- 
duce, themselves, those further relaxations of 
the penal code, of which they had just before 
assured the Catholics they must abandon all 
hope. Such is the absurdity of supposing that 
a few interested and ignorant individuals can 
postpone, at their pleasure and caprice, the 
happiness of millions. 

As to the feeling of irritation with which 
such continued discussion may inspire the 
Irish Catholics, we are convinced that no opi- 
nion could be so prejudicial to the cordial 
union which we hope may always subsist be- 
tween the two countries, as that all the efibrts 
of the Irish were unavailing, — that argument 
was hopeless, — that their case was prejudged 
with a sullen inflexibility which circumstances 
could not influence, pity soften, or reason sub- 
due. 

We are by no means convinced, that the 
decorous silence recommended upon the Ca- 
tholic question would be rewarded by those 
future concessions, of which many persons 
appear to be so certain. We have a strange 
incredulit}'^ where persecution is to be abo- 
lished, and any class of men restored to their 
indisputable rights. When we see it done, we 
will believe it. Till it is done, we shall always 
consider it to be highly improbable — much too 
improbable — to justify the smallest relaxation 
in the Catholics themselves, or in those who 
are well-wishers to their cause. When the 
fanciful period at present assigned for the 
emancipation arrives, new scruples may arise 
— fresh forbearance be called for — and the ope- 
rations of common sense be deferred for an- 
other generation. Toleration never had a 
present tense, nor taxation a future one. The 
answer which Paul received from Felix, he 
owed to the subject on which he spoke. When 
justice and righteousness were his theme, 
Felix told him to go away, and he would hear 
him some other time. All men who have 
spoken to courts upon such disagreeable topics, 
have received the same answer. Felix, how- 
ever, trembled when he gave it; but his fear 
was ill-directed. He trembled at the subject — 
he ought to have trembled at the delay. 

Little or nothing is to be expected from the 
shame of deferring what it is so wicked and per- 
ilous to defer. Profligacy in taking office is so 
extreme, that we have no doubt public men may 
be found, who, for half a century', would postpone 
all remedies for a pestilence, if the preservation 
of their places depended upon the propagation 
of the virus. To us, such kind of conduct 
conveys no other action than that of sordid 
avaricious impudence : — it puts to sale the best 
interests of the country for some improvement 
in the wines and meats and carriages which a 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



63 



itnan uses, — and encourages a new political 
morality which may always postpone any other 
great measure — and every other great measure 
as well as the emancipation of the Catholics. 

We terminate this apologetical preamble 
with expressing the most earnest hope that the 
Catholics will not, from any notion that their 
cause IS effectually carried, relax in any one 
constitutional effort necessary to their purpose. 
Their cause is the cause of common sense 
and justice ; — the safety of England and of the 
world may depend upon it. It rests upon the 
soundest principles ; leads to the most import- 
ant consequences ; and therefore cannot be too 
frequently brought before the notice of the 
public. 

The book before us is written by Mr. Henry 
Parnell, the brother of Mr. William Parnell, 
author of the Historical Apology, reviewed in 
one of our late numbers ; and it contains a 
very well written history of the penal laws en- 
acted against the Irish Catholics, from the 
peace of Limerick, in the reign of King 
William, to the late Union. Of these we shall 
present a very short, and, we hope even to 
loungers, a readable abstract. 

The war carried on in Ireland against King 
William cannot deserve the name of a re- 
bellion : it was a struggle for their lawful 
Prince, whom they had sworn to maintain; 
and whose zeal for the Catholic religion, what- 
ever effect it might have produced in England, 
could not by them be considered as a crime. 
This war was terminated by the surrender of 
Limerick, upon conditions by which the Catho- 
lics hoped, and very rationally hoped, to secure 
to themselves the free enjoyment of their re- 
ligion in future, and an exemption from all 
those civil penalties and incapacities which the 
reigning creed is so fond of heaping upon its 
subjugated rivals. 

By the various articles of this treaty, they 
are to enjoy such privileges in the exercise of 
their religion, as they did enjoy in the time of 
Charles II. : and the King promises upon the 
meeting of Parliament, " to endeavor to pro- 
cure for them such further security in that par- 
ticular, as may preserve them /ro?n aiiy disturb- 
ance on account of their said religion." They 
are to be restored to their estates, privileges, 
and immunities, as they enjoyed them in the 
time of Charless II. The gentlemen are to be 
allowed to carry arms ; and no other oath is to 
be tendered to the Catholics who submit to 
King William than the oath of allegiance. 
These and other articles. King William ratifies 
for himself, his heirs and successors, as far as in 
him lies ; and confirms the same, and every other 
clause and matter therein contained. 

These articles were signed by the English 
general on the 3d of October, 1691; and dif- 
fused comfort, confidence, and tranquillity 
among the Catholics. On the 22d of October, 
the English Parliament excluded Catholics 
from the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons, 
ty compelling them to take the oaths of su- 
premacy before admission. 

In 1695, the Catholics were deprived of all 
means of educating their children, at home or 
abroad, and of the privilege of being guardians 
'.to their own or to other persons' children. 



Then all the Catholics were disarmed, — and 
then all the priests banished. JIfter this (proba- 
bly by way of joke), an act was passed to con- 
firyn the treaty of Limerick, — the great and 
glorious King William totally forgetting the 
contract he had entered into of recommending 
the religious liberties of the Catholics to the 
attention of Parliament. 

On the 4th of March, 1704, it was enacted, 
that any son of a Catholic who would turn 
Protestant, should succeed to the family estate, 
which from that moment could no longer be 
sold, or charged with debt and legacy. On the 
same day. Popish fathers were debarred, by a 
penalty of 500/., from being guardians to their 
own children. If the child, however young, 
declared himself a Protestant, he was to be 
delivered immediately to the custody of some 
Protestant relation. No Protestant to marry a 
Papist. No Papist to purchase land, or take a 
lease of land for more than thirty-one years. 
If the profits of the lands so leased by the 
Catholics amounted to above a certain rate 
settled by the act, — farm to belong to the first 
Protestant who made the discovery. No Papist to 
be in a line of entail; but the estate to pass on 
to the next Protestant heir, as if the Papist were 
dead. If a Papist dies intestate, and no Pro- 
testant heir can be found, property to be equally 
divided among all the sons ; or, if he has none, 
among all the daughters. By the 16th clause 
of this bill, no Papist to hold any office civil or 
military. Not to dwell in Limerick or Gal way, 
except on certain conditions. Not to vote at 
elections. Not to hold advowsons. 

In 1709, Papists were prevented from hold- 
ing an annuity for life. If any son of a Papist 
chose to turn Protestant, and enrol the certifi- 
cate of his conversion in the Court of Chan- 
cery, that court is empowered to compel his 
father to state the value of his property upon 
oath, and to make out of that property a com- 
petent allowance to the son, at their own dis- 
cretion, not only for his present maintenance, 
but for his future portion after the death of his 
father. An increase of jointure to be enjoyed 
by Papist wives upon their conversion. Papists 
keeping schools to be prosecuted as convicts. 
Popish priests who are converted, to receive 
30/. per annum. 

Rewards are given by the same act for the 
discovery of the Popish clergy ; — 50/. for dis- 
covering a Popish bishop ; 20/. for a common 
Popish clergyman ; 10/. for a Popish usher I 
Two justices of the peace can 'compel any 
Papist above eighteen years of age to disclose 
every particular which has come to his know- 
ledge respecting Popish priests, celebration of 
mass, or Papist schools. Imprisonment for a 
year if he refuses to answer. Nobody can 
hold property in trust for a Catholic. Juries, 
in all trials growing out of these statutes, to 
be Protestants. No Papist to take more than 
two apprentices, except in the linen trade. All 
the Catholic clergy to give in their names and 
places of abode at the quarter-sessions, and to 
keep no curates. Catholics not to serve on 
grand juries. In any trial upon statutes for 
strengthening the Protestant interest, a Papist 
juror may be peremptorily challenged. 
In the next reign, Popish horses were at- 



64 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tached, and allowed to be seized for the militia. 
Papists cannot be either high or petty consta- 
bles. No Papists to vote at elections. Papists 
in towns to provide Protestant watchmen ; — 
and not to vote at vestries. 

In the reign of George 11., Papists were pro- 
hibited from being barristers. Barristers and 
solicitors marrying Papists, considered to be 
Papists, and subjected to all penalties as such. 
Persons robbed by privateers, during a war 
with a Popish prince, to be indemnified by 
grand jury presentments, and the money to be 
levied on the Catholics only. No Papist to 
marry a Protestant; — any priest celebrating 
such a marriage to be hanged. 

During all this time there was not the slight- 
est rebellion in Ireland. 

In 1715 and 1745, while Scotland and the 
north of England were up in arms, not a man 
stirred in Ireland ; yet the spirit of persecution 
against the Catholics continued till the 18th of 
his present Majesty, and then gradually gave 
way to the increase of knowledge, the huma- 
nity of our Sovereign, the abilities of Mr. 
Grattan, the weakness of England struggling 
in America, and the dread inspired by the 
French revolution. 

Such is the rapid outline of a code of laws 
which reflects indelible disgrace upon the Eng- 
lish character, and explains but too clearly 
the cause of that hatred in which the English 
name has been so long held in Ireland. It 
would require centuries to eflace such an im- 
pression ; and yet, when we find it fresh, and 
operating at the end of a few years, we explain 
the fact by every cause which can degrade the 
Irish, and by none which can remind us of our 
own scandalous policy. With the folly and 
the horror of such a code before our eyes, — 
with the conviction of recent and domestic 
history, that mankind are not to be lashed and 
chained out of their faith, — we are striving to 
tea^je and worry them into a better theology. 



Heavy oppression is r'imoved ; light insults 
and provocations are retained; the scourge 
does not fall upon their shoulders, but it sounds 
in their ears. And this is the conduct we are 
pursuing, when it is still a great doubt whether 
this country alone may not be opposed to the 
united efforts of the whole of Europe. It is 
really difficult to ascertain which is the most 
utterly destitute of common sense, — the capri- 
cious and arbitrary stop we have made in our 
concessions to the Catholics, or the precise 
period we have chosen for this grand effort of 
obstinate folly. 

In whatsoever manner the contest now in 
agitation on the Continent may terminate, its 
relation to the emancipation of the Catholics 
will be very striking. If the Spaniards succeed 
in establishing their own liberties, and in res- 
cuing Europe from the tyranny under which it 
at present labours, it will still be contended, 
within the walls of our own Parliament, that 
the Catholics cannot fulfil the duties of social 
life. Venal politicians will still argue that the 
time is not yet come. Sacred and lay syco- 
phants will still lavish upon the Catholic faith 
their well-paid abuse, and England still pas- 
sively submit to such a disgraceful spectacle 
of ingratitude and injustice. If, on the con- 
trary (as may probably be the case), the Spa- 
niards fall before the numbers and military 
skill of the French, then are we left alone in 
the world, without another ray of hope ; and 
compelled to employ against internal disaffec- 
tion that force which, exalted to its utmost en- 
ergy, would in all probability prove but barely 
equal to the external danger by which we 
should be surrounded. Whence comes it that 
these things are universally admitted to be 
true, but looked upon in servile silence by a 
country hitherto accustomed to make great 
efforts for its prosperity, safety and indepen- 
dence ■? 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



65 



METHODISM; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1809.] 



Iw routing out a nest of consecrated cobblers, 
and in bringing to light such a perilous heap 
of trash as we were obliged to work through, 
in our articles upon the Methodists and Mis- 
sionaries, we are generally conceived to have 
rendered an useful service to the cause of ra- 
tional religion. Every one, however, at all 
acquainted with the true character of Method- 
ism, must have known the extent of the abuse 
and misrepresentation to which we exposed 
ourselves in such a service. All this obloquy, 
however, we were very willing to encounter, 
from our conviction of the necessity of expos- 
ing and correcting the growing evil of fanati- 
cism. In spite of all misrepresentation, we 
have ever been, and ever shall be, the sincere 
friends of sober and rational Christianity. We 
are quite ready, if any fair opportunity occur, 
to defend it, to the best of our ability, from the 
tiger-spring of infidelity ; and we are quite de- 
termined, if we can prevent such an evil, that 
it shall not be eaten up by the nasty and nu- 
merous vermin of Methodism. For this pur- 
pose, we shall proceed to make a few short 
remarks upon the sacred and silly gentleman 
before us, — not, certainly, because we feel any 
sort of anxiety as to the effect of his strictures 
on our own credit or reputation, but because 
his direct and articulate defence of the princi- 
ples and practices which we have condemned, 
affords us the fairest opportunity of exposing, 
still more clearly, both the extravagance and 
the danger of these popular sectaries. 

These very impudent people have one ruling 
canon, which pervades every thing they say 
and do. Whoever is xmfriendly to Methodism, is 
an infidel and an atheist. This reasonable and 
amiable maxim, repeated, in every form of 
dulness, and varied in every attitude of malig- 
nity, is the sum and substance of Mr. Styles's 
pamphlet. Whoever wishes to rescue religion 
from the hands of didactic artisans, — whoever 
prefers a respectable clergyman for his teacher 
to a delirious mechanic, — whoever wishes ■ to 
keep the intervals between churches and luna- 
tic asylums as wide as possible, — all such men, 
in the estimation of Mr. Styles, are nothing 
better than open or concealed enemies of 
Christianity. His catechism is very simple. 
In what hoy do you navigate"? By what shoe- 
maker or carpenter are you instructed 7 What 
miracles have you to relate 1 Do you think it 
sinful to reduce Providence to an alternative, &c. 
&c. &c. Now, if we were to content ourselves 
with using to Mr. Styles, while he is dealing 
about his imputations of infidelity, the un- 
courtly language which is sometimes applied 
to those who are little curious about truth 

* Strictures on two Critiques in the , Edinburgh Review, 
tfin the Subject of Methodism and Missions ; with Remarks 
Cn the Influence of Reviews, in general, on Morals and 
Happiness. By John Styles. 8vo. London, 1809. 

y 



or falsehood, what Methodist would think the 
worse of him for such an attack 1 Who is 
there among them that would not glory to lie 
for the tabernacle 1 who that would not believe 
he was pleasing his Maker, by sacrificing 
truth, justice and common sense, to the inte- 
rests of his own little chapel, and his own de- 
ranged instructor ? Something more than con- 
tradiction or confutation, therefore, is necessary 
to discredit those charitable dogmatists, and to 
diminish their pernicious influence; — and the 
first accusation against us is, that we have 
endeavoured to add ridicule to reasoning. 

We are a good deal amused, indeed, with the 
extreme disrelish which Mr. John Styles ex- 
hibits to the humour and pleasantry with which 
he admits the Methodists to have been attacked; 
but Mr. John Styles should remember, that it 
is not the practice with destroyers of vermin 
to allow the little victims a veto upon the wea- 
pons used against them. If this were other- 
wise, we should have one set of vermin banish- 
ing small-tooth combs ; another protesting 
against mouse-traps ; a third prohibiting the 
finger and thumb ; a fourth exclaiming against 
the intolerable infamy of using soap and wa- 
ter. It is impossible, however, to listen to such 
pleas. They must all be caught, killed and 
cracked, in the manner, and by the instruments 
which are found most efficacious to their de- 
struction ; and the more they cry out, the 
greater plainly is the skill used against them. 
We are convinced a little laughter will do 
them more harm than all the arguments in the 
world. Such men as the author before us 
cannot understand when they are out-argued ; 
but he has given us a specimen, from his irri- 
tability, that he fully comprehends when he 
has become the object of universal contempt 
and derision. We agree with him, that ridi- 
cule is not exactly the weapon to be used in 
matters of religion ; but the use of it is ex- 
cusable, when there is no other which can 
make fools tremble. Besides, he should re- 
member the particular sort of ridicule we have 
used, which is nothing more than accurate 
quotation from the Methodists themselves. It 
is true, that this is the most severe and cutting 
ridicule to which we could have had recourse; 
but, whose fault is that? 

Nothing can be more disingenuous than the 
attacks Mr. Styles has made upon us for our 
use of Scripture language. Light and grace 
are certainly terms of Scripture. It is not to 
the words themselves that any ridicule can 
ever attach. It is from the preposterous ap- 
plication of those words, in the mouths of the 
most arrogant and ignorant of human beings ; 
— it is from their use in the most trivial, low 
and familiar scenes of life ; — it is from the 
illiterate and ungrammalical prelacy of Mr. 
John Styles, that any tinge of ridicule ever is 
f2 



66 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



or ever can be imparted to the sacred language 
of Scripture. 

We admit also, with this gentleman, that it 
would certainly evince the most vulgar and 
contracted heart, to ridicule any religious 
opinions, methodistical or otherwise, because 
they were the opinions of the poor, and were 
conveyed in the language of the poor. But 
are we to respect the poor, when they wish to 
step out of their province, and become the 
teachers of the landl — when men, whose pro- 
per " talk is of bullocks, pretend to have wis- 
dom and understanding," is it not lawful to tell 
them they have none? An ironmonger is a 
very respectable man, so long as he is merely 
an ironmonger, — an admirable man if he is a 
religious ironmonger ; but a great blockhead 
if he sets up for a bishop or a dean, and lec- 
tures upon theology. It is not the poor we 
have attacked, — but the writing poor, the pub- 
lishing poor, — the limited arrogance which 
mistakes its own trumpery sect for the world: 
nor have we attacked them for want of talent, 
but for want of modesty, want of sense, and 
want of true rational religion, — for every fault 
which Mr. John Styles defends and exemplifies. 

It is scarcely possible to reduce the drunken 
declamations of Methodism to a point, to grasp 
the wriggling lubricity of these cunning ani- 
mals, and to fix them in one position. We 
have said, in our review of the Methodists, that 
it is extremely wrong to suppose that Provi- 
dence interferes with special and extraordinary 
judgments on every trifling occasion of life : 
that to represent an innkeeper killed for pre- 
venting a Methodist meeting, or loud claps of 
thunder rattling along the heavens, merely to 
hint to Mr. Scott that he was not to preach at 
a particular tabernacle in Oxford-road, appear- 
ed to us to be blasphemous and mischievous 
nonsense. With great events, which change 
the destiny of mankind, we might suppose 
such interference, the discovery of which, 
upon every trifling occasion, we considered to 
be pregnant with very mischievous conse- 
quences. To all which Mr. Styles replies, 
that, with Providence, nothing is great, or no- 
thing little, — nothing difficult, or nothing easy; 
that a worm and a whale are equal in the esti- 
mation of a Supreme Being. But did any hu- 
man being but a Methodist, and a third or 
fourth rate Methodist, ever make such a reply 
to such an argument 1 We are not talking of 
what is great or important to Providence, but 
to us. The creation of a worm or a whale, a 
Newton or a Styles, are tasks equally easy to 
Omnipotence. But are they, in their results, 
equally important to us 1 The lightning may 
as easily strike the head of the French empe- 
ror, as of an innocent cottager ; but we are 
surely neither impious nor obscure, when we 
say, that one would be an important interfer- 
ence of Providence, and the other compara- 
tively not so. But it is a loss of time to reply 
to such trash ; it presents no stimulus of diffi- 
culty to us, nor would it oSer any of novelty to 
our readers. 

To our attack upon the melancholy ten- 
dency of Methodism, Mr. Styles replies, " that 
a man must have studied in the schools of Hume, 
Voltaire, and Kotzebue, who can plead in be- 



half of the theatre ; that, at fashionable ball- 
rooms and assemblies, seduction is drawn out 
to a system ; that dancing excites the fever of 
the passions, and raises a delirium too often 
fatal to innocence and peace ; and that, for the 
poor, instead of the common rough amuse- 
ments to which they are now addicted, there 
remain the simple beauties of nature, the 
gay colours, and scented perfumes of the 
earth." These are the blessings which the 
common people have to expect from their 
Methodistical instructors. They are pilfered 
of all their money, — shut out from all their 
dances and country wakes, — and are then sent 
pennyless into the fields, to gaze on the clouds, 
and to smell dandelions ! 

Against the orthodox clergy of all descrip- 
tions, our sour devotee proclaims, as was to 
have been expected, the most implacable war, 
— declaring that, " in one century, they would 
have obliterated all the remaining practical reli- 
gimi in the church, had it not been for this new 
sect, everywhere spoken against." Undoubtedly, 
the distinction of mankind into godly and un- 
godly — if by godly is really meant those who 
apply religion to the extinction of bad pas- 
sions — would be highly desirable. But when, 
by that word, is only intended a sect more de- 
sirous of possessing the appellation than of 
deserving it, — when, under that term, are comr 
prehended thousands of canting hypocrites 
and raving enthusiasts — men despicable from 
their ignorance, and formidable from their 
madness, — the distinction may hereafter prove 
to be truly terrific ; and a dynasty of fools may 
again sweep away both church and state in 
one hideous ruin. There may be, at present, 
some very respectable men at the head of 
these maniacs, who would insanify them with 
some degree of prudence, and keep them only 
half mad, if they could. But this won't do ; 
Bedlam will break loose, and overpower its 
keepers. If the preacher sees visions, and 
has visitations, the clerk will come next, and 
then the congregation ; every man will be his 
own prophet, and dream dreams for himself: 
the competition in extravagance will be hot 
and lively, and the whole island a receptacle 
for incurables. There is, at this moment, a 
man in London who prays for what garments 
he wants, and finds them next morning in his 
room, tight and fitting. This man, as might 
be expected, gains between two and three 
thousand a year from the common people, by 
preaching. Anna, the prophetess, encamps in 
the woods of America, with thirteen or four- 
teen thousand followers, and has visits every 
night from the prophet Elijah. Joanna South- 
cote raises the dead, &c. &c. Mr. Styles will 
call us atheists, and disciples of the French 
school, for what we are about to say ; but it is 
our decided opinion, that there is some fraud 
in the prophetic visit ; and it is but too pro- 
bable, that the clothes are merely human, and 
the man measured for them in the common 
way. When such blasphemous deceptions 
are practised upon mankind, how can remon- 
strance be misplaced, or exposure mischiev- 
ous ? If the choice rested with us, we should 
say, — give us back our wolves again, — restore" 
our Danish invaders, — curse us with any evil 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



67 



but the evil of a canting, deluded, and Metho- 
distical populace. Wherever Methodism ex- 
tends its baneful influence, the character of 
.the English people is constantl}'- changed by 
,it. Boldness and rough honesty are broken 
down into meanness, prevarication, and fraud. 
While Mr. Styles is so severe upon the in- 
dolence of the Church, he should recollect 
that his Methodists are the ex-party; that it is 
not in human nature, that any persons who 
quietly possess power can be as active as 
those who are pursuing it. The fair way to 
state the merit of the two parties is, to esti- 
mate what the exertions of the lachrymal and 
suspirious clergy would be, if they stepped 
into the endowments of their competitors. 
The moment they ceased to be paid by the 
groan, — the instant that Easter offerings no 
longer depended upon jumping and convul- 
sions, — Mr. Styles may assure himself, that 
the character of his darling preachers would 
be totally changed ; their bodies would become 
quiet, and their minds reasonable. 

It is not true, as this bad writer is perpe- 
tually saying, that the world hates piety. That 
modest and unobtrusive piety which fills the 
heart with all human charities, and makes a 
man gentle to others, and severe to himself, is 
an object of universal love and veneration. 
But mankind hate the lust of power when it 
is veiled under the garb of piety ; — they hate 
canting and hypocrisy ; — they hate advertisers 
and quacks and piety ; — they do not choose to 
be insulted ; — they love to tear folly and im- 
prudence from that altar which sliould only 
be a sanctuary for the wretched and the good. 

Having concluded his defence of Method- 
ism, this fanatical writer opens upon us his 
Missionary battery, firing away with the most 
incessant fury, and calling names, all the time, 
as loud as lungs accustomed to the eloquence 
of the tub usually vociferate. In speaking 
of the cruelties which their religion entails 
upon the Hindoos, Mr. Styles is peculiarly 
severe upon us for not being more shocked at 
their piercing their limbs with kimefi. This is 
rather an unfair mode of alarming his readers 
with the idea of some unknown instrument. 
He repi'esents himself as having paid consi- 
derable attention to the manners and customs 
of the Hmdoos ; and, therefore, the peculiar 
stress he lays upon this instrument is na- 
turally calculated to produce, in the minds of 
the humane, a great degree of mysterious 
terror. A drawing of the hime was impe- 
riously called for; and the want of it is a 
subtle evasion, for which Mr. Styles is fairly 
accountable. As he has been silent on this 
-subject, it is for us to explain the plan and 
nature of this terrible and unknown piece of 
mechanism. A kime, then, is neither more 
nor less than a false print in the Edinburgh 
Review for a knife ; and from this blunder of 
the printer has Mr. Styles manufactured this 
Dasdalean instrument of torture, called a 
hime. ! We were at first nearly persuaded 
by his arguments against klmes ,- — we grew 
frightened ; — we stated to ourselves the hor- 
ror of not sending missionaries to a nation 
Avhich used Mmes ,- — we were struck with the 
nice and accurate information of the Taber- 



nacle upon this important subject: — but we 
looked in the errata, and found Mr. Styles to 
be always Mr. Styles, — always cut off from 
every hope of mercy, and remaining for ever 
himself. 

Mr. Styles is right in saying we have abo- 
lished many practices of the Hindoos since 
the establishment of our empire ; but then we 
have always consulted the Brahmins, whether 
or not such practices were conformable to 
their religion ; and it is upon the authority of 
their condemnation that we have proceeded 
to abolition. 

To the whole of Mr. Styles's observations 
upon the introduction of Christianity into 
India, we have one short answer: — it is not 
Christianity which is introduced there, but 
the debased mummery and nonsense of Metho- 
dists, which has little more to do with the 
Christian religion than it has to do with th» 
religion of China. We would as soon con- 
sent that Brodum and Sohinon should carry 
the medical art of Europe into India, as that 
Mr. Styles and his Anabaptists should give to 
the Eastern World their notions of our reli- 
gion. We send men of the highest character 
for the administration of justice and the re- 
gulation^f trade, — nay, we take great pains 
to impress upon the minds of the natives the 
highest ideas of our arts and manufactures, 
by laying before them the finest specimens of 
our skill and ingenuity, — why, then, are com- 
mon sense and decency to be forgotten in re- 
ligion alone 1 and so foolish a set of men 
allowed to engage themselves in this occupa- 
tion, that the natives almost instinctively duck 
and pelt theml But the missionaries, we are 
told, have mastered the languages of the East. 
They may also, for aught we know, in the 
same time, have learnt perspective, astrono- 
my, or any thing else. What is all this to us ! 
Our charge is, that they want sense, conduct, 
and sound religion ; and that, if they are not 
watched, tlie throat of every European in 
India will be cut : — the answer to which is, 
that their progress in languages is truly asto 
nishing ! If they expose us to eminent peril, 
what matters it if they have every virtue 
under .heaven 1 We are not writing disserta 
tions upon the intellect of Brother Carey, bu' 
stating his character so far as it concerns us 
and caring for it no further. But these pious 
gentlemen care nothing about the loss of the 
country. The plan, it seems, is this : — We 
are to educate India in Christianity, as a pa- 
rent does his child ; and, when it is perfect in 
its catechism, then to pack up, quit it entirely, 
and leave it to its own management. This is 
the evangelical project for separating a colony 
from the parent country. They see nothing 
of the bloodshed, and massacres, and devasta- 
tions, nor of the speeches in parliament, squan- 
dered millions, fruitless expeditions, jobs and 
pensions, with which the loss of our Indian 
possessions would necessarily be accompa- 
nied ; nor will they see that these consequences 
could arise from the attempt, and not from the 
completion, of their scheme of conversion. 
We should be swept from the peninsula by Pa- 
gan zealots; and should lose, among other things, 
all chance of ever really converting them. 



WORKS or THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



What is the use, too, of telling us what these 
men endure 1 Suffering is not a merit, but 
only useful suffering. Prove to us that they 
are fit men, doing a fit thing, and we are ready 
to praise the missionaries ; but it gives us no 
pleasure to hear that a man has walked a 
thousand miles with peas in his shoes, unless 
we know why, and wherefore, and to what 
good purpose he has done it. 

But these men, it is urged, foolish and ex- 
travagant as they a,re, may be very useful pre- 
cursors of the established clergy. This is 
much as if a regular physician should send a 
quack doctor before him, and say, do you go 
and look after this disease for a day or two, 
and ply the patient well with your nostrums, 
and then I will step in and complete the cure; 
a more notable expedient we have seldom 
heard of. Its patrons forget that these self- 
ordained ministers, with Mr. John Styles at 
their head, abominate the established clergy 
ten thousand times more than they do Pagans, 
who cut themselves with cruel kimes. The 
efforts of these precursors would be directed 
with infinitely more zeal to make the Hindoos 
disbelieve in bishops, than to make them be- 
lieve in ChrisX. The darling passion in the 
soxil of every missionary is, not to teach the 
great leading truths of the Christian faith, but 
to enforce the little paltry modification and 
distinction which he first taught from his own 
tub. And then what a vv'ay of teaching Chris- 
tianity is this ! There are five sects, if not six, 
now employed as missionaries, every one in- 
structing the Hindoos in their own particular 
method of interpreting the Scriptures ; and, 
when these have completely succeeded, the 
Church of England is to step in, and convert 
them all over again to its own doctrines. 
There is, indeed, a very fine varnish of proba- 
bility over this ingenious andplausible scheme. 
Mr. John Styles, however, would much rather 
see a hime in the flesh of an Hindoo than the 
hand of a bishop on his head. 

The missionaries complain of intolerance. 
A weasel might as well complain of intoler- 
ance when he is throttled for sucking eggs. 
Toleration for their own opinions, — toleration 
for their domestic worship, for their .private 
groans and convulsions, they possess in the 
fullest extent; but who ever heard of tolera- 
tion for intolerance! Who ever before heard 
men cry out that they were persecuted, be- 
cause they might not insult the religion, shock 
the feelings, irritate the passions of their fel- 
low-creatures, and throw a whole colony into 
bloodshed and confusion 1 We did not say 
that a man was not an object of pity who 
tormented himself from a sense of duty, but 
that he was not so great an object of pity as 
one equally tormented by the tyranny of an- 
other, and without any sense of duty to sup- 
port him. Let Mr. Styles first inflict forty 
lashes upon himself, then let him allow an 
Edinburgh Reviewer to give him forty more, — 
he will find no comparison between the two 
flagellations. 

These men talk of the loss of our posses- 
sions in India, as if it made the argument 
against them only more or less strong ; where- 
as, in our estimation, it makes the argument 



against them conclusive, and shuts tip the 
case. Two men possess a cow, and they quar- 
rel violently how they shall manage this cow. 
They will surely both of them (if they have a 
particle of common sense) agree, that there is 
an absolute necessity for preventing the cow 
from running away. It is not only the loss 
of India that is in question, — but how will it 
be lost 1 By the massacre of ten or twenty 
thousand English, by the blood of our sons 
and brothers, who have been toiling so many 
years to return to their native country. But 
what is all this to a ferocious. Methodist? 
What care brothers Barrel and Ringletub for 
us and our colonies 1 

If it were possible to invent a method by 
which a few men sent from a distant country 
could hold such masses of people as the Hin- 
doos in subjection, that method would be the 
institution of castes. There is no institution 
which can so effectually curb the ambition of 
genius, reconcile the individual more com- 
pletely to his station, and reduce the varieties 
of human character to such a state of insipid 
and monotonous lameness; and yet the re- 
ligion which destroys castes is said to render 
our empire in India more certain ! It may be 
our duty to make the Hindoos Christians, — 
that is another argument : but, that we shall 
by so doing strengthen our empire, we utterly 
deny. What signifies identity of religion to a 
question of this kindl Diversity of bodily 
colour and of language would soon overpower 
this consideration. Make the Hindoos enter- 
prising, active, and reasonable as yourselves, 
— destroy the eternal track in which they have 
moved for ages — and, in a moment, they would 
sweep you oft' the face of the earth. Let us 
ask, too, if the Bible is universally diffused in 
Hindostan, what must be the astonishment 
of the natives to find that we are forbidden to 
rob, murder, and steal ; — we who, in fifty years, 
have extended our empire from a few acres 
about Madras over the whole peninsula, and 
sixty millions of people, and exemplified in 
oixr public conduct every crime of which hu- 
man nature is capable. What matchless im- 
pudence to follow up such practice with such 
precepts ! If we have common prudence, let 
us keep the gospel at home, and tell them that 
Machiavel is our prophet, and the god of the 
Manicheans our god. 

There is nothing which disgusts us more 
than the familiarity which these impious cox- 
combs affect with the ways and designs of Pro- 
vidence. Every man, now-a-days, is an Amos 
or a Malachi. One rushes out of his chambers, 
and tells us we are beaten by the French, be- 
cause we do not abolish the slave trade. An- 
other assures us, that we have no chance of 
victory till India is evangelized. The new 
Christians are now come to speak of the ways 
of their Creator with as much confidence els 
they would of the plans of an earthly ruler. 
We remember when the ways of God to man 
were gazed upon with trembling humility, — 
when they were called inscrutable, — when 
piety looked to another scene of existence for 
the true explanation of this ambiguous and 
distressing world. We were taught in our 
childhood that this was true religion; but it 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tarns out now to be nothing but atheism and 
infidelity. If any thing could surprise us from 
the pen of a Methodist, we should be truly sur- 
prised at the very irreligious and presump- 
tuous answer which Mr. Styles makes to some 
of our arguments. Our title to one of the an- 
ecdotes from the Methodist Magazine is as 
follows: — ''A sinner pimished — a Bee the in- 
strument;'' to which Mr. Styles replies, that we 
might as well ridicule the Scriptures, by re- 
lating their contents in the same ludicrous 
manner. An interference with respect to a tra- 
velling Jew,- blindness the consequence. Acts, 
the ninth chapter, and first nine verses. The 
account of Paul's conversion, ^c. <^c. <Src. page 38. 
But does Mr. Styles forget that the one is a 
shameless falsehood, introduced to sell a two- 
penny book, and the other a miracle recorded 
by inspired writers? In the same manner, 
when we express our surprise that sixty mil- 
lions of Hindoos should be converted by four 
men and sixteen guineas, he asks, what would 
have become of Christianity if the twelve 
Apostles had argued in the same way? It is 
impossible to make this infatuated gentleman 
understand that the lies of the Evangelical 
Magazine are not the miracles of Scripture; 
and that the Baptist Missionaries are not the 
Apostles. He seriously expects that we should 
speak of Brother Carey as we would speak of 
St. Paul; and treat with an equal respect the 
miracles of the Magazine and the Gospel. 

Mr. Styles knows very well that we have 
never said, because a nation has present hap- 
piness, that it can therefore dispense with im- 
mortal happiness ; but we have said that, where 
of two nations both cannot be made Christians, 
it is more the duty of a missionary to convert 
the one, which is exposed to every evil of bar- 
barism, than the other possessing every bless- 
ing of civilization. Our argument is merely 
comparative : Mr. Styles must have known it 
to be so : — but who does not love the Taber- 
nacle better than truth? When the tenacity 
of the Hindoos on the subject of their religion 
is adduced as a reason against the success of 
^the missions, the friends of this understanding 
are always fond of reminding us how patiently 
the Hindoos submitted to the religious perse- 
cutions and butchery of Tippoo. The infer- 
ence from such citations is truly alarming. 
It is the imperious duty of Government to 
watch some of these men most narrowly. — 
There is nothing of which they are not capa- 
ble. And what, after all, did Tippoo effect in 
the way of conversion ? How many Mahome- 
dans did he make ? There was all the car- 
nage of Medea's Kettle, and none of the trans- 
formation. He deprived multitudes of Hindoos 
of their caste, indeed; and cut them oif from 
all the benefits of their religion. That he did, 



69 

and we may do, by violence; but, did he make 
Mahomedans?— or shall we make Christians? 
This, however, it seems, is a matter of plea- 
santry. To make a poor Hindoo hateful to 
himself and his kindred, and to fix a curse 
upon him to the end of his days !— we have no 
doubt but that this is very entertaining; and 
particularly to the friends of toleration. But 
our ideas of comedy have been formed in 
another school. We are dull enough to think, 
too, that It IS more innocent to exile pigs than 
to offend conscience, and destroy human hap- 
piness. The scheme of baptizing with beef 
broth IS about as brutal and preposterous as 
the assertion that you may vilify the gods and 
priests of the Hindoos with safety, provided 
you do not meddle with their turbans and 
toupees, (which are cherished solely on a 
principle of religion,) is silly and contemptible. 
After all, if the Mahomedan did persecute the 
Hindoo with impunity, is that any precedent 
of safety to a government that offends every 
feeling both of Mahomedan and Hindoo at the 
same time ? You have a tiger and a bufialo 
in the same enclosure; and the tiger drives 
the buffalo before him;— is it therefore prudent 
in you to do that which will irritate them both, 
and bring their united strength upon you? 

In answer to the low malignity of this au- 
thor, we have only to reply, that we are, as we 
always have been, sincere friends to the con- 
version of the Hindoos. We admit the Hin- 
doo religion to be full of follies, and full of 
enormities ;— we think conversion a great 
duty; and should think, if it could be effected, a 
great blessing; but our opinion of the mis- 
sionaries and of their employer is such, that 
we most firmly believe, in less than twenty 
years, for the conversion of a few degraded 
wretches, who would be neither Methodists 
nor Hindoos, they would infallibly produce the 
massacre of every European in India;* the 
loss of our settlements ; and, consequently, of 
the chance of that slow, solid, and temperate 
introduction of Christianity, which the supe- 
riority of the European character may ulti- 
mately effect in the Eastern world. The Board 
of Control (all Atheists, and disciples of Vol- 
taire, of course) are so entirely of our way of 
thinking, that the most peremptory orders have 
been issued to send all the missionaries home 
upon the slightest appearance of disturbance. 
Those who have sons and brothers in India 
may now sleep in peace. Upon the transmis- 
sion of this order, Mr. Styles is said to have 
destroyed himself with a kime. 



♦Every opponent sayg of Major Scott's book, " What 
a dangerous book ! the arrival of it at Calcutta may 
throw the whole Indian empire into conftision ;" and yet 
these are the people whose religious prejudices may be 
insulted with impunity. 



70 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, 



HAT^NAH MOEE/ 

[Edinburgh Review, 1809.] 



This book is written, or supposed to be writ- 
ten, (for we would speak timidly of the mys- 
teries of superior beings,) by the celebrated 
Mrs. Hannah More ! We shall probably give 
great offence by such indiscretion; but still we 
must be excused for treating it as a book 
merely human, — an uninspired production, — 
the result of mortality left to itself, and de- 
pending on its own limited resources. In tak- 
ing up the subject in this point of view, we so- 
lemnly disclaim the slightest intention of in- 
dulging in any indecorous levity, or of wound- 
ing the religious feelings of a large class of very 
respectable persons. It is the only method in 
which we can possibly make this work a pro- 
per object of criticism. We have the strong- 
est possible doubts of the attributes usually 
ascribed to this authoress; and we think it 
more simple and manly to say so at once, than 
to admit nominally superlunary claims, which, 
in the progress of our remarks, we should vir- 
tually deny. 

Coelebs wants a wife: and, after the death 
of his father, quits his estate in Northumber- 
land to see the world, and to seek for one of 
its best productions, a woman, who may add 
materially to the happiness of his future life. 
His first journey is to London, where, in the 
midst of the gay society of the metropolis, of 
course, he does not find a wife ; and his next 
journey is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the 
head of the Methodists, a serious people, where, 
of course, he does find a wife. The exaltation, 
therefore, of what the authoress deems to be 
the religious, and the depreciation of what she 
considers to be the worldly character, and the 
influence of both upon matrimonial happiness, 
form the subject of this novel, — rather of this 
dramatic sermon. 

The machinery upon which the discourse is 
suspended is of the slightest and most inarti- 
ficial texture, bearing every mark of haste, and 
possessing not the slightest claim to merit. 
Events there are none; and scarcely a charac- 
ter of any interest. The book is intended to 
convey religious advice ; and no more labour 
appears to have been bestowed upon the story, 
than was merely sufficient to throw it out of 
the dry, didactic form. Lucilla is totally un- 
interesting; so is Mr. Stanley ; Br. Barlow still 
worse ; and Coelebs a mere clod or dolt. Sir 
John and Lady Belfield are rather more inte- 
resting — and for a very obvious reason: they 
have some faults ; they put us in mind of men 
and women ; they seem to belong to one com- 
mon nature with ourselves. As we read, we 
seem to think we might act as such people 
act, and therefore we attend; whereas imita- 



* Cmlebs in Search of a Wife ; comprehending Observa- 
rions on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Mo- 
rals. 2 vols. London, 1809. 



tion is hopeless in the more perfect characters 
which Mrs. More has set before us; and 
therefore they inspire us with very little inte- 
rest. 

There are books, however, of all kinds ; and 
those may not be unwisely planned which set 
before us very pure models. They are less 
probable, and therefore less amusing, than or- 
dinary stories; but they are more amusing 
than plain, unfabled precept. Sir Charles 
Grandison is less agreeable than Tom Jones; 
but it is more agreeable than Sherlock and 
Tillotson; and teaches religion and morality 
to many who would not seek it in the produc- 
tions of these professional writers. 

But, making every allowance for the diffi- 
culty of ihe task which Mrs. More has pre- 
scribed to herself, the book abounds with marks 
of negligence and want of skill ; with repre- 
sentations of life and manners which are either 
false or trite. 

Temples to friendship and virtue must be 
totally laid aside, for many years to come, in 
novels. Mr. Lane, of the Minerva Press, has 
given them up long since ; and we were quite 
surprised to find such a writer as Mrs. More 
busied in moral brick and mortar. Such an 
idea, at first, was merely juvenile ; the second 
time, a little nauseous ; but the ten thotisandth 
time it is quite intolerable. Coslebs, upon his 
first arrival in London, dines out, — meets with 
a bad dinner, — stipposes the cause of that bad 
dinner to be the erudition of the ladies of the 
house, — talks to them upon learned subjects, 
and finds them as dull and ignorant as if they 
had piqued themselves upon all the mysteries 
of housewifery. We humbly submit to Mrs. 
More, that this is not humorous, but strained 
and unnatural. Philippics against frugivo- 
rous children after dinner are too common. 
Lady Melbury has been introduced into every 
novel for these four years last past. Peace to 
her ashes ! 

The characters in this novel which evince 
the greatest skill are unquestionably those of 
Mrs. Ranby and her daughters. There are 
some scenes in this part of the book extremely 
well painted, and which evince that Mrs. More 
could amuse, in no common degree, if amuse- 
ment was her object. 

"At tea I found the young ladies took no 
more interest in the conversation than they 
had done at dinner, but sat whispering and 
laughing, and netting white silk gloves, till 
they were summoned to the harpsichord. 
Despairing of getting on with them in com 
pany, I proposed a walk in the garden. I now 
found them as willing to talk as destitute of 
any thing to say. Their conversation was 
vapid and frivolous. They laid great stress 
on small things. They seemed to have no 
shades in their understanding, but used the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



71 



strongest terms for the commonest occasions ; 
and admiration was excited by things hardly 
worthy to command attention. They were 
extremely glad and extremely sorry on sub- 
jects not calculated to excite afiections of 
any kind. They were animated about trifles, 
and indifferent on things of importance. They 
were, I must confess, frank and good-na- 
tured ; but it was evident that, as they were 
too open to have any thing to conceal, so 
they were too uninformed to have any thing 
to produce ; and I was resolved not to risk 
my happiness with a woman who could not 
contribute her full share towards spending 
a wet winter cheerfully in the country." — (I. 
54, 55.) 

This trait of character appears to us to be 
very good. The following passage is still 
better. 

" In the evening, Mrs. Ranby was lamenting 
in general, in rather customary terms, her own 
exceeding sinfulness. Mr. Ranby said, ' You 
accuse yourself rather too heavily, my dear ; 
you have sins to be sure.' ' And pray what 
sins have I, Mr. Ranby V said she, turning upon 
him with so much quickness that the poor 
man started. ' Nay,' said he, meekly, ' I did 
not mean to offend you ; so far from it, that, 
hearing you condemn yourself so grievously, 
I intended to comfort you, and to say that, 

except a few faults ' ' And pray what 

faults T'. interrupted she, continuing to speak, 
however, lest he should catch an interval to 
tell them. ' I defy you, Mr. Ranby, to produce 
one.' ' My dear,' replied he, ' as you charged 
yourself with all, I thought it would be letting 
you oif cheaply, by naming only two or three, 

such as ' Here, fearing matters would 

go too far, I interposed ; and, softening things 
as much as I could for the lady, said, ' I con- 
ceived that Mr. Ranby meant, that though she 

partook of the general corruption ' Here 

Ranby, interrupting me with more spirit than 
I thought he possessed, said, ' General corrup- 
tion, sir, must be the source of particular cor- 
ruption. I did not mean that my wife was 
worse *.han other women.' — ' Worse, Mr. 
Ranby, worse ]' cried she. Ranby, for the 
first time in his life, not minding her, went on, 
' As she is alwaj-^s insisting that the whole 
species is corrupt, she cannot help allowing 
that she herself has not quite escaped the infec- 
tion. Now, to be a sinner in the gross, and a 
saint in the detail — that is, to have all sins, 
and no faults — is a thing I do not quite com- 
prehend.' 

" After he had left the room, which he did 
as the shortest way of allaying the storm, she, 
apologizing for him, said, ' he was a well- 
meaning man, and acted up to the little light 
he had ;' but added, ' that he was unacquainted 
with religious feelings, and knew little of the 
nature of conversion.' 

" Mrs. Ranby, I found, seems to consider 
Christianity as a kind of free-masonry; and 
therefore thinks it superfluous to speak on 
serious subjects to any but the initiated. If 
they do not return the sign, she gives them up 
as blind and dead. She thinks she can only 
make herself intelligible to those to whom 



certain peculiar phrases are familiar: and' 
though her friends may be correct, devo^^t, and 
both doctrinally and practically pious ; yet, if 
they cannot catch a certain mystic meaning, — 
if there is not a sympathy of intelligence 
between her and them, — if they do not fully 
conceive of impressions, and cannot I'espond 
to mysterious communications, she holds them 
unworthy of intercourse with her. She does 
not so much insist on high moral excellence 
as the criterion of their worth, as on their 
own account of their internal feelings." — (L 
60— 6a) 

The great object kept in view, throughout 
the whole of this introduction, is the enforce- 
ment of religious principle, and the condemna- 
tion of a life lavished in dissipation and 
fashionable amusement. In the pursuit of this 
object, it appears to us that Mis. More is much 
too severe upon the ordinary amusements of 
mankind, many of which she does not object 
to in this or that degree, but altogether.. 
Coelebs and Lucilla, her optimus and optima, 
never dance, and never go to the play. They 
not only stay away from the comedies of 
Congreve and Farquhar, for which they may 
easily enough be forgiven ; but they never go 
to see Mrs. Siddons in the Gamester, or in 
Jane Shore. The finest exhibition of talent, 
and the most beautiful moral lessons, are in- 
terdicted at the theatre. There is something 
in the word Playhouse which seems so closely 
connected, in the minds of these people, with 
sin and Satan, — that it stands in their vocabu- 
lary for every species of abomination. And 
yet why 1 Where is every feeling more roused 
in favour of virtue than at a good play ? 
Where is goodness so feelingly, so enthusias- 
tically learnt 1 What so solemn as lo see the 
excellent passions of the human heart called 
forth by a great actor, animated by a great poet 1 
To hear Siddons repeat what Shakspeare wrote 1 
To behold the child and his mother — the noble 
and the poor artisan — the monarch and his 
subjects — all ages and all ranks convulsed 
with one common passion — wrung with one 
common anguish, and, with loud sobs and 
cries, doing involuntary homage to the God 
that made their hearts ! What wretched infa- 
tuation to interdict such amusements as these ! 
What a blessing that mankind can be allured 
from sensual gratification, and find relaxation 
and pleasure in such pursuits ! But the excel- 
lent Mr. Stanley is uniformly paltry and nar- 
row, — always trembling at the idea of being 
entertained, and thinking no Christian safe 
who is not dull. As to the spectacles of im- 
propriety which are sometimes witnessed in 
parts of the theatre, such reasons apply, in a 
much stronger degree, to not driving along the 
Strand, or any of the great public streets of 
London, after dark ; and, if the virtue of well- 
educated young persons is made of such very 
frail materials, their best resource is a nun- 
nery at once. It is a very bad rule, however, 
never to quit the house for fear of catching 
cold. 

Mrs. More practically extends the same 
doctrine to cards and assemblies. No cards 
— because cards are employed in gaming ; no 
assemblies — because many dissipated persons 



n 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pass their lives in assemblies. Carry this but 
a little further, and we must say, no wine — 
because of drunkenness ; no meat — because 
of gluttony; no use, that there may be no 
abuse ! The fact is, that Mr. Stanley wants, 
not only to be religious, but to be at the head 
of the religious. These little abstinences are 
the cockades by which the party are known, — 
the rallying points for the evangelical faction. 
So natural is the love of power, that it some- 
times becomes the influencing motive with the 
sincere advocates of that blessed religion 
whose very characteristic excellence fs the 
humility which it inculcates. 

We observe that Mrs. More, in one part of 
her work, falls into the common error about 
dress. She first blames ladies for exposing 
their persons in the present style of dress, and 
then says, if they knew their own interest, — if 
they were aware how much more alluring 
they were to men when their charms are less 
displayed, they would make the desired altera- 
tion from motives merely selfish. 

" Oh ! if women in general knew what was 
their real interest, if they could guess with 
what a charm even the appearance of modesty 
invests its possessor, they would dress deco- 
rously from mere self-love, if not from prin- 
ciple. The designing would assume modesty 
as an artifice ; the coquette would adopt it as 
an allurement; the pure as her appropriate 
attraction ; and the voluptuous as the most 
infallible art of seduction." — (I. 189.) 

If there is any truth in this passage, nudity 
becomes a virtue ; and no decent woman, for 
the future, can be seen in garments. 

We have a few more of Mrs. More's opinions 
to notice. — It is not fair to attack the religion 
of the times, because, in large and indiscri- 
minate parties, religion does not become the 
subject of conversation. Conversation must 
and ought to grow out of materials on which 
men can agree, not upon subjects which try 
the passions. But this good lady wants to see 
men chatting together upon the Pelagian 
heresy — to hear, in the afternoon, the theolo- 
gical rumours of the day — and to glean pole- 
mical tittle-tattle at a tea-table rout. All the 
disciples of this school uniformly fall into the 
same mistake. They are perpetually calling 
upon their votaries for religious thoughts and 
religious conversation in every thing ; inviting 



them to ride, walk, row, wrestle, and dine out 
religiously ; — forgetting that the being to whom 
this impossible purity is recommended, is a 
being compelled to scramble for his existence 
and support for ten hours out of the sixteen he 
is awake ; — forgetting that he must dig, beg, 
read, think, move, pay, receive, praise, scold, 
command, and obey ; — forgetting, also, that if 
men conversed as often upon religious subjects 
as they do upon the ordinary occurrences of 
the world, they would converse upon them 
with the same familiarity and want of respect, 
— that religion would then produce feelings not 
more solemn or exalted than any other topics 
which constitute at present the common furni- 
ture of human understandings. 

We are glad to find in this work some strong 
compliments to the efficacy of works, — some 
distinct admissions that it is necessary to be 
honest and just, before we can be considered 
as religious. Such sort of concessions are 
very gratifying to us ; but how will they be 
received by the children of the Tabernacle 1 
It is quite clear, indeed, throughout the whole 
of the work, that an apologetic al explanation 
of certain religious opinions is intended; and 
there is a considerable abatement of that tone 
of insolence with which the improved Chris- 
tians are apt to treat the bungling specimens 
of piety to be met with in the more ancient 
churches. 

So much for the extravagances of this lady. 
— With equal sincerity, and with greater plea- 
sure we bear testimony to her talents, her good 
sense, and her real piety. There occur every 
now and then, in her productions, very original, 
and very profound observations. Her advice 
is very often characterized by the most amiable 
good sense, and conveyed in the most brilliant 
and inviting style. If, instead of belonging to 
a trumpery faction, she had only watched over 
those great points of religion in which the 
hearts of every sect of Christians are interest- 
ed, she would have been one of the most useful 
and valuable writers of her day. As it is, 
every man would wish his wife and his children 
to read Coelebs ,- — watching himself its effects ; 
— separating the piety from the puerility ; — 
and showing that it is very possible to be a 
good Christian, without degrading the human 
understanding to the trash and folly of Me- 
thodism. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



73 



PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION/ 



[Edinbuegh Review, 1809.]. 



Tbebe arp two questions to be asked respect- 
ing every new publication. Is it worth buying 1 
Is it worth borrowing 1 and we would advise 
our readers to weigh diligently the importance 
of these interrogations, before they take any 
decided step as to this work of Mr. Edgeworth ; 
the more especially as the name carries with 
it considerable authority, and seems, in the 
estimation of the unwary, almost to include 
the idea of purchase. For our own part, we 
would rather decline giving a direct answer to 
these questions ; and shall content ourselves 
for the present with making a few such slight 
observations as may enable the sagacious to 
conjecture what our direct answer would be 
■were we compelled to be more explicit. 

One great and signal praise we think to be 
the eminent due of Mr. Edgeworth : in a cant- 
ing age, he does not cant; — at a period when 
hypocrisy and fanaticism will almost certainly 
insure the success of any publication, he has 
constantly disdained to have recourse to any 
such arts ; — without ever having been accused 
of disloyalty or irreligion, he is not always 
harping upon Church and King, in order to 
catch at a little popularity, and sell his books ; — 
he is manly, independent, liberal — and main- 
tains enlightened opinions with discretion and 
honesty. There is also in this work of Mr. 
Edgeworth an agreeable diffusion of anecdote 
and example, such as a m'an acquires who 
reads with a view to talking or writing. With 
these merits, we cannot say that Mr. Edgeworth 
is either very new, very profound, or very apt 
to be right in his opinion. He is active, enter- 
prising, and unprejudiced ; but we have not 
been very much instructed by what he has 
written, or always satisfied that he has got to 
the bottom of his subject. 

On one subject, however, we cordially agree 
with this gentleman ; and return him our thanks 
for the courage with which he has combated 
the excessive abuse of classical learning in 
England. It is a subject upon which we have 
long wished for an opportunity of saying 
something ; and one which we consider to be 
of the very highest importance. 

" The principal defect," says Mr. Edgeworth, 
"in the present system of our great schools is, 
that they devote too large a portion of time to 
Latin and Greek. It is true, that the attainment 
- of classical literature is highly desirable ; but 
it should not, or rather it need not, be the ex- 
clusive object of boys during eight or nine 
years. 

"Much less time, judiciously managed, would 
give them an acquaintance with the classics 
sufficient for all useful purposes, and would 
make them as good scholars as gentlemen or 



* Essays on Professional Education. By R. I,. Edoe- 
WOKTH, Esq., F. K. S., &c. London, 1809. 
10 



professional men need to be. It is not requi- 
site that every man should make Latin or 
Greek verses ; therefore, a knowledge of pro- 
sody beyond the structure of hexameter and 
pentameter verses, is as worthless an acquisi- 
tion as any which folly or fashion has intro- 
duced amongst the higher classes of mankind. 
It must indeed be acknowledged that there are 
some rare exceptions ; but even party prejudice 
would allow, that the persons alluded to must 
have risen to eminence though they had never 
written sapphics or iambics. Though precep- 
tors, parents, and the public in general, maybe 
convinced of the absurdity of making boys 
spend so much of life in learning what can be 
of no use to them ; such are the difficulties of 
making any change in the ancient rules of 
great establishments, that masters themselves, 
however reasonable, dare not, and cannot make 
sudden alterations. 

"The only remedies that can be suggested 
might be, perhaps, to take those boys, who are 
not intended for professions in which deep 
scholarship is necessary, away from school 
before they reach the highest classes, where 
prosody and Greek and Latin verses are 
required. 

" In the college of Dublin, where an admira- 
ble course of instruction has been long esta- 
blished, where this course is superintended by 
men of acknowledged learning and abilities, 
and pursued by students of uncommon in- 
dustry, such is the force of example, and such 
the fear of appearing inferior in trifles to En- 
glish universities, that much pains have been 
lately taken to introduce the practice of writ- 
ing Greek and Latin verses, and much solici- 
tude has been shown about the prosody of the 
learned languages, without any attention being 
paid to the prosody of our own. 

" Boarding-houses for the scholars at Eton 
and Westminster, which are at present mere 
lodging houses, might be kept by private tutors, 
who might, during the hours when the boys 
were not in their public classes, assist them in 
acquiring general literature, or such know- 
ledge as might be advantageous for their re- 
spective professions. 

" New schools, that are not restricted to any 
established routine, should give a fair trial to 
experiments in education, which afford a ra- 
tional prospect of success. If nothing can be 
altered in the old schools, leave them as they 
are. Destroy nothing — injure none — but let 
the public try whether they cannot have some- 
thing better. If the experiment do not suc- 
ceed, the public will be convinced that they 
ought to acquiesce in the established methods 
of instruction, and parents will send their 
children to the ancient seminaries with in- 
creased confidence." — (p. 47 — 49.) 

We are well aware that nothing very new 
G 



74 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



can remain to be said upon a topic so often 
debated. The complaints we have to make 
are at least a.s old as the time of Locke and 
Dr. Samuel Clarke ; and the evil which is the 
subject of these complaints has certainly 
rather increased than diminished since the 
period of those two great men. An hundred 
years, to be sure, is a very little time for the 
duration of a national error; and it is so far 
from being reasonable to look for its decay at 
so short a date, that it can hardly be expected, 
within such limits, to have displayed the full 
bloom of its imbecility. 

There are several feelings to which attention 
must be paid, before the question of classical 
learning can be fairly and temperately dis- 
cussed. 

We are apt, in the first place, to remember 
the immense benefits which the study of the 
classics once conferred on mankind ; and to 
feel for those models on which the taste of 
Europe has been formed, something like senti- 
ments of gratitude and obligation. This is all 
well enough, so long as it continues to be a 
mere feeling; but, as soon as it interferes with 
action, it nourishes dangerous prejudices about 
education. Nothing will do in the pursuit of 
knowledge but the blackest ingratitude; the 
moment we have got up the ladder we must 
kick it down; — as soon as we have passed 
over the bridge, we must let it rot ; — when we 
have got upon the shoulders of the ancients, 
we must look over their heads. The man who 
forgets the friends of his childhood in real life, 
is base: but he who clings to the props of his 
childhood in literature, must be content to re- 
main as ignorant as he was when a child. His 
business is to forget, disown, and deny — to 
think himself above every thing which has 
been of use to him in time past — and to culti- 
vate that exclusively from which he expects 
future advantage : in short, to do every thing 
for the advancement of his knowledge which 
it would be infamous to do for the advancement 
of his fortune. If mankind still derive advan- 
tage from classical literature proportionate to 
the labour they bestow upon it, let their labour 
and their study proceed ; but the moment we 
cease to read Latin and Greek for the solid 
utility we derive from them, it would be a very 
romantic application of human talents to do so 
from any feeling of gratitude, and recollection 
of past service. 

To almost everj-- Englishman up to the age 
of three or four and twenty, classical learning 
has been the great object of existence ; and no 
man is very apt to suspect, or very much 
pleased to hear, that what he has done for so 
long a time was not worth doing. His clas- 
sical literature, too, reminds every man of the 
scenes of his childhood, and brings to his fancy 
several of the most pleasing associations 
which we are capable of forming. A certain 
sort of vanity, also, very naturally grows 
among men occupied in a common pursuit. 
Classical quotations are the watchwords of 
scholars, by which they distinguish each other 
from the ignorant and illiterate; and Greek 
and Latin are insensibly become almost the 
only test of a cultivated mind. 

Some men through indolence, others through 



ignorance, and most through necessity, submit' 
to the established education of the times ; and 
seek for their children that species of distinc- 
tion which happens, at the period in which 
they live, to be stamped with the approbation 
of mankind. This mere question of conve- 
nience every parent must determine for him- 
self. A poor man, who has his fortune to 
gain, must be a quibbling theologian, or a 
classical pedant, as fashion dictates ; and he 
must vary his error with the error of the times. 
But it would be much more fortunate for man- 
kind, if the public opinion, which regulates 
the pursuits of individuals, were more wise 
and enlightened than it at present is. 

All these considerations make it extremely 
difficult to procure a candid hearing on this 
question ; and to refer this branch of educa- 
tion to the only proper criterion of every 
branch of education — its utility in future life. 

There are two questions which grow out of 
this subject: 1st, How far is any sort of clas- 
sical education useful 1 2d, How far is that 
particular classical education adopted in this 
country useful 1 

Latin and Greek are, in the first place, use- 
ful, as they inure children to intellectual diffi- 
culties, and make the life of a young student 
what it ought to be, a life of considerable 
labour. We do not, of course, mean to con- 
fine this praise exclusively to the study of 
Latin and Greek; or to suppose that other 
difficulties might not be found which it would 
be useful to overcome : but though Latin and 
Greek have this merit in common with many 
arts and sciences, still they have it ; and, if 
they do nothing else, they at least secure a 
solid and vigorous application at a period of 
life which materially influences all other pe- 
riods. 

To go through the grammar of one language 
thoroughly is of great use for the mastery of 
every other grammar ; because there obtains, 
through all languages, a certain analogy to 
each other in their grammatical construction. 
Latin and Greek have now mixed themselves 
etymologically with all the languages of mo- 
dern Europe — and with none more than our 
own; so that it is necessary to read these two 
tongues for other objects than themselves. 

The two ancient languages are, as mere in- 
ventions — as pieces of mechanism — incompa- 
rably more beautiful than any of the modern 
languages of Europe : their mode of signifying 
time and case by terminations, instead of aux- 
iliary verbs and participles, would of itself 
stamp their superiority. Add to this, the co- 
piousness of the Greek language, with the 
fancy, majesty, and harmony of its com- 
pounds ; and there are quite sufficient reasons 
why the classics should be studied for the 
beauties of language. Compared to them, 
merely as vehicles of thought and passion, 
all modern languages are dull, ill-contrived, 
and barbarous. 

That a great part of the Scriptures has 
come down to us in the Greek lansfuage, is of 
itself a reason, if all others were wanting, why 
education should be planned so as to produce 
a supply of Greek scholars. " 

The cultivation of style is very justly made 



WORKS OP THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



75 



a part of education. Every thing which is 
written is meant either to please or to instruct. 
The second object it is difficult to effect, with- 
out attending to the first; and the cultivation 
of style is the acquisition of those rules and 
literary habits which sagacity anticipates, or 
experience shows to be the most effectual 
means of pleasing. Those works are the best 
which have longest stood the test of time, and 
pleased the greatest numbers of exercised 
minds. Whatever, therefore, our conjectures 
may be, we cannot be so sure that the best 
modern writers can afford us as good models 
as the ancients ; — we cannot be certain that 
they will live through the revolutions of the 
world, and continue to please in every climate 
— under every species of government — through 
every stage of civilization. The moderns 
have been well taught by their masters ; but 
the time is hardly yet come when the necessity 
for such instruction no longer exists. We 
may still borrow descriptive power from Ta- 
citus ; dignified perspicuity from Livy ; simpli- 
city from Ceesar ; and from Homer some por- 
tion of that light and heat which, dispersed 
into ten thousand channels, has filled the world 
with bright images and illustrious thoughts. 
Let the cultivator of modern literature addict 
himself to the purest models of taste which 
France, Italy, and England could supply, he 
might still learn from Virgil to be majestic, 
and from TibuUus to be tender ; he might not 
yet look upon the face of nature as Theocritus 
saw it ; nor might he reach those springs of 
pathos with which Euripides softened the 
hearts of his audience. In short, it appears to 
us, that there are so many excellent reasons 
why a certain number of scholars should be 
kept up in this and in every civilized country, 
that we should consider every system of edu- 
cation from which classical education was 
excluded, as radically erroneous and com- 
pletely absurd. 

That vast advantages, then, may be derived 
from classical learning, there can be no doubt. 
The advantages which are derived from clas- 
sical learning by the English manner of teach- 
ing, involve another and a very different ques- 
tion ; and we will venture to say, that there never 
was a more complete instance in any country 
of such extravagant and overacted attachment 
to any branch of knowledge as that which ob- 
tains in this country with regard to classical 
knowledge. A young Englishman goes to 
school at six or seven years old ; and he re- 
mains in a course of education till twenty-three 
or twenty-four years of age. In all that time, 
his sole and exclusive occupation is learning 
Latin and Greek :* he has scarcely a notion 
that there is any other kind of excellence ; and 
the great system of facts with which he is the 
most perfectly acquainted, are the intrigues of 
the heathen gods : with whom Pan slept 1 — 
with whom Jupiter? — whom Apollo ravished? 
These facts the English youth get by heart the 
moment they quit the nursery ; and are most 
sedulously and industriously instructed in 
them till the best and most active part of life 

* Unless he goes to the University of Cambridge ; and 
then classics occupy him entirely for about ten years; 
and divide liim with matbematics for four or five more. 



is passed away. Now, this long career of 
classical learning, we may, if we please, de- 
nominate a foundation; but it is a foundation 
so far above ground, that there is absolutely 
no room to put any thing upon it. If you 
occupy a man with one thing till he is twenty- 
four years of age, you have exhausted all his 
leisure time : he is called into the world, and 
compelled to act ; or is surrounded with plea- 
sures, and thinks and reads no more. If you have 
neglected to put other things in him, they will 
never get in afterwards ;— if you have fed him 
only with words, he will remain a narrow and 
limited being to the end of his existence. 

The bias given to men's minds is so strong, 
that it is no uncommon thing to meet with 
Englishmen, whom, but for their gray hairs 
and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for 
schoolboys. Their talk is of Latin verses; 
and it is quite clear, if men's ages are to be 
dated from the state of their mental progress, 
that such men are eighteen years of age, and 
not a day older. Their minds have been so 
completely possessed by exaggerated notions 
of classical learning, that they have not been 
able, in the great school of the world, to form 
any other notion of real greatness. Attend, 
too, to the public feelings— look to all the terms 
of applause. A learned man ! — a scholar ! — a 
man of erudition ! Upon whom are these epi- 
thets of approbation bestowed? Are they 
given to men acquainted with the science of 
government ? thoroughly masters of the geo- 
graphical and commercial relations of Europe ? 
to men who know the properties of bodies, and 
their action upon each other ? No : this is not 
learning: it is chemistry, or political economy 
—not learning. The distinguishing abstract 
term, the epithet of Scholar, is reserved for 
him who writes on the CEolic reduplication, 
and is familiar with the Sylburgian method of 
arranging defectives in a> and /ui. The picture 
which a young Englishman, addicted to the 
pursuit of knowledge, draws — his beau ideal of 
human nature — his top and consummation of 
man's powers — is a knowledge of the Greek 
language. His object is not to reason, to 
imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate, de- 
cline,, and derive. The situations of imagina- 
ry glory which he draws for himself, are the 
detection of an anapsest in the wrong place, or 
the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius 
had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti 
failed to observe. If a young classic of this 
kind were to meet the greatest chemist or the 
greatest mechanician, or the most profound 
political economist of his time, in company 
with the greatest Greek scholar, would the 
slightest comparison between them ever come 
across his mind? — would he ever dream that 
such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were 
equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the 
same utility as, Bentley and Heyne ? We are 
inclined to think, that the feeling excited would 
be a good deal like that which was expressed 
by Dr. George about the praises of the great 
King of Prussia, who entertained considerable 
doubts whether the king, with all his victories, 
knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in jui. 

Another misfortune of classical learning, as 
taught in England, is, that scholars have come. 



76 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



in process of time, and from the effects of asso- 
ciation, to love the instrument better than the 
end ; — not the luxury which the dilficulty en- 
closes, but the difficulty ; — not the filbert, but 
the shell; — not what may be read in Greek, 
but Greek itself. It is not so much the man 
who has mastered the wisdom of the ancients, 
that is valued, as he who displays his know- 
ledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is 
conveyed. The glory is to show 1 am a scho- 
lar. The good sense and ingenuity I may gain 
by my acquaintance with ancient authors is 
matter of opinion ; but if I bestow an immen- 
sity of pains upon a point of accent or quan- 
tity, this is something positive ; I establish my 
pretensions to the name of scholar, and gain 
the credit of learning, while I sacrifice all its 
utility. 

Another evil in the present system of classi- 
cal education is the extraordinary perfection 
which is aimed at in teaching those languages; 
a needless perfection ; an accuracy which is 
sought for in nothing else. There are few 
boys who remain to the age of eighteen or 
nineteen at a public school, without making 
above ten thousand Latin verses ; — a greater 
number than is contained in the JF/neid- and 
after he has made this quantity of verses in a 
dead language, unless the poet should happen 
to be a very weak man indeed, he never makes 
another as long as he lives. It may be urged, 
and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching 
the delicacies of the language. No doubt it 
is of use for this purpose, if we put out of 
view the immense time and trouble sacrificed 
in gaining these little delicacies. It would be 
of use that we should go on till fifty years of 
age making Latin verses, if the price of a 
whole life were not too much to pay for it. 
We effect our object ; but we do it at the price 
of something greater than our object. And 
whence comes it, that the expenditure of life 
and labour is totally put out of the calculation, 
when Latin and Greek are to be attained 1 In 
every other occupation, the question is fairly 
stated between the attainment, and the time 
employed in the pursuit; — but, in classical 
learning, it seems to be sufficient if the least 
possible good is gained by the greatest possible 
exertion ; if the end is any thing, and the means 
every thing. It is of some importance to speak 
and write French ; and innumerable delicacies 
would be gained by writing ten thousand 
French verses : but it makes no part of our 
education to write French poetry. It is of 
some importance that there should be good 
botanists ; but no botanist can repeat, by heart, 
the names of all the plants in the known 
world ; nor is any astronomer acquainted with 
the appellation and magnitude of every star in 
*the map of the heavens. The only department 
of human knowledge in which there can be no 
excess, no arithmetic, no balance of profit and 
loss, is classical learning. 

The prodigious honour in which Latin verses 
are held at public schools, is surely the most 
absurd of all absurd distinctions. You rest all 
reputation upon doing that which is a natural 
gift, and which no labour can attain. If a lad 
won't learn the words of a language, his de- 
gradatioa ia the school is a very natural pun- 



ishment for his disobedience, or his indolence; 
but it would be as reasonable to expect that all 
boys should be witty, or beautiful, as that they 
should be poets. In either case, it would be 
to make an accidental, unattainable, and not a 
very important gift of nature, the only, or the 
principal, test of merit. This is the reason 
why boys, who make a very considerable 
figure at school, so very often make no figure 
in the world ; — and why other lads, who are 
passed over without notice, turn out to be va- 
luable, important men. The test established in 
the world is widely different from that esta- 
blished in a place which is presumed to be a 
preparation for the world ; and the head of a 
public school, who is a perfect miracle to his 
contemporaries, finds himself shrink into ab- 
solute insignificance, because he has nothing 
else to command respect or regard, but a talent 
for fugitive poetry in a dead language. 

The present state of classical education cul- 
tivates the imagination a great deal too much, 
and other habits of mind a great deal too little; 
and trains up many young men in a style of 
elegant imbecility, ytterly unworthy of the 
talents with which nature has endowed them. 
It may be said, there are profound investiga- 
tions, and subjects quite powerful enough for 
any understanding, to be met with in classical 
literature. So there are ; but no man likes to 
add the difficulties of a language to the diffi- 
culties of a subject; and to study metaphysics, 
morals, and politics in Greek, when the Greek 
alone is study enough without them. In all 
foreign languages, the most popular works are 
works of imagination. Even in the French 
language, which we know so well, for one 
serious work which has any currency in this 
country, we have twenty which are mere works 
of imagination. This is still more true in 
classical literature ; because what their poets 
and orators have left us, is of infinitely greater 
value than the remains of their philosophy ; 
for, as society advances, men think more ac- 
curately and deeply, and imagine more tamely; 
works of reasoning advance, and works of 
fancy decay. So that the matter of fact is, that 
a classical scholar of twenty-three or twenty- 
four years of age, is a man principally conver- 
sant with the works of imagination. His feel- 
ings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste 
good. Talents for speculation and original 
inquiry he has none ; nor has he formed the 
invaluable habit of pushing things up to their 
first principles, or of collecting dry and un- 
amusing facts as the materials of reasoning. 
All the solid and masculine parts of his under- 
standing are left wholly without cultivation ; 
he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects 
every man whose boldness and originality call 
upon him to defend his opinions and prove his 
assertions. 

A very curious argument is sometimes em- 
ployed in justification of the learned minutiae 
to which all young men are doomed, whatever 
be their propensities in future life. What are 
you to do with a young man up to the age of se- 
venteen 1 Just as if there was such a want of 
difficulties to overcome, and of important 
tastes to inspire, that from the mere necessity 
of doing something, and the impossibility of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



77 



doing any thing else, you were driven to the 
expedient of metre and poetry; — as if a young 
man within that period might not acquire the 
modern languages, modern history, experimen- 
tal philosophy, geography, chronology, and a 
considerable share of mathematics ; — as if the 
memory of things was not more agreeable 
and more profitable than the memory of words. 
The great objection is, that we are not mak- 
ing the most of human life, when we consti- 
tute such an extensive, and such minute clas- 
sical erudition, an indispensable article in 
education. Up to a certain point we would 
educate every young man in Latin and Greek ; 
but to a point far short of that to which this 
species of education is now carried. After- 
wards, we would grant to classical erudition as 
high honours as to every other department of 
knowledge, but not higher. We would place 
it upon a footing with many other objects of 
study ; but allow it no superiority. Good 
scholars would be as certainly produced by 
these means as good chemists, astronomers, 
and mathematicians are now produced, with- 
out any direct provision whatsoever for their 
production. Why are we to trust to the diver- 
sity of human tastes, and the varieties of human 
ambition in every thing else, and distrust it in 
classics alone? The passion for language is 
just as strong as any other literary passion. 
There are very good Persian and Arabic 
scholars in this country. Large heaps of trash 
have been dug up from Sanscrit ruins. We 
have seen, in our own times, a clergyman of 
the University of Oxford complimenting their 

' majesties in Coptic and Syrophcenician verses; 
and yet we doubt whether there will be a suffi- 
cient avidity in literary men to get at the beau- 
ties of the finest writers which the world has 
yet seen ; and though the Bagvat Gliecta has 
(as can be proved) met with human beings to 
translate, and other human beings to read it, 
we think that, in order to secure an attention 

. to Homer and Virgil, we must catch up every 
man — whether he is to be a clergyman or a 
duke, — begin with him at six years of age, and 
never quit him till he is twenty; making him 
conjugate and decline for life and death ; and 
so teaching him to estimate his progress in 
real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the 
Greek tragedians. 

The English clergy, in whose hands educa- 
tion entirely rests, bring up the first young 
men of the country as if they were all to keep 
grammar schools in little country towns ; and 
a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and libe- 
rality the honour and welfare of his country 
may depend, is diligently worried, for half 
his life, with the small pedantry of longs and 
shorts. There is a timid and absurd appre- 
hension, on the part of ecclesiastical tutors, 
of letting out the minds of youth upon difficult 
and important subjects. They fancy that men- 
tal exertion must end in religious scepticism; 
and, to preserve the principles of their pupils, 
they confine them to the safe and elegant im- 
becility of classical learning. A genuine Ox- 
ford tutor would shudder to hear his young 
men disputing upon moral and political truth, 
forming and pulling down theories, and indulg- 
ing in all the boldness of youthful discussion. 



He would augur nothing from it but impiety to 
God and treason to kings. And yet, who vili- 
fies both more than the holy poltroon who care- 
fully averts from them the searching eye of 
reason, and who knows no better method of 
teaching the highest duties, than by extirpating 
the finest qualities and habits of the mind ? 
If our religion is a fable, the sooner it is ex- 
ploded the better. If our government is bad, 
it should be amended. But we have no doubt 
of the truth of the one, or of the excellence of 
the other ; and are convinced that both will be 
placed on a firmer basis in proportion as the 
minds of men are more trained to the investi- 
gation of truth. At present, we act with the 
minds of our young men as the Dutch did with 
their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of 
talent is annually destroyed in the universities 
of England by the miserable jealousy and lit- 
tleness of ecclesiastical instructors. It is in. 
vain to say we have produced great men under 
this system. We have produced great men 
under all systems. Every Englishman must 
pass half his life in learning Latin and Greek ; 
and classical learning is supposed to have pro- 
duced the talents which it has not been able to 
extinguish. It is scarcely passible to prevent 
great men from rising up under any system of 
education, however bad. Teach men demono- 
logy or astrology, and you will still have a cer- 
tain portion of original genius, in spite of these 
or any other branches of ignorance and folly. 

There is a delusive sort of splendour in a 
vast body of men pursuing one object, and 
thoroughly obtaining it ; and yet, though it is 
very splendid, it is far from being useful. 
Classical literature is the great object at Ox- 
ford. Many minds so employed have produced 
many works and much fame in that depart- 
ment; but if all liberal arts and sciences use- 
ful to human life had been taught there, — if 
some have dedicated themselves to chemistry, 
some to mathematics, some to experimental 
philosophy, — and if every attainment had been 
honoured in the mixed ratio of its difficulty 
and utility, — the system of such an University 
would have been much more valuable, but the 
splendour of its name something less. 

When an University has been doing useless 
things for a long time, it appears at first de- 
grading to them to be useful. A set of lectures 
upon political economy would be discouraged 
in Oxford,* probably despised, probably not 
permitted. To discuss the inclosure of com- 
mons, and to dwell upon imports and exports, 
— to come so near to common life, would seem 
to be undignified and contemptible. In the 
same manner, the Parr, or the Bentley of his 
day, would be scandalized in an University to 
be put on a level with the discoverer of a neu- 
tral salt ; and yet, what other measure is there 
of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness 
and diflSculty 1 And what ought the term Uni- 
versity to mean, but a place where every 
science is taught which is liberal, and at the 
same time useful to mankind! Nothing 
would so much tend to bring classical litera- 
ture wdthin proper bounds, as a steady and 
invariable appeal to these tests in our appre- 



* They have since been established. 
G 2 



78 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



ciation of all human knowledge. The puffed 
up pedant would collapse into his proper size, 
and the maker of verses, and the rememberer 
of words, would soon assume that station which 
is the lot of those who go up unbidden to the 
upper places of the feast. 

We should be sorry if what we have said 
should appear too contemptuous towards clas- 
sical learning, which we most sincerely hope 
will always be held in great honour in this 
country, though we certainly do not wish 
to it that exclusive honour which it at pre- 
sent enjoys. A great classical scholar is an 
ornament, and an important acquisition to 
nis country ; but, in a place of education, we 
would give to all knowledge an equal chance 
for distinction ; and would trust to the varieties 
of human disposition that every science worth 
cultivation would be cultivated. Looking al- 
ways to real utility as our guide, we should 
see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inqui- 
sitive mind arranging the productions of na- 
ture, investigating the qualities of bodies, or 
mastering the difficulties of the learned lan- 
guages. We should not care whether he were 
chemist, naturalist, or scholar; because we 
know it to be as necessary that matter should 
be studied, and subdued to the use of man, as 
that taste should be gratified, and imagination 
inflamed. 

In those Avho were destined for the church, 
we would undoubtedly encourage classical 
learning more than in any other body of men; 
but if we had to do with a young man going 
out into public life, we would exhort him to 
contemn, or at least not to affect, the reputa- 
tion of a great scholar, but to educate himself 
for the offices of civil life. He should learn 
what the constitution of his country really was, 
— how it had grown into its present state, — the 
perils that had threatened it, — the malignity 
that had attacked it, — the courage that had 
fought for it, and the wisdom that had made it 
great. We would bring strongly before his 
mind the characters of those Englishmen who 
have been the steady friends of the public hap- 
piness ; and by their examples, would breathe 
into him a pure public taste which should keep 



him untaiated in all the vicissitudes of politi- 
cal fortune. We would teach him to burst 
through the well paid, and the pernicious cant 
of indiscriminate loyalty; and to know his 
sovereign only as he discharged those duties, 
and displayed, those qualities, for which the 
blood and the treasure of his people are con- 
fided to his hands. We should deem it of the 
utmost importance that his attention was di- 
rected to the true principles of legislation, — 
what effect laAvs can produce upon opinions, 
and opinions upon laws, — what subjects are fit 
for legislative interference, and when men 
may be left to the management of their own 
interests. The mischief occasioned by bad 
laws, and the perplexity which arises from 
numerous laws, — the causes of national wealth, 
— the relations of foreign trade, — the encou- 
ragement of manufactures and agriculture, — 
the fictitious wealth occasioned by paper cre- 
dit, — the laws of population, — the management 
of poverty and mendicity, — the use and abuse 
of monopoly, — the theory of taxation, — the 
consequences of the public debt. These are 
some of the subjects, and some of the branches 
of civil education to which we would turn the 
minds of future judges, future senators, and 
future noblemen. After the first period of life 
had been given up to the cultivation of the 
classics, and the reasoning powers were now 
beginning to evolve themselves, these are some 
of the propensities in study which we would 
endeavour to inspire. Great knowledge, at 
such a period of life, we could not convey ; 
but we might fix a decided taste for its acqui- 
sition, and a strong disposition to respect it in 
others. The formation of some great scholars 
we should certainly prevent, and hinder many 
from learning what, in a few years, they would 
necessarily forget ; but this loss would be well 
repaid,— if we could show the future rulers of 
the country that thought and labour which it 
requires to make a nation happy, — or if we 
could inspire them with that love of public 
virtue, which, after religion, we most solemnly 
believe to be the brightest ornament of the 
mind of man. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



79 



FEMALE EDUCATION.* 



Edinburgh Review, 1810. 



Mr. Broadhurst is a very good sort of a 
man, who has not vi^ritten a very bad book upon 
a very important subject. His object (a very 
laudable one) is to recommend a better system 
of female education than at present prevails in 
this country — to turn the attention of women 
from the trifling pursuits to which they are now 
condemned — and to cultivate faculties which, 
under the actual system of management, might 
almost as well not exist. To the examination 
of his ideas upon these points, we shall very 
cheerfully give up a portion of our time and at- 
tention. 

A great deal has been said of the original 
difference of capacity between men and wo- 
men ; as if women were more quick, and men 
more judicious — as if women were more re- 
markable for delicacy of association, and men 
for stronger powers of attention. All this, we 
confess, appears to us very fanciful. That there 
is a difference in the understandings of the men 
and the women we every day meet with, every 
body, we suppose, must perceive ; but there is 
none surely which may not be accounted for 
by the difference of circumstances in which 
they have been placed, without referring to any 
conjectural difference of original conformation 
of mind. As long as boys and girls run about 
in the dirt, and trundle hoops together, they are 
both precisely alike. If you catch up one half 
of these creatures, and train them to a particu- 
lar set of actions and opinions, and the other 
half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their 
understandings will differ, as one or the other 
sort of occupations has called this or that ta- 
lent into action. There is surely no occasion 
to go into any deeper or more abstruse reason- 
ing, in order to explain so very simple a phe- 
nomenon. Taking it, then, for granted, that 
nature has been as bountiful of understanding 
to one sex as the other, it is incumbent on us 
to consider what are the principal objections 
commonly made against the communication of 
a greater share of knowledge to women than 
commonly falls to their lot at present : for though 
it may be doubted whether women should learn 
all that men learn, the immense disparity which 
now exists between their knowledge we should 
hardly think could admit of any rational de- 
fence. It is not easy to imagine that there can 
be any just cause why a woman of forty should 
be more ignorant than a boy of twelve years of 
age. If there be any good at all in female ig- 
norance, this (to use a very colloquial phrase) 
is surely too much of a good thing. 

Something in this question must depend, no 
doubt, upon the leisure which either sex en- 
joys for the cultivation of their understand- 
ings: — and we cannot help thinking, that wo- 
men have fully as much, if not more, idle time 
upon their hands than men. Women are ex- 
cluded from all the serious business of the 



♦ Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the 
'Mind. By Thomas Broadhurst. 8vo. London, 1808. 



world ; men are lawyers, physicians, clergy- 
men, apotliecaries, and justices of the peace — 
sources of exertion which consume agrealdeal 
more time than producing and suckling child- 
ren ; so that, if the thing is a thing that ought 
to be done — if the attainments of literature are 
objects really worthy the attention of females, 
they cannot plead the want of leisure as an ex- 
cuse for indolence and neglect. The lawyer 
who passes his day in exasperating the bicker- 
ings of Roe and Doe, is certainly as much en- 
gaged as his lady who has the whole of the 
morning before her to correct the children and 
pay the bills. The apothecary, who rushes 
from an act of phlebotomy in the western parts 
of the town to insinuate a bolus in the east, is 
surely as completely absorbed as that fortunate 
female who is darning the garment, or prepar- 
ing the repast of her .<Esculapiiis at home; 
and, in every degree and situation of life, it 
seems that men must necessarily be exposed to 
more serious demands upon their time and at- 
tention than can possibly be the case with re- 
spect to the other sex. We are speaking al- 
ways of the fair demands which ought to be 
made upon the time and attention of women; 
for, as the matter now stands, the time of wo- 
inen is considered as worth nothing at all. 
Daughters are kept to occupations in sewing, 
patching, mantua-making, and mending, by 
M^hich it is impossible they can earn tenpence 
a day. The intellectual improvement of wo- 
men is considered to be of such subordinate 
importance, tliat twenty pounds paid for needle- 
work would give to a whole family leisure to 
acquire a fund of real knowledge. They are 
kept with nimble fingers and vacant under- 
standings till the season for improvement is ut- 
terly passed way, and all chance of forming 
more important habits completely lost. We 
do not therefore say that women have more 
leisure than men, if it be necessary that they 
should lead the life of artisans ; but we make 
this assertion only upon the supposition, that it 
is of some importance women should be in- 
structed ; and that many ordinary occupations, 
for which a little money will find a better substi- 
tute, should be sacrificed to this consideration. 
We bar, in this discussion, any objection 
which proceeds from the mere novelty of teach 
ing women more than they are already taught. 
It may be useless that their education should 
be improved, or it may be pernicious ; and 
these are the fair grounds on which the ques- 
tion may be argued. But those who cannot 
bring their minds to consider such an unusual 
extension of knowledge, without connecting 
with it some sensation of the ludicrous, should 
remember that, in the progress from absolute 
ignorance, there is a period when cultivation of 
mind is new to every rank and description of 
persons. A century ago, who would have be- 
lieved that country gentlemen could be brought 
to read and spell with the ease and accuracy 
which we now so frequently remark, — or sup- 
posed that they could be carried up even to the 



80 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



elements of ancient and modern history 1 No- 
thing is more common, or more stupid, than to 
take the actual for the possible— to believe that 
all which is, is all which can be ; first to laugh 
at every proposed deviation from practice as 
impossible— then, when it is carried into effect, 
to be astonished that it did not take place 
before. 

It is said, that the effect of knowledge is to 
make women pedantic and affected ; and that 
nothinof can be more offensive than to see a 
woman stepping out of the natural modesty of 
her sex to make an ostentatious display of her 
literary attainments. This may be true enough ; 
but the answer is so trite and obvious, that we 
are almost ashamed to make it. All affectation 
and display proceed from the supposition of 
possessing something better than the rest of 
the world possesses. Nobody is vain of pos- 
sessing two legs and two arms ; — because that 
is the precise quantity of either sort of limb 
which every body possesses. Who ever heard 
a lady boast that she understood French ? — for 
no other reason, that we know of, but because 
every body in these days does understand 
French ; and though there may be some dis- 
grace in being ignorant of that language, there 
is little or no merit in its acquisition. Diffuse 
knowledge generally among women, and you 
will at once cure the conceit which knowledge 
occasions while it is rare. Vanity and conceit 
we shall of course witness in men and women 
as long as the world endures : but by multiply- 
ing the attainments upon which these feelings 
are founded, you increase the difficulty of in- 
dulging them, and render them much more to- 
lerable, by making them the proofs of a much 
higher merit. When learning ceases to be un- 
common among women, learned women will 
cease to be affected. 

A great many of the lesser and more obscure 
duties of life necessarily devolve upon the fe- 
male sex. The arrangement of all household 
matters, and the care of children in their early 
infancy, must of course depend upon them. 
Now, there is a very general notion, that the 
moment you put the education of women upon 
a better footing than it is at present, at that ino- 
ment there will be an end of all domestic econo- 
my; and that, if you once suffer women to eat 
of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family 
will very soon be reduced to the same kind of 
aerial and unsatisfactory diet. These, and all 
such opinions, are referable to one great and 
common cause of error ; that man does every 
thing, and that nature does nothing ; and that 
every thing we see is referable to positive insti- 
tution rather than to original feeling. Can any 
thing, for example, be more perfectly absurd 
than to suppose that the care and perpetual so- 
licitude which a mother feels for her children, 
depends upon her ignorance of Greek and ma- 
thematics ; and that she would desert an infant 
for a quadratic equation? We seem to ima- 
gine that we can break in pieces the solemn 
institution of nature, by the little laws of a 
boarding-school; and that the existence of the 
human race depends upon teaching women a 
a little more or a little less; — that Cimmerian 
ignorance can aid paternal affection, or the cir- 
cle of arts and sciences produce its destruction. 
In the same manner, we forget the principles 
upon which the love of order, arransement, 
and nil the arts of economy depend. They de- 
pend not upon ignorance nor idleness ; but 



upon the poverty, confusion, and ruin which 
would ensue for neglecting them. Add to 
these principles, the love of what is beautiful 
and magnificent, and the vanity of display ; — 
and there can surely be no reasonable doubt 
but that the order and economy of private life • 
is amply secured from the perilous inroads of 
knowledge. 

We would fain know, too, if knowledge is to 
produce such baneful effects upon the material 
and the household virtues, why this influence 
has not already been felt? Women are much 
better educated now than they were a century 
ago ; but they are by no means less remarka- 
ble for attention to the arrangements of their 
household, or less inclined to discharge the of- 
fices of parental affection. It would be very- 
easy to show, that the same objection has been 
made at all times to every improvement in the 
education of both sexes, and all ranks — and 
been as uniformly and completely refuted by 
experience. A great part of the objections 
made to the education of women, are rather 
objections made to human nature than to the 
female sex : for it is surely true, that knowledge, 
where it produces any bad effects at all, does as 
much mischief to one sex as to the other, — 
and gives birth to fully as much arrogance, in- 
attention to common affairs, and eccentricity 
among men, as it does among women. But it 
by no means follows, that you get rid of vanity 
and self-conceit because you get rid of learn- 
ing. Self-complacency can never want an ex- 
cuse; and the best way to make it more tolera- 
ble, and more useful, is to give to it as high and 
as dignified an object as possible. But at all 
events it is unfair to bring forward against a 
part of the world an objection which is equally 
powerful against the whole. When foolish wo- 
men think they have any distinction, they are 
apt to be proud of it ; so are foolish men. But 
we appeal to any one who has lived with culti- 
vated persons of either sex, whether he has not 
witnessed as much pedantry, as "much wrong- 
headedness, as much arrogance, and certainly 
a great deal more rudeness, produced by learn- 
ing in men, than in women; therefore, we 
should make the accusation general — or dis- 
miss it altogether ; though, with respect to pe- 
dantry, the learned are certainly a little unfortu- 
nate, that so very emphatic a word, which is 
occasionally applicable to all men embarked 
eagerly in any pursuit, should be reserved ex- 
clusively for them : for, as pedantry is an osten- 
tatious obtrusion of knowledge, in which those 
who hear us cannot sympathize, it is a fault of 
which soldiers, sailors, sportsmen, gamesters, 
cultivators, and all men engaged in a particular 
occupation, are quite as guilty as scholars; but 
thay have the good fortune to have the vice 
only of pedantry, — while scholars have both the 
vice and the name for it too. 

Some persons are apt to contrast the acquisi- 
tion of important knowledge with what they 
call simple pleasures ; and deem it more be- 
coming that a woman should educate flowers, 
make friendships with birds, and pick up plants, 
than enter into more difficult and fatiguing 
studies. If a woman has no taste and gerfius 
for higher occupation, let her engage in these 
to be sure rather than remain destitute of any 
pursuit. Bat why are we necessarily to doom 
a girl, whatever be her taste or her capacity, to 
one unvaried line of petty and frivolous occu- 
pation'' If she is full of strong sense and ele- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



81 



vated curiosity, can there be any reason why 
she should be diluted and enfeebled down to a 
mere culler of simples, and fancier of birds ? — 
why books of history and reasoning are to be 
torn out of her hand, and why she is to be sent, 
like a butterfly, to hover over the idle flowers 
of the field? Such amusements are innocent 
to those whom they can occupy; but they are 
not innocent to those who have too powerful 
understandings to be occupied by them. Light 
broths and fruits are innocent food only to 
weak or to infant stomachs ; but they are poison 
to that organ in its perfect and mature state. 
But the great charm appears to be in the word 
simplicity — simple pleasure ! If by a simple 
pleasure is meant an innocent pleasure, the ob- 
servation is best answered by showing, that 
tte pleasure which results from the acquisition 
of important knowledge is quite as innocent as 
any pleasure whatever : but if by a simple 
pleasure is meant one, the cause of which can 
be easily analyzed, or which does not last long, 
or which in itself is very faint, then simple plea- 
sures seem to be very nearly synonymous with 
small pleasures ; and if the simplicity were to 
be a little increased, the pleasure would vanish 
altogether. 

As it is impossible that every man should 
have industry or activity sufficiently to avail 1 
himself of the advantages of education, it is 
natural that men who are ignorant themselves, | 
should view, with some degree of jealousy and \ 
alarm, any proposal for improving the education ; 
of women. But such men may depend upon 
it, however the system of female education 
may be exalted, that there will never be want- [ 
ing a due proportion of failures ; and that after j 
parents, guardians, and preceptors have done 
all in their power to make every body wise, 
there will still be a plentiful supply of women 
who have taken special care to remain other- 
wise ; and they may rest assured, if the utter 
extinction of ignorance and folly is the evil 
they dread, that their interests will always be 
effectually protected, in spite of every exertion 
to the contrary. 

We must in candour allow that those women 
who begin will have something more to over- 
come than may probably hereafter be the case. 
We cannot deny the jealousy which exists 
among pompous and foolish men respecting the 
education of women. There is a class of pe- 
dants who would be cut short in the estimation 
of the world a whole cubit if it were generally 
known that a young lady of eighteen could be 
taught to decline the tenses of the nriddle voice, 
or acquaint herself with the .iEolic varieties of 
that celebrated language. Then women have, 
of course, all ignorant men for enemies to their 
instruction, who being bound (as they think,) 
in point of sex, to know more, are not well 
pleased, in point of fact, to know less. But, 
among men of sense and liberal politeness, a 
woman who has successfully cidtivated her 
mind, without diminishing the gentleness and 
propriety of her manners, is always sure to meet 
with a respect and attention bordering upon en- 
thusiasm. 

There is in either sex a strong and perma- 
nent disposition to appear agreeable to the 
other : and this is the lair answer to those who 
are fond of supposing, that an higher degree of 
knowledge would make women rather the rivals 
than the companions of men. Presupposing 
such a desire to please, it seems much more 
II 



probable, that a common pursuit should be a 
fresh source of interest than a cause of conten- 
tion. Indeed, to suppose that any mode of edu- 
cation can create a general jealousy and rivalry 
between- the sexes, is so very ridiculous, that it 
requires only to be stated in order to be refuted. 
The same desire of pleasing secures all that de- 
licacy and reserve which are of such inestima- 
ble value to women. We are quite astonished, 
in hearing men converse on such subjects, to- 
find them attributing such beautiful effects to- 
ignorance. It would appear, from the tenour 
of such objections, that ignorance had been the 
great civilizer of the world. Women are deli- 
cate and refined only because they are igno- 
rant ; — they manage their household, only be- 
cause they are ignorant ; — they attend to their 
children, only because they know no better. 
Now, we must really confess, we have all our 
lives been so ignorant as not to know the value 
of ignorance. We have always attributed the 
modesty and the refined manners of women, to 
their being well taught in moral and religious 
duty, — to the hazardous situation in which they 
are placed, — to that perpetual vigilance which it 
is their duty to exercise over thought, word, and 
action, — and to that cultivation of the mild vir- 
tues, which those who cultivate the stern and 
magnanimous virtues expect at their hands. 
After all, let it be remembered, we are not say- 
ing there are no objections to the diffusion of 
knowledge among the female sex. We would 
not hazard such a proposition respecting any 
thing ; but we are saying, that, upon the whole, 
it is the best method of employing time; and 
that there are fewer objections to it than to any 
other method. There are, perhaps, 50,000 fe- 
males in Great Britain wlio are exempted by 
circumstances from all necessary labour : but 
every human being must do something with 
their existence ; and the pursuit of knowledge 
is, upon the whole, the most innocent, the most 
dignified, and the most useful method of filling 
up that idleness, of which there is always so 
large a portion in nations far advanced in civil- 
ization. Let any man reflect, too, upon the soli- 
tary situation in which women are placed, — 
the ill treatment to which they are sometimes 
exposed, and which they must endure in silence, 
and without the power of complaining, — and 
he must feel convinced that the happiness of a 
woman will be materially increased in propor- 
tion as education has given to her the habit and 
the means of drawing her resources from her- 
self. 

There are a few common phrases in circula- 
tion, respecting the duties of women, to which 
we wish to pay some degree of attention, be- 
cause they are rather inimical to those opinions 
which we have advanced on this subject. In- 
deed, independently of this, there is nothing 
which requires more vigilance than the current 
phrases of the day, of which there are always 
some resorted to in every dispute, and from the 
sovereign authority of which it is often vain to 
make any appeal. '• The true theatre for a wo-^ 
man is the sick-chamber;" — "Nothing so ho- 
nourable to a woman as not to be spoken of at 
all." These two phrases, the delight oi' Noodle- 
dom, are grown into common-places upon the 
subject ; and are not unfrequently employed to 
extinguish that love of knowledge in women, 
which, in our humble opinion, it is of so much, 
importance to cherish. Nothing, certainly, is so 
ornamental and delightful in women as the be- 



82 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



nevolent affections: but time cannot be filled 
up, and life employed, with high and impas- 
sioned virtues. Some of these feelings are of 
rare occurrence— all of short duration — or na- 
ture would sink under them. A scene of dis- 
tress and anguish is an occasion where the 
finest qualities of the female mind may be dis- 
played ; but it is a monstrous exaggeration to 
tell women that they are born only for scenes 
of distress and anguish. Nurse father, mother, 
sister and brother, if they want it ; — it would 
be a violation of the plainest duties to neglect 
them. But, when we are talking of the com- 
mon occupations of life, do not let us mistake 
the accidents for the occupations; — when we 
are arguing how the twenty-three hours of the 
day are to be filled up, it is idle to tell us of 
those feelings and agitations above the level of 
common existence, which may employ the re- 
maining hour. Compassion, and every other 
virtue, are the great objects we all ought to 
have in view ; but no man (and no woman) can 
fill up the twenty-four hours by acts of virtue. 
But one is a lawyer, and the other a plough- 
man, and the third a merchant ; and then, acts 
of goodness, and intervals of compassion and 
fine feeling, are scattered up and down the 
common occupations of life. We know women 
are to be compassionate ; but they cannot be 
compassionate from eight o'clock in the morn- 
ing till twelve at night : — and what are they to 
do in the interval? This is the only question 
we have been putting all along, and is all that 
can be meant by literary education. 

Then, again, as to the notoriety w^hich is in- 
curred by literature. — The cultivation of know- 
ledge is a very distinct thing from its publica- 
tion ; nor does it follow that a woman is to be- 
come an author merely because she has talent 
enough for it. We do not wish a lady to write 
books, — to defend and reply, — to squabble about 
the tomb of Achilles, or the plain of Troy, — any 
more than we wish her to dance at the opera, 
to play at a public concert, or to put pictures 
in the exhibition, because she has learned music, 
dancing and drawing. The great use of her 
knowledge will be that it contributes to her 
priva:te happiness. She may make it public : 
but it is not the principal object which the 
friends of female education have in view. 
Among men, the few who write bear no com- 
parison to the many who read. We hear most 
of the former, indeed, because they are, in ge- 
neral, the most ostentatious part of literary 
men ; but there are innumerable persons who, 
without ever laying themselves before the pub- 
lic, have made use of literature to add to the 
strength of their understandings, and to improve 
the happiness of their lives. After all, it may 
be an evil for ladies to be talked of: but we 
really think those ladies who are talked of only 
as Mrs. Marcet, Mrs. Somerville, and Miss Mar- 
tineau are talked of, may bear their misfortunes 
with a very great degree of Christian patience. 

Their exeinption from all the necessary busi- 
ness of life is one of the most powerful motives 
for the improvement of education in women. 
Lawyers and physicians have in their profes- 
sions a constant motive to exertion ; if you ne- 
glect their education, they must in a certain 
degree educate themselves by their commerce 
with the world: they must learn caution, accu- 
racy, and judgment, because they must incur 
responsibility. But if you neglect to educate 
the mind of a woman, by the speculative diffi- 



culties which occur in literature, it can never be 
educated at all : if you do not effectually rouse 
it by education, it must remain for ever languid. 
Uneducated men may escape intellectual degra- 
dation ; uneducated women cannot. They have 
nothing to do ; and if they come untaught from 
the schools of education, they will never be in- 
structed in the school of events. 

Women have not their livelihood to gain by 
knowledge ; and that is one motive for relaxing 
all those efforts 'which are made in the educa- 
tion of men. They certainly have not ; but 
they have happiness to gain, to which know- 
ledge leads as probably as it does to profit; 
and that is a reason against mistaken indul- 
gence. Besides, we conceive the labour and 
fatigue of accomplishments to be quite equal to 
the labour and fatigue of knowledge ; and that. 
it takes quite as many years to be charming as 
it does to be learned. 

Another difference of the sexes is, that women 
are attended to, and men attend. All acts of 
courtesy and politeness originate from the one 
sex, and are received by the other. We can 
see no sort of reason, in this diversity of condi- 
tion, for giving to women a trifling and insig- 
nificant education ; but we see in it a very pow- 
erful reason for strengthening their judgment, 
and inspiring them with the habit of employing 
time usefully. We admit many striking differ- 
ences in the situation of the two sexes, and 
many striking differences of understanding, pro- 
ceeding from the different circumstances in 
which they are placed : but there is not a single 
difference of this kind which does not afford a 
new argument for making the education of wo- 
men better than it is. They have nothing se- 
rious to do ; — is that a reason why they should 
be brought up to do nothing but what is tri- 
fling? They are exposed to greater dangers ; — 
is that a reason \vhy their faculties ate to be 
purposely and industriously weakened ? They 
are to form the characters of future men ; — is 
that a cause why their own characters are to 
be broken and frittered down as they now are? 
In short, there is not a single trait in that diver- 
sity of circumstances, in which the two sexes 
are placed, that does not decidedly prove the 
magnitude of the error we commit in neglect- 
ing (as we do neglect) the education of 
vi^omen. 

If the objections against the better education 
of women could be overruled, one of the great 
advantages that would ensue v/ould be the ex- 
tinction of innumerable follies. A decided and 
prevailing taste for one or another mode of 
education there must be. A century past, it 
was for housew^ifery — now it is for accomplish- 
ments. The object now is, to make women 
artists, — to give them an excellence in drawing, 
music, painting and dancing, — of which, per- 
sons who make these pursuits the occupation 
of their lives, and derive from thfem their sub- 
sistence, need not b,e ashamed. Now, one great 
evil of this is, that it dbes not last. If the whole 
of life were an Olympic game, — if we could go 
on feasting and dancing to the end, — this might 
do ; but it is in truth merely a provision for the 
little interval between coming into life, and set- 
tling in it; while it leaves a long and dreary 
expanse behind, devoid both of dignity and 
cheerfulness. No mother, no woman who has 
passed over the few first years of life, sings, or 
dances, or draws, or plays upon musical instru- 
ments. These are merely means for displaying 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



83 



the grace and vivacity of youth, which every 
woman gives up, as she gives up the dress and 
manners of eighteen: she has no wish to retain 
them , or, if she has, she is driven out of them 
by diameter and derision. The system of fe- 
male education, as it now stands, aims only at 
embellishing a few years of life, which are in 
themselves so full of grace and happiness, that 
they hardly want it ; and then leaves the rest of 
existence a miserable prey to idle insignificance. 
No woman of understanding and reflection can 
possibly conceive she is doing justice to her 
children by such kind of education. The object 
is, to give to children resources that will en- 
dure as long as life endures, — habits that time 
will ameliorate, not destroy, — occupations that 
will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, 
age venerable, life more dignified and useful, 
and therefore death less terrible : and the com- 
pensation which is oifered for the omission of 
all this, is a short-lived blaze, — a little tempo- 
rary effect, which has no other consequence 
than to deprive the remainder of life of all 
taste and relish. There may be women who 
have a taste for the fine arts, and who 
evince a decided talent for drawing, or for 
music. In that case, there can be no objection 
to the cultivation of these arts ; but the error is, 
to make such things the grand and universal 
object, — to insist upon it that every woman is 
to sing, and draw, and dance — with nature, or 
against nature, — to bind her apprentice to some 
accomplishment, and if she cannot succeed in 
oil or water-colours, to prefer gilding, varnish- 
ing, burnishing, box-making, to real solid im- 
provement in taste, knowledge, and under- 
standing. 

A great deal is said in favour of the social 
nature of the fine arts. Music gives pleasure 
to others. Drawing is an art, the amusement 
of which does not centre in him who exercises 
it, but it is diffused among the rest of the world. 
This is true ; but there is nothing, after all, so 
social as a cultivated mind. We do not mean 
to speak slightingly of the fine arts, or to depre- 
ciate the good humour with which they are some- 
times exhibited ; but we appeal to any man, 
whether a little spirited and sensible conversa- 
tion — displaying, modestly, useful acquirements 
— and evincing rational curiosity, is not well 
worth the highest exertions of musical or gra- 
phical skill. A woman of accomplishments 
may entertain those who have the pleasure of 
knowing her for half an hour with great brillian- 
cy ; but a mind full of ideas, and with that elas- 
tic spring which the love of knowledge only can 
convey, is a perpetual source of exhilaration 
and amusement to all that come within its reach ; 
— not collecting its force into single and insu- 
lated achievements, like the effort made in the 
fine arts — but diffusing, equally over the whole 
of existence, a calm pleasure — better loved as 
it is longer felt — and suitable to every variety 
and every period of life. Therefore, instead of 
hanging the understanding of a woman upon 
walls, or hearing it vibrate upon strings, — in- 
stead of seeing it in clouds, or hearing it in the 
wind, we would make it the first spring and or- 
nament of society, by enriching it with attain- 
ments upon which alone such power depends. 

If the education of women were improved, 
the education of men would be improved also. 
Let any one consider (in order to bring the 
matter more home by an individual instance) 
of what immense importance to society it is, 



whether a nobleman of first-rate fortune and 
distinction is well or ill brought up ; — what a 
taste and fashion he may inspire for private and 
for political vice ! — and what misery and mis- 
chief he may produce to the thousand human 
beings who are dependent on him ! A country 
contains no such curse within its bosom. Youth, 
wealth, high rank, and vice, form a combina- 
tion which baffles all remonstrance and beats 
down all opposition. A man.of high rank who 
combines these qualifications for corruption, is 
almost the master of the manners of the age, 
and has the public happiness within his grasp. 
But the most beautiful possession which a coun- 
try can have is a noble and rich man, who loves 
virtue and knowledge ; — who without being 
feeble or fanatical is pious — and who withouc 
being factious is firm and independent ; — who, 
in his political life, is an equitable inediator be- 
tween king and people ; and in his civil life, a 
firm promoter of all which can shed a lustre 
upon his country, or promote the peace and or- 
der of the world. But if these objects are of 
the importance which we attribute to them, 
the education of women must be important, as 
the formation of character for the first seven or 
eight years of life seems to depend almost en- 
tirely upon them. It is certainly in the power 
of a sensible and well-educated mother to in- 
spire, within that period, such tastes and pro- 
pensities as shall nearly decide the destiny of 
the future man ; and this is done, not only by 
the intentional exertions of the mother, but by 
the gradual and insensible imitation of the child; 
for there is something extremely contagious in 
greatness and rectitude of thinking, even at 
that age ; and the character of the mother with 
whom he passes his early infancy, is always an 
event of the utmost importance to the child. 
A merely accomplished woman cannot infuse 
her tastes into the minds of her sons ; and, if 
she could, nothing could be more unfortunate 
than her success. Besides, when her accom- 
plishments are given up, she has nothing left 
for it but to amuse herself in the best way she 
can ; and, becoming entirely frivolous, either 
declines altogether the fatigue of attending to 
her children, or, attending to them, has neither 
talents nor knowledge to succeed; and, there- 
fore, here is a plain and fair answer to those 
who ask so triuxnphantly, why should a woman 
dedicate herself to this branch of knowledge ? 
or why should she be attached to such science? 
— Because, by having gained information on 
these points, she may inspire her son with valu- 
able tastes, which may abide by him through 
life, and carry him up to all the sublimities of 
knowledge ; because she cannot lay the founda- 
tion of a great character, if she is absorbed in 
frivolous amusements, nor inspire her child with 
noble desires, when a long course of trifling 
has destroyed the little talents which were left 
by a bad education. 

It is of great importance to a country, that 
there should be as many understandings as pos- 
sible actively employed within it. Mankind 
are much happier for the discovery of barome- 
ters, thermometers, steam-engines, and all the 
innumerable inventions in the arts and sciences. 
We are every day and every hour reaping the 
benefit of such talent and ingenuity. The same 
observation is true of such works as those of 
Dryden, Pope, Milton and Shakspeare. Man- 
kind are much happier that such individuals 
have lived and written ; they add every day to 



84 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the stock of public enjoyment — and perpetually 
gladden ;md embellish Hie. Now, the number 
of those who exercise their understandings to 
any good purpose, is exactly in proportion to 
those who exercise it at all ; but, as the matter 
stands at present, half the talent in the universe 
runs to waste, and is totally unprofitable. It 
would have been almost as well for the world, 
hitherto, that women, instead of possessing the 
capacities they do at present, should have been 
born wholly destitute of wit, genius, and every 
other attribute of mind, of which men make so 
eminent a use : and the ideas of use and pos- 
session are so united together, that, because it 
has been the custom in almost all countries to 
give to women a different and a worse educa- 
tion than to men, the notion has obtained that 
they do not possess faculties which they do 
not cultivate. Just as, in breaking up a com- 
mon, it is sometimes very difficult to make the 
poor believe it will carry corn, merely because 
they have been hitherto accustomed to see it 
produce nothing but weeds and grass — they 
very naturally mistake present condition for 
general nature. So completely have the talents 
of women been kept down, that there is scarcely 
a single work, either of reason or imagination, 
written by a woman, which is in getieral cir- 
culation either in the English, French, or Ita- 
lian literature ; — scarcely one that has crept 
even into the ranks of our minor poets. 

If the possession of excellent talents is not a 
conclusive reason why they should be im- 
proved, it at least amounts to a very strong 
presumption ; and, if it can be shown that wo- 
men may be trained to reason and imagine as 
well as men, the strongest reasons are certainly 
necessary to show us why we should not avail 
ourselves of such rich gifts of nature ; and we 
have a right to call for a clear statement of those 
perils which make it necessary that such talents 
should be totally extinguished, or, at most, 
very partially drawn out. The burthen of 
proof does not lie with those who say. increase 
the quanity of talent in any country as much 
as ijossible — for such a proposition is in con- 
formity with every man's feelings : but it lies 
with those who say, take care to keep that un- 
derstanding weak and trifling, which natvtre 
has made capable of becoming strong and 
powerful. The paradox is with them, not with 
us. In all human reasoning, knowledge must 
be taken for a good, till it can be shown to be 
an evil. But now, nature makes to us rich and 
magnificent presents ; and we say to her — 
You are too luxuriant and munificent — we 
must keep you under, and prune you ; — we 
have talents enough in the other half of the 
creation ; — and, if you will not stupefy and en- 
feeble the mind of women to our hands, we 
ourselves must expose them to a narcotic pro- 
cess, and educate away that fatal redundance 
with which the world is afflicted, and the order 
of sublunary things deranged. 

One of the greatest pleasures of life is con- 
versation : — and the pleasures of conversation 
are of course evihanced by every increase of 
knowledge : not that we should meet together 
to talk of alkalies and angles, or to add to our 
stock of history and philology — though a little 
of these things is no bad ingredient in conver- 
sation ; but let the subject be what it may, there 
is always a prodigious difference between the 
conversation of those who have been well edu- 
cated and of those who have not enjoyed this 



advantage. Education gives fecundity of 
thought, copiousness of illustration, quickness, 
vigour, fancy, words, images and illustrations ; 
— it decorates every common thing, and gives 
the power of trifling without being undignified 
and absurb. The subjects themselves may not 
be wanted, upon which the talents of an edu- 
cated man have been exercised; but there is 
always a demand for those talents which his 
education has rendered strong and quick. 
Now, really, nothing can be further from our 
intention than to say any thing rude and un- 
pleasant ; but we must be excused for observing, 
that it is not now a very common thing to be 
interested by the variety and extent of female 
knowledge, but it is a very common thing to 
Jament, that the finest faculties in the world 
jihave been confined to trifles utterly unworthy 
of their richness and their strength. 

The pursuit of knowledge is the most inno- 
cent and interesting occupation which can be 
given to the female sex ; nor can there be a 
better method of checking a spirit of dissipation 
than by. diffusing a taste for literature. The 
true way to attack vice, is by setting up some- 
thing else against it. Give to women, in early 
youth, something to acquire, of sufficient in- 
terest and importance to command the appli- 
cation of their mature faculties, and to excite 
their perseverance in future life ; — teach them 
that happiness is to be derived from the acqui- 
sition of knowledge, as well as the gratification 
of vanity: and you will raise up a much more 
formidable barrier against dissipation than a 
host of invectives and exhortations can supply. 

It sometimes happens that an unfortunate 
man gets drunk with very bad wine, — not to 
gratify his palate, but to forget his cares: he 
does not set any value on what he receives, 
but on account of what it excludes; — it keeps out 
something worse than itself Now, tliough it 
were denied that the acquisition of serious 
knowledge is of itself important to a woman, 
still it prevents a taste for silly and pernicious 
works of imagination : it keeps away the horrid 
trash of novels ; and, in lieu of that eagerness 
for emotion and adventure which books of that 
sort inspire, promotes a calm and steady tem- 
perament of mind. 

A man who deserves such a piece of good 
fortune, may generally find an excellent com- 
panion for all the vicissitudes of his life , but 
it is not so easy to find a companion for his un- 
derstanding, who has similar pursuits with 
himself, or who can comprehend the pleasure 
he derives from them. We really can see no 
reason why it should not be otherwise ; nor 
comprehend how the pleasures of domestic life 
can be promoted by diminishing the number 
of subjects in which persons who are to spend 
their lives together take a common interest. 

One of the most agreeable consequences of 
knowledge is the respect and importance which 
it communicates to old age. Men rise in cha- 
racter often as they increase in years ; — they 
are venerable from what they have acquired,^ 
and pleasing from what they can impart. If 
they outlive their faculties, the mere frame it- 
self is respected for what it once contained ; but 
women (such is their unfortunate style of edu- 
cation) hazard every thing upon one cast of the 
die; — when youth is gone, all is gone. No hu- 
man' creature gives his admiration for nothing: 
either the eye must be charmed, or the under- 
standing gratified. A woman must talk wisely 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



85 



■or look well. Every human being must put 
up with the coldest civility, who has neither 
the charms of yovith nor the wisdom of age. 
Neither is there the slightest commiseration for 
decayed accomplishments ; — no man mourns 
over the fragments of a dancer, or drops a tear 
• on the relics of musical skill. They are flowers 
destined to perish; but the decay of great 
talents is always the subject of solemn pity; 
and, even when their last memorial is over, 
their ruins and vestiges are regarded with pious 
aileetion. 

There is no connexion between the igno- 
rance in which women are kept, and the pre- 
servation of moral and religious principle ; and 
yet certainly there is, in the minds of some 
timid and respectable persons, a vague, indefi- 
nite dread of knowledge, as if it were capable 
of producing these effects. It might also be 
supposed, from the dread which the propagation 
of knowledge has excited, that there was some 
great secret which was to be kept in impene- 
trable obscurity, — that all moral rules were a 
species of delusion and imposture, the detection 
of which, by the improvement of the under- 
standing, would be attended with the most fatal 
consequences to all, and particularly to women. 
If we could possibly understand what these 
great secrets were, we might perhaps be dis- 
posed to concur in their preservation ; but be- 
lieving that all the salutary rules which are 
imposed on women are the result of true wis- 
dom, and productive of the greatest happiness, 
we cannot understand how they are to become 
less sensible of this truth in proportion as their 
l^ower of discovering truth in general is in- 
creased, and the habit of viewing questions 
with accuracy and comprehension established 
by education. There are men, indeed, who are 
always exclaiming against every species of 
power, because it is connected with danger : 
their dread of abuses is so much stronger than 
their admiration of uses, that they would cheer- 
fully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and 
printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, 
and libels. It is true, that every increase of 
knowledge may possibly render depravity more 
depraved, as well as it may increase the strength 
of virtue. It is in itself only power ; and its 
value depends on its applicalion. But, trust to 
the natural love of good where there is no temp- 
tation to be bad — it operates no where more 
forcibly than in education. No man, whether 
he be tutor, guardian, or friend, ever contents 
himself with infusing the mere ability to ac- 
quire ; but giving the power, he gives with it a 
taste for the wise and rational exercise of that 



power ; so that an educated person is not only 
one with stronger and better faculties than 
others, but with a more useful propensity — a 
disposition better cultivated — and associations 
of a higher and more important class. 

In short, and to recapitulate the main points 
upon which we have insisted : — Why the dis- 
proportion in knowledge between the two 
sexes should be so great, when the inequality 
in natural talents is so small ; or why the un- 
derstanding of women should be lavished upon 
trifles, when nature has made it capable of 
higher and better things, we profess ourselves 
not able to understand. The affectation charged 
upon female knowledge is best cured by making 
that knowledge more general : and the economy 
devolved upon women is best secured by the 
ruin, disgrace, and inconvenience which pro- 
ceeds from neglecting it. For the care of child- 
ren, nature has made a direct and powerful 
provision ; and the gentleness and elegance of 
women is the natural consequence of that de- 
sire to please, which is productive of the greatest 
part of civilization and refinement, and which 
rests upon a foundation too deep to be shaken 
by any such modifications in education as we 
have proposed. If you educate women to at- 
tend to dignified and important subjects, you 
are multiplying beyond measure the chances 
of human improvement, by preparing SLnd me- 
dicating those early impressions, which always 
come from the mother ; and which, in a great 
majority of instances, are quite decisive of 
character and genius. Nor is it only in the 
business of education that women would influ- 
ence the destiny of men. If women knew more, 
men must learn more — for ignorance would 
then be shameful — and it would become the 
fashion to be instructed. The instruction of 
women improves the stock of national talents, 
and employs more minds for the instruction 
and amusement of the world ; — it increases the 
pleasures of society, by multiplying the topics 
upon which the two sexes take a common in- 
terest; and makes marriage an intercourse of 
understanding as well as of affection, by giving 
dignity and importance to the female character. 
The education of women favours public mo- 
rals ; it provides for every season of life, as well 
as for the brightest and the best : and leaves a 
woman when she is stricken by the hand of 
time, not as she now is, destitute of every thing, 
and neglected by all ; but with the full power 
and the splendid attractions of knowledge, — 
diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite litera- 
ture, and receiving the just homage of learned 
and accomplished men. 



H 



86 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS.* 



(Edinburgh Review, 1810.) 



There is a set of well-dressed, prosperous 
wentlemen, who assemble daily at Mr. Hatch- 
ard's shop ; — clean, civil personages, well in 
■with people in power, — delighted with every 
existing institution — and almost with every ex- 
isting circumstance : and, every now and then, 
one of these personages writes a litlle book ; — 
and the rest praise that little book — expecting 
to be praised, in their turn, for their own little 
books : — and of these little books, thus written 
by these clean, civil personages, so expecting to 
be praised, the pamphlet before us appears to 
be one. 

The subject of it is the advantage of public 
schools ; and the author, very creditably to liim- 
self, ridicules the absurd clamour, first set on foot 
by Dr. Rennel, of the irreligious tendency of 
public schools : he then proceeds to an investiga- 
tion of the effects which public schools may 
produce upon the moral character ; and here 
the subject becomes moje difhcult, and the 
pamphlet worse. 

In arguing any large or general question, it 
is of infinite importance to attend to the first 
feelings which the mention of the topic has a 
tendency to excite ; and the name of a public 
school brings ■with it immediately the idea of 
brilliant classical attainments : but, upon the 
importance of these studies, we are not now 
offering any opinion. The only points for con- 
sideration are, whether boys are put in the way 
of becoming good and wise men by these 
schools ; and whether they actually gather there 
those attainments which it pleases mankind, 
for the time being, to consider as valuable, and 
to decorate by the name of learning. 

By a public school, we mean any endowed 
place of education, of old standing, to which 
the sons of gentlemen resort in considerable 
numbers, and where they continue to reside, 
from eight or nine, to eighteen years of age. 
We do not give this as a definition which would 
have satisfied Porphyry or Duns-Scotus, but as 
one sufficiently accurate for our purpose. The 
characteristic features of these schools are, their 
antiquity, the numbers, and the ages of the 
young people who are educated at them. We 
beg leave, however, to premise, that we have 
not the slightest intention of insinuating any 
thing to the disparagement of the present dis- 
cipline or present rulers of these schools, as 
compared with other times and other men : we 
have no reason whatever to doubt that they are 
as ably governed at this as they have been at 
any preceding period. Whatever objections we 
may have to these institutions, they are to 
faults, not depending on prnsent administration, 
but upon original construction. f 

At a public school (for such is the system es- 



* Remarks on the System of Education in Public 
Schools. 8vo. Hatchard. London, 1809. 

t A public school is thouglit to be the best cure for 
the insolence of youthful aristocracy. This insolence, 
however, is not a little increased by the homage of mas- 
ters, and would soon meet with its natural check in the 



tablished by immemorial custom) , every boy is 
alternately tyrant and slave. The power which 
the elder part of these communities exercises 
over the younger is exeedingly great — very dif- 
ficult to be controlled — and accompanied, not 
unirequently, with cruelty and caprice. It is 
the common law of the place, that the young 
should be implicitly obedient to the elder boys ; 
and this obedience resembles more the submis- 
sion of a slave to his master, or of a sailor to 
his captain, than the common and natural de- 
ference which would always be shown by one 
boy to another a few years older than himself. 
Now, this system we cannot help considering as 
an evil, — because it inflicts upon boys, for two or 
three years of their lives, many painful hardships, 
and mucli unpleasant servitude. These suffer- 
ings might perhaps be of some use in military 
schools ; but, to give a boy the habit of enduring 
privations to which he will never again be called 
upon to submit — to inure him to pains which 
he will never again feel — and to subject him to 
the privation of comforts with which he will 
always in future abound — is surely not a very 
useful and valuable severity in education. It 
is not the life in miniature which he is to lead 
herealer — nor does it bear any relation to it : — 
he will never again be subjected to so much in- 
solence and caprice ; nor ever, in all human 
probability, be called upon to make so many sa- 
crifices. The servile obedience ■which it teaches 
might be useful to a menial domestic ; or the 
habits of enterprise which it encourages prove 
of importance to a military partisan ; but we 
cannot see what bearing it has upon the calm, 
regular, civil life, which the sons of gentlemen, 
destined to opulent idleness, or to any of the 
three learned professions, are destined to lead. 
Such a system makes many boys very misera- 
ble ; and produces those bad effects upon the 
temper and disposition, which unjust suffering 
always does produce ; — but what wood it does 
we are much at a loss to conceive. Reasonable 
obedience is extremely useful in forming the 
disposition. Submission to tyranny lays the 
foundation of hatred, suspicion, cunning, and a 
variety of odious passions. We are convinced 
that those young people will turn out to be the 
best men, who have been guarded most effec- 
tually in their childhood, from every species of 
useless vexation; and experienced, in the 
greatest degree, the blessings of a wise and 
rational indulgence. But even if these effects 
upon future character are not produced, still 
four or five years in childhood make a very 
considerable period of human existence ; and it 
is by no means a trifling consideration whether 
they are passed happily or unhappily. The 
wretchedness of school tyranny is trifling 
enough to a man who only contemplates it in 



world. There can tte no occasion to brin? five hun- 
dred boys together to teach to a young noblemen that 
proper demeanour which he would learn so much better 
from the first English gentleman whom he might think 
proper to insult. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



87 



ease of body and tranquillity of mind, through 
the medium of twenty intervening years ; but 
it is quite as real, and quite as acute, while it 
lasts, as any of the sufferings of mature life: 
and the utility of these sufferings, or the price 
paid in compensation for them, should be clear- 
ly made out to a conscientious parent before he 
consents to expose his children to them. 

This system also gives to the elder boys an 
absurd and pernicious opinion of their own 
importance, which is often with difficulty ef- 
faced by a considerable commerce with the 
world. The head of a public school is gene- 
rally a very conceited young man, utterly igno- 
rant of his own dimensions, and losing all that 
habit of conciliation towards others, and that 
anxiety for self-improvement, which result from 
the natural modesty of youth. Nor is this con- 
ceit very easily and speedily gotten rid of; — we 
have seen (if we mistake not) public school 
importance lasting through the half of after 
life, strutting in lawn, swelling in ermine, and 
displaying itself, both ridiculously and offen- 
sively, in the haunts and business of bearded 
men. 

There is a manliness in the athletic exercises 
of public schools which is as seductive to the 
imagination as it is utterly unimportant in it- 
self. Of what importance is it in after life 
whether a boy can play well or ill at cricket ; 
or row a boat with the skill and precision of a 
waterman? If our young lords and esquires 
were hereafter to wrestle together in public, or 
the gentlemen of the Bar to exhibit Olympic 
games in Hilary Term, the glory attached to 
these exercises at public schools would be ra- 
tional and important. But of what use is the 
body of an athlete, when we have good laws 
over our heads. — or when a pistol, a postchaise, 
or a porter, can be hired for a few shillings ? 
A gentleman does nothing but ride or walk ; 
and yet such a ridiculous stress is laid upon the 
manliness of the exercises customary at public 
schools — exercises in which the greatest block- 
heads commonly excel the most — which often 
render habits of idleness inveterate — and often 
lead to foolish expense and dissipation at a 
more advanced period of life. 

One of the supposed advantages of a public 
school is the greater knowledge of the world 
which a boy is considered to derive from those 
situations; but if, by a knowledge of the world, 
is meant a knowledge of the forms and man- 
ners which are found to be the most pleasing 
and useful in the world, a boy from a public 
school is almost always extremely deficient in 
these particulars ; and his sister, who has re- 
mained at home at the apron-strings of her 
mother, is very much his superior in the science 
of manners. It is probably true, that a boy at 
a public school has made more observation on 
human character, because he has had more op- 
portunities of observing than have been en- 
joyed by young persons educated either at 
home or at private schools : but this little ad- 
vance gained at a public school is so soon over- 
taken at college or in the world, that, to have 
made it, is of the least possible consequence, 
and utterly underserving of any risk incurred 
in the acquisition. Is it any injury to a man 
of thirty or thirty-five years of age — to a learned 
Serjeant or venerable dean — that at eighteen 
they did not know so much of the world as 
some other boys of the same standing? They 
have probably escaped the arrogant character 



so often attendant upon this trifling superiority ; 
nor is there much chance that they have ever 
fallen into the common and youthful error of 
mistaking a premature initiation into vice for 
a knowledge of the ways of mankind ; and, in 
addition to these salutary exemptions, a winter 
in London brings it all to a level ; and offers to 
every novice the advantages which are sup- 
posed to be derived from this precocity of con- 
fidence and polish. 

According to the general prejudice in favour 
of public schools, it would be thought quite as 
absurd and superfluous to enumerate the illus- 
trious characters who have been bred at our 
three great seminaries of this description, as it 
would be to descant upon the illustrious cha- 
racters who have passed in and out of London 
over our three great bridges. Almost every con- 
spicuous person is supposed to have been edu- 
cated at public schools; and there are scarcely 
any means (as it is imagined) of making an 
actual comparison; and yet, great as the rage 
is, and long has been, for public schools, it is 
very remarkable, that the most eminent men in 
every art and science have not been educated 
in public schools ; and this is true, even if we 
include, in the term of public schools, not only 
Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, but the 
Charter-House, St. Paul's School, Merchant 
Tailors', Rugby, and every school in England, 
at all conducted upon the plan of the three first. 
The great schools of Scotland we do not call 
public schools; because, in these, the mixture 
of domestic life gives to them a widely different 
character. Spenser, Pope, Shakspeare, Butler, 
Rochester, Spratt, Parnell, Garth, Congreve, 
Gay, Swift, Thomson, Shenstone, Akenside, 
Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sydney, Savage, 
Arbuthnot, and Burns, among the poets, were 
not educated in the system of English schools. 
Sir Isaac Newton, Maclaurin, Wallis, Hamstead, 
Saunderson, Simpson, and Napier, among men 
of science, were not educated in public schools. 

The three best historians that the English 
language has produced. Clarendon, Hume, and 
Robertson, were not educated at public schools. 
Public schools have done little in England for 
the fine arts — as in the examples of Inigo Jones, 
Vanbrugh, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Garrick, 
&c. The great medical writers and discoverers 
in Great Britain, Harvey, Cheselden, Hunter, 
Jenner, Meade, Brown, and Cullen, were not 
educated at public schools. Of the great writers 
on morals and metaphysics, it was not the sys- 
tem of public schools which produced Bacon, 
Shaftesbury, Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, 
Hartley, or Dugald Stewart. The greatest dis- 
coverers in chemistry have not been brought 
up at public schools ; — we mean Dr. Priestley, 
Dr. Black, and Mr. Davy. The only English- 
men who have evinced a remarkable genius, in 
modern times, for the art of war, — the Duke of 
Marlborough, Lord Peterborough, General 
Wolfe, and Lord Clive, were all trained in pri- 
vate schools. So were Lord Coke, Sir Matthew 
Hale, and Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and 
Chief Justice Holt, among the lawyers. So 
also, among statesmen, were Lord Burleigh, 
Walsingham, the Earl of Strafford, Thurloe, 
Cromwell, Hampden, Lord Clarendon, Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh, Sydney, Russel, Sir W. Temple, 
Lord Somers, Burke, Sheridan, Pitt. In addi- 
tion to this list, we must not forget the names 
of such eminent scholars and men of lettersj as 



«8 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Cudworth, Chillingworth, Tillotson, Archbishop 
King, Selden, Conyers, Middleton, Bentley, Sir 
Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Bishops Sher- 
lock and Wilkins, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Hooker, 
Bishops Usher, Stillingfleet, and Spelman, Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, Bishop Hoadley, and Dr. Lard- 
ner. Nor must it be forgotten, in this examina- 
tion, that none of the conspicuous writers upon 
political economy which this country has as 
yet produced, have been brought up in public 
schools. If it be urged that public schools have 
only assumed their present character within 
this last century, or half century, and that what 
are now called public schools partook, before 
this period, of the nature of private schools, 
there must then be added to our lists the names 
of Milton, Dryden, Addison, &c., &c.: and it 
will follow, that the English have done almost 
all that they have done in the arts and sciences, 
without the aid of that systein of education to 
w^hich they are now so much attached. Ample 
as this catalogue of celebrated names already 
is, it would be easy to double it ; yet, as it 
stands, it is obviously sufficient to show that 
great eminence may be attained in any line of 
fame without the aid of public schools. Some 
more striking inferences might perhaps be 
drawn from k; but we content ourselves with 
the simple fact. 

The most important peculiarity in the consti- 
tution of a public school is its numbers, which 
are so great, that a close inspection of the mas- 
ter into the studies and conduct of each indi- 
vidual is quite impossible. We must be al- 
lowed to doubt, whether such an arrangement 
is favourable either to literature or morals. 

Upon this system, a boy is left almost entire!}' 
to himself, to impress upon his own mind, as 
w^ell as he can, the distant advantages of know- 
ledge, and to withstand, from his own innate 
resolution, the examples and the seductions of 
idleness. A firm character survives this brave 
neglect; and very exalted talents may some- 
times remedy it by subsequent diligence : but 
schools are not made for a few youths of pre- 
eminent talents, and strong characters; such 
prizes can, of course, be drawn but by a very 
few parents. The best school is that which is 
best accommodated to the greatest variety of 
characters, and which embraces the greatest 
number of cases. It cannot be the main ob- 
ject of education to render the splendid more 
splendid, and to lavish care upon those who 
would almost thrive without any care at all. 
A public school does this effectually; but it 
commonly leaves the idle almost as idle, and the 
dull almost as dull as it found them. It dis- 
dains the tedious cultivation of those middling 
talents of which only the great mass of human 
beings are possessed. When a strong desire of 
improvement exists, it is encouraged, but no 
pains are taken to inspire it. A boy is cast in 
among five or six hundred other boys, and is 
left to form his own character ; — if his love of 
knowledge survives this severe trial, it, in gene- 
ral, carries him very far: and, upon the same 
principle, a savage, who grows up to manhood, 
is, in general, well made, and free from all 
bodily defects; not because the severities of 
such a state are favourable to animal life, but 
because they are so much the reverse, that 
none but the strongest can* survive them. A 
few boys are incorrigibly idle, and a few incor- 
.rigibly eager for knowledge ; but the great mass 
are in a state of doubt and fluctuation ; and they 



come to school for the express purpose, not of 
being left to themselves — for that could be done 
any where — but that their wavering tastes and 
propensities should be decided by the interven- 
tion of a master. In a forest, or public school 
for oaks and elms, the trees are left to them- 
selves ; the s.trong plants live, and the weak 
ones die : the towering oak that remains is ad- 
mired : the saplings that perish around it are 
cast into the flames and forgotten. But it is 
not surely to the vegetable struggle of a forest, 
or the hasty glance of a forester, that a bota- 
nist would commit a favourite plant ; he would 
naturally seek for it a situation of less hazard, 
and a cultivator whose hmited occupations 
would enable him to give to it a reasonable 
share of his time and attention. The very mean- 
ing of education seems to us to be, that the old 
should teach the young, and the wise direct the 
weak ; that a man who professes to instruct, 
should get among his pupils, study their cha- 
racters, gain their affections, and form their in- 
clinations and aversions. In a public school, 
the numbers render this impossible ; it is im- 
possible that sufficient time should be found for 
this useful and affectionate interference. Boys, 
therefore, are left to their own crude concep- 
tions and ill-formed propensities ; and this ne- 
glect is called a spirited and manly education. 

In by far the greatest number of cases, we 
cannot think public schools favourable to the 
cultivation of knowledge ; and we have equally 
strong doubts if they be so to the cultivation of 
morals, — though we admit, that, upon this point, 
the most striking arguments have been pro- 
duced in their favour. 

It io contended by the friends to public schools, 
that every person, before he comes to man's 
estate, must run through a certain career of dis- 
sipation ; and that if that career is, by the means 
of a private education, deferred to a more ad- 
vanced period of life, it will only be begun 
with greater eagerness, and pursued into more 
blameable excess. The time must, of course, 
come when every man must be his own master ; 
when his conduct can be no longer regulated 
by the watchful superintendence of another, 
but must be guided by his own discretion. 
Emancipation must come at last ; and we ad- 
mit, that the object tt> be aimed at is, that such 
emancipation should be gradual, and not pre- 
mature. Upon this very invidious point of the 
discussion, we rather wish to avoid offering any 
opinion. The manners of great schools vary 
considerably from time to time ; and what may 
have been true many years ago, is very possi- 
bly not true at the present period. In this in- 
stance, every parent must be governed by bis 
own observations and means of information. 
If the license which prevails at public schools 
is only a fair increase of hberty, proportionate 
to advancing age, and calculated to prevent 
the bad effects of a sudden transition from tute- 
lary thraldom to perfect self-government, it is 
certainly a good rather than an evil. If, on the 
contrary, there exists in these places of educa- 
tion a system of premature debauchery, and if 
they only prevent men from being corrupted 
by the world, by corrupting them before their 
entry info the world, they can then only be 
looked upon as evils of the greatest magni- 
tude, however they may be sanctioned by opi- 
nion, or rendered femiliar to us by habit. 

The vital and essential part of a school is the 
master ; but, at a pubhc school, no boy, or, at 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the best, only a very few, can see enough of 
him to derive any considerable benefit i'»om 
his character, manners, and information. It is 
certainly of eminent use, particularly to a young 
man of rank, that he should have lived among 
boys; but it is only so when they are all mo- 
derately watched by some superior understand- 
ing. The morality of boys is generally very im- 
perfect; their notions of honour extremely mis- 
taken ; and their objects of ambition frequently 
very absurd. The probability then is, that the 
kind of discipline they exercise over each other 
will produce (when left to itself) a great deal of 
mischief; and yet this is the discipline to which 
every child at a public school is not only ne- 
cessarily exposed, but principally confined. 
Our objection (we again repeat) is not to the 
interference of boys in the formation of the 
character of boys ; their character, we are per- 
suaded, will be very imperfectly formed without 
their assistance ; but our objection is to that 
almost exclusive agency which they exercise 
in public schools. 

After having said so much in opposition to 
the general prejudice in favour of public schools, 
we may be expected to state what species of 
school we think preferable to them; for if pub- 
lic schools, with all their disadvantages, are 
the best that can actually be found, or easily 
attained, the objections to them are certainly 
made to very little purpose. 

We have no hesitation, however, in saying, 
that that education seems to us to be the best 
which mingles a domestic with a school life ; 
and which gives to a youth the advantage 
which is to be derived from the learning of a 
master, and the emulation which results from 
the society of other boys, together with the 
affectionate vigilance which he must experience 
in the house of his parents. But where this 
species of education, from peculiarity of circum- 



stances or situation, is not attainable, we are 
disposed to think a society of twenty or thirty 
boys, under the guidance of a learned man, 
and, above all, of a man of good sense, to be a 
seiTiinary the best adapted for the education of 
youth. The numbers are sufficient to excite a 
considerable degree of emulation, to give to a 
boy some insight into the diversities of the 
human character, and to subject him to the ob- 
servation and control of his superiors. It by no 
means follows, that a judicious man should al- 
ways interfere with his authority and advice be- 
cause he has always the means ; he may con- 
nive at many things which he cannot approve, 
and suffer some little failures to proceed to a 
certain extent, which, if indulged in wider 
limits, would be attended with irretrievable 
mischief: he will be aware, that his object is to 
fit his pupil for the world ; that constant con- 
trol is a very bad preparation for complete 
emancipation from all control; that it is not 
bad policy to expose a young man, under the 
eye of superior wisdom, to some of those dan- 
gers which will assail him hereafter in greater 
number, and in greater strength — when he has 
only his own resources to depend upon. A 
private education, conducted upon these prin- 
ciples, is not calculated to gratify quickly the 
vanity of a parent who is blest with a child of 
strong character and pre-eminent abilities : to 
be the first scholar of an obscure master, at an 
obscure place, is no very splendid distinction ; 
nor does it afford that opportunity, of which so 
many parents are desirous, of forming great 
connexions for their children : but if the ob- 
ject be, to induce the young to love knowledge 
and virtue, we are inclined to suspect, that, for 
the average of human talents and characters, 
these are the situations in which such tastes 
will be the most effectually formed. 



12 



90 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



TOLERATION.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1811.] 



If a prudent man sees a child playing with a 
porcelain cup of great value, he takes the ves- 
sel out of his hand, pats him on the head, tells 
him his mamma will be sorry if it is broken, 
and gently cheats him into the use of some less 
precious substitute. Why will Lord Sidmouth 
meddle with the Toleration Act, when there are 
so many other subjects in which his abilities 
might be so eminently useful — when enclosure 
bills are drawn up with such scandalous negli- 
gence — turnpike roads so shamefully neglected 
— and public conveyances illegitimately loaded 
in the face of day, and in defiance of Ihe wisest 
legislative provisions! We confess our trepi- 
dation at seeing the Toleration Act in the hands 
of Lord Sidmouth ; and should be very glad if 
it were fairly back in the statute book, and the 
sedulity of this well-meaning nobleman diverted 
into another channel. 

The alarm and suspicion of the Dissenters 
upon these measures are wise and rational. 
They are right to consider the Toleration Act 
as their palladium ; and they may be certain 
that in this country there is always a strong 
party ready, not only to prevent the further ex- 
tension of tolerant principles, but to abridge (if 
they dared) their present operation within the 
narrowest limits. Whoever makes this at- 
tempt, will be sure to make it under professions 
of the most earnest regard for mildness and 
toleration, and with the strongest declarations 
of respect for King William, the Revolution, 
and the principles which seated the House of 
Brunswick on the throne of these realms ; — 
and then will follow the clauses for whipping 
Dissenters, imprisoning preachers, and sub- 
jecting them to rigid qualifications, &c. &c. 
&c. The infringement on the militia acts is a 
mere pretence. The real object is to diminish 
the number of Dissenters from the Church of 
England, by abridging the liberties and privi- 
leges they now possess. This is the project 
which we shall examine, for we sincerely be- 
lieve it to be the project in agitation. The 
mode in which it is proposed to attack the Dis- 
senters is, first, by exacting greater qualifica- 
tions in their teachers : next, by preventing the 
interchange or itinerancy of preachers, and 
fixing them to one spot. 

It can never, we presume, be intended to 
subject dissenting ministers to any kind of the- 
ological examination. A teacher examined in 
doctrinal opinions, by another teacher who dif- 
fers from him, is so very absurd a project, that 
we entirely acquit Lord Sidmouth of any in- 
tention of this sort. We rather presume his 
lordship to mean, that a man who professes to 
teach his fellow creatures, should at least have 



* Bints on Toleration, in Five Essays, $-c. suggested for 
the consideration of Lord Viscount Sidmouth, and the Dis- 
eenters. By Philagatharches. London. 1810. 



made some progress in human learning;— 
that he should not be wholly without educa- 
tion ; — that he should be able at least to read 
and write. If the test is of this very ordinary 
nature, it can scarcely exclude many teachers 
of religion ; and it was hardly worth while, for 
the very insignificant diminution of numbers 
which this must occasion to the dissenting 
clergy, to have raised all the alarm which this 
attack upon the Toleration Act has occasioned. 
But, without any reference to the magnitude 
of the efiects, is the principle i-ight ? or, What 
is the meaning of religious toleration 1 That 
a man should hold, without pain or penalty, 
any religious opinions, — and choose for his 
instruction, in the business of salvation, any 
guide whom he pleases ; — care being taken 
that the teacher and the doctrine injure neither 
the policy nor the morals of the country. We . 
maintain that perfect religious toleration ap- 
plies as much to the teacher as the thing 
taught; and that it is quite as intolerant to 
make a man hear Thomas, who wants to hear 
John, as it would be to make a man profess 
Arminian, who wished to profess Calviaistical 
principles. What right has any government to 
dictate to any man who shall guide him to 
heaven, any more than it has to persecute the 
religious tenets by which he hopes to arrive 
there 1 You believe that the heretic professes 
doctrines utterly incompatible with the true 
spirit of the gospel ; — first you burnt him for 
this, — then you whipt him, then you fined 
him, — then you put him in prison. All this 
did no good ; — and, for these hundred years 
last past, you have let him alone. The heresy 
is now firmly protected by law ; — and you know 
it must be preached : — What matters it then, 
who preaches it 1 If the evil must be commu- 
nicated, the organ and instrument through 
which it is communicated cannot be of much 
consequence. It is true, this kind of persecu- 
tion against persons, has not been quite so 
much tried as the other against doctrines ; but 
the folly and inexpediency of it rest precisely 
upon the same grounds. 

Would it not be a singular thing if the friends 
of the Church of England were to make the 
most strenuous efforts to render their enemies 
eloquent and learned? — and to found places of 
education for Dissenters 1 But, if their learn- 
ing would not be a good, why is their ignorance 
an evin — unless it be necessarily supposed, , 
that all increase of learning must- bring men i 
over to the Church of England; in which sup- T 
position, the Scottish and Catholic universities, 
and the college at Hackney, would hardly ac- 
quiesce. Ignorance surely matures and quick- 
ens the progress, by insuring the dissolution 
of absurdity. Rational and learned Dissenters 
remain : — religious mobs, under some ignorant 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



91 



fanatic of the day, become foolish overmuch, — 
dissolve, and return to the Church. The Uni- 
tarian, who reads and writes gets some sort of 
discipline, and returns no more. 

What connection is there (as Lord Sid- 
mouth's plan assumes) between the zeal and 
piety required for religious instruction and the 
common attainments of literature 1 But, if 
knowledge and education are required for re- 
ligious instruction, why be content with the 
common elements of learning 1 why not require 
higher attainments in dissenting candidates for 
orders; and examine them in the languages 
in which the books of their religion are con- 
veyed 1 

A dissenting minister of vulgar aspect and 
homely appearance, declares that he entered 
into that holy office because he felt a call ; — 
and a clergyman of the Establishment smiles 
at him for the declaration. But it should be 
remembered, that no minister of the Establish- 
ment is admitted into orders, before he has been 
expressly interrogated by the bishop whether 
he feels himself called to that sacred office. 
The doctrine of calling, or inward feeling, is 
quite orthodox in the English Church ; — and, 
in arguing this subject in Parliament, it will 
hardly be contended, that the Episcopalian only 
is the judge when that call is genuine, and 
when it is only imaginary. 

The attempt at making the dissenting clergy 
stationary, and persecuting their circulation, 
appears to us quite as unjust and inexpedient 
as the other measure of qualifications. It ap- 
pears a gross inconsistency to say — "I admit 
that what you are doing is legal, — but you must 
not do it thoroughly and effectually. I allow 
you to propagate your heresy, — but I object to 
all means of propagating it which appear to 
be useful and effective." If there are any other 
grounds upon which the circulation of the dis- 
senting clergy is objected to, let these grounds 
be stated and examined ; but to object to their 
circulation merel}^ because it is the best method 
of effecting the object which you allow them to 
effect, does appear to be rather unnatural and 
inconsistent. 

It is persumed, in this argument, that the 
only reason urged for the prevention of itiner- 
ant preachers is the increase of heresy ; for, 
if heresy is not increased by it, it must be im- 
material to the feelings of Lord Sidraouth, and 
of the imperial Parliament, whether Mr. Shuf- 
flebotlom preaches at Bungay, and Mr. Ringle- 
tub at Ipswich ; or whether an artful vicissitude 
is adopted, a'nd the order of insane predication 
reversed. 

But, supposing all this new interference to 
be just, what good will it do] You find a dis- 
senting preacher, whom 3'-ou have prohibited, 
still continuing to preach, — or preaching at 
Ealing when he ought to preach at Acton ; — 
his number is taken, and the next morning he 
is summoned. Is it believed that this descrip- 
tion of persons can be put down by fine and 
imprisonment 1 His fine is paid for him ; and 
he returns from imprisonment ten times as 
much sought after and as popular as he was 
before. This is a receipt for making a stupid 
preacher popular, and a popular preacher more 
popular, but can have no possible tendency to 



prevent the mischief against which it is level- 
ed. It is precisely the old history of perse- 
cution against opinions turned into a perse- 
cution against persons. The prisons will be 
filled, — the enemies of the Church made ene- 
mies of the state also, — and the Methodists 
rendered ten times more actively mad than 
they are at present. This is the direct and 
obvious tendency of Lord Sidmouth's plan. 

Nothing dies so hard and rallies so often as 
intolerance. The fires are put out, and no liv- 
ing nostril has scented the nidor of a human 
creature roasted for faith ; — then, after this, the 
prison doors were got open, and the chains 
knocked off; and now Lord Sidmouth only 
begs that men who disagree with him in re- 
ligious opinions may be deprived of all civil 
offices and not be allowed to hear the preachers 
they like best. Chains and whips he would 
not hear of; but these mild gratifications of 
his bill every orthodox mind is surely entitled 
to. The hardship would indeed be great if a 
churchman were deprived of the amusement 
of putting a dissenting parson in prison. We 
are convinced Lord Sidmouth is a very amia- 
ble and well-intentioned man : his error is not 
the error of his heart, but of his time, above 
which few men ever rise. It is the error of 
some four or five hundred thousand English 
gentlemen of decent education and worthy 
characters, who conscientiously believe that 
they are punishing, and continuing incapaci- 
ties, for the good of the state ; while they are, 
in fact (though without knowing it), only grati- 
fying that insolence, hatred, and revenge, which 
all human beings are unfortunately so ready to 
feel against those who will not conform to their 
own sentiments. 

But, instead of making the dissenting church- 
es less popular, why not make the English 
church more popular, and raise the English 
clergy to the privileges of the Dissenters 1 In 
any parish of England, any layman, or clergy- 
man, by paying sixpence, can open a place of 
worship, — provided it be not the worship of the 
Church of England. If he wishes to attack the 
doctrines of the bishop or the incumbent, he is 
not compelled to ask the consent of any person; 
but if, by any evil chance, he should be per- 
suaded of the truth of those doctrines, and build 
a chapel or mount a pulpit to support them, he 
is instantly put in the spiritual court; for the 
regular incumbent, who has a legal monopoly 
of this doctrine, does not choose to suffer any 
interloper; and without his consent, it is ille- 
gal to preach the doctrines of the church within 
his precincts.* Now this appears to us a great 

* It.^might be supposed that the general interests of 
the Church would outweigh the particular interests of 
the rector; and that any clergyman would be glad to 
see places of worship opened within his parish for the 
doctrines of the Established Church. The fact, how- 
ever, is directly the reverse. It is scarcely possible to 
obtain permission from the established clergyman of the 
parish to open a chapel there ; and, when it is granted, 
it is granted upon very hard and interested conditions. 
The parishes of St, George— of St. James— of Mary-le- 
bone— and of St. Anne's, in London— may, in the parish 
churches, chapels of ease, and mercenary chapels, con- 
tain, perhaps, one-hundredth part of their Episcopalian 
inhabitants. Let the rectors, lay and clerical, meet 
together, and give notice that any clergyman of the 
Church of England, approved by the bishop, may preach 
there ; and we will venture to say, that places of wor- 



92 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



and manifest absurdity, and a disadvantage 
against the Established Church which very few 
establishments could bear. The persons who 
preach and who build chapels, or for whom 
chapels are built, among the Dissenters, are 
active clever persons, with considerable talents 
for that kind of employment. These talents 
have, with them, their free and unbounded 
scope ; while in the English Church they are 
wholly extinguished and destroyed. Till this 
evil is corrected, the Church contends with fear- 
ful odds against its opponents. On the one 
side, any man who can command the attention 
of a congregation — to whom nature has given 
the animal and intellectual qualifications of a 
preacher — such a man is the member of every 
corporation ; — all impediments are removed ; — 
there is not a single position in Great Britain 
which he may not take, provided he is hostile 
to the Established Church. In the other case, 
if the English Church were to breed up a Mas- 
sillon or a Bourdaloue, he finds every place 
occupied, and every where a regular and re- 
spectable clergyman ready to put him in the 
spiritual court, if he attracts, within his pre- 
cincts, any attention to the doctrines and wor- 
ship of the Established Church. 

The necessity of having the bishop's consent 
would prevent any improper person from 
preaching. That consent should be withheld, 
not capriciously, but for good and lawful cause 
to be assigned. 

The profits of an incumbent proceed from 
fixed or voluntary contributions. The fixed 
could not be afl^ected ; and the voluntary ought 
to vary according to the exertions of the in- 
cumbent and the good will of the parishioners ; 
but, if this is wrong, pecuniary compensation 
might be made (at the discretion of the ordina- 
ry) from the supernumerary to the regular cler- 
gyman.* 

Such a plan, it is true, would make the 
Church of England more popular in its nature ; 
and it ought to be made more popular, or it 
will not endure for another half century. There 
are two methods ; the Church must be made 
more popular or the Dissenters less so. To 
effect the latter object by force and restriction 
is unjust and impossible. The only remedy 
seems to be, to grant to the Church the same 
privileges which are enjoyed by the Dissenters, 
and to excite, in one party, that competition of 
talent which is of such palpable advantage to 
the other, 

A remedy suggested by some well-wishers to 
the Church, is the appointment of men to bene- 



ship capable of containing 20,000;persons would be built 
within ten yenrs. But, in these cases, the interest of 
the rector and'of the Establishment is not the same. A 
chapel belonging to the Swedenborgians, or Methodists 
of the New Jerusalem, was offered, two or three years 
since, in London, to a clergyman of the Establishment. 
The proprietor was tired of his irrational tenants, and 
wished for better doctrine. The rector (since a digni- 
tary), with every possible compliment to the fitness of 
the person in question, positively refusedithe applica- 
tion ; and the church remains in the hands of Metho- 
dists. No particular blame is intended, by this anec- 
dote, against the individual rector. He acted as many 
have done before and since; but the incumbent clergy- 
man ought to possess no such power. It is his interest, 
but not the interest of the Establishment. 

* All this has been since placed on a better footing. 



fices who have talents for advancing the inter- 
'ests of religion ; but, till each particular patron 
can be persuaded to care more for the general 
good of the Church than for the particular good 
of the person whom he patronizes, little expec- 
tation of improvement can be derived from this 
quarter. 

The competition between the Established 
clergy, to which this method would give birth, 
would throw the incumbent in the back-ground 
only when he was unfit to stand forward, — im- 
moral, negligent, or stupid. His income would 
still remain ; and, if his influence were super- 
seded by a man of better qualities and attain- 
ments, the general good of the Establishment 
would be consulted by the change. The bene- 
ficed clergyman would always come to the 
contest with great advantages ; and his defici- 
encies must be very great indeed, if he lost the 
esteem of his parishioners. But the contest 
would rarely or never take place, where the 
friends of the Establishment were not numer- 
ous enough for all. At present, the selfish 
incumbent, who cannot accommodate the fif- 
tieth part of his parishioners, is determined that 
no one else shall do it for him. It is in such 
situations that the benefit to the Establishment 
would be greatest, and the injury to the ap- 
pointed minister none at all. 

We beg of men of sense to reflect, that the 
question is not whether they wish the English 
Church to stand as it now is, but whether the 
English Church can stand as it now is ; and 
whether the moderate activity here recom- 
mended is not the minimum of exertion neces- 
sary for its preservation. At the same time, 
we hope nobody will rate our sagacity so very 
low as to imagine we have much hope that any 
measure of the kind will ever be adopted. Ml 
establishments die of dignity. They are too proud 
to think themselves ill, and to take a little 
physic. 

To show that we have not misstated the ob- 
stinacy or the conscience of sectaries, and the 
spirit with which they will meet the regulations 
of Lord Sidmouth, we will lay before our 
readers the sentiments of Philagatharches — a 
stern subacid Dissenter. 

"I shall not here enter into a comprehensive 
discussion of the nature of a call to the minis- 
terial office; but deduce my proposition from a 
sentiment admitted equally by conformists and 
nonconformists. It is essential to the nature 
of a call to preach ' that a man be moved by the 
Holy Ghost to enter upon the work of the min- 
istry : ' and, if the Spirit of God operate power- 
fully upon his heart to contrain him to appear 
as a public teacher of religion, who shall com- 
mand him to desist"! We have seen that the 
sanction of the magistrate can give no autho- 
rity to preach the gospel ; and if he were to 
forbid our exertions, we must persist in the 
work ; we dare not relinquish a task that God 
has required us to perform ; we cannot keep 
our consciences in peace, if our lips are closed 
in silence, while the Holy Ghost is moving our 
hearts to proclaim the tidings of salvation : — 
'Yea, woe is unto me,' saith St. Paul, 'if I 
preach not the gospel.' Thus, when the Jewish 
priests had taken Peter and John into custody, 
I and after examining them concerning their doc- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



93 



•trine, * commanded them not to speak at all, 
nor to teach in the name of Jesus,' these apos- 
tolical champions of the cross undauntedly 
replied, 'Whether it be right in the sight of God 
to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge 
ye : for we cannot but speak the things which 
we have seen and heard.' Thus, also, in our 
day, when the Holy Ghost excites a man to 
preach the gospel to his fellow sinners, his 
message is sanctioned by an authority which is 
'far above all principality and power;' and, 
-consequently, neither needs the approbation of 
subordinate rulers, nor admits of revocation by 
:their countermanding edicts. 

" 3dly. He who receives a license should not 
expect to derive from it a testimony of qualifi- 
•cation to preach. 

" It would be grossly absurd to seek a testi- 
mony of this description from any single indi- 
vidual, even though he were an experienced 
•veteran in the service of Christ; for aH are 
fallib\e ; and, under some unfavourable prepos- 
session, even the wisest or the best of men 
might give an erroneous decision upon the 
•case. But this observation will gain additional 
force when we suppose the power of judging 
transferred to the person of the magistrate — 
We cannot presume that a civil ruler under- 
stands as much of theology as a minister of 
the gospel. His necessary duties prevent him 
from critically investigating questions upon 
•divinity ; and confine his attention to that par- 
ticular department which society has deputed 
him to occupy ; and hence to expect at his 
hands a testimony of qualification to preach 
would be almost as ludicrous as to require an 
obscure country curate to fill the office of Lord 
Chancellor. 

" But again— admitting that a magistrate 
•who is nominated by the sovereign to issue 
forth licenses to dissenting ministers, is com- 
petent to the task of judging of their natural 
and acqviired abilities, it must still remain a 
doubtful question whether they are moved to 
preach by the influences of the Holy Ghost ; 
for it is the prerogative of God alone to ' search 
the heart and try ihe reins' of the children of 
men. Consequently, after every effort of the 
ruling powers to assume to themselves the 
right of judging whether a man be or be not 
•qualified to preach, the most essential property 
of the call must remain to be determined by 
the conscience of the individual. 

"It is further worthy of observation that the 
talents of a preacher may be acceptable to 
many persons, if not to him who issues the 
license. The taste of a person thus high in 
office may be too refined to derive gratification 
from any but the most learned, intelligent, and 
accomplished preachers. Yet, as the gospel 
is sent to the poor as well as to the rich, per- 
haps hundreds of preachers may be highly 
acceptable, much esteemed, and eminently 
useful in their respective circles, who would 
be despised as men of mean attainments by 
one whose mind is well stored with literature, 
and cultivated by science. From these re- 
marks, I infer, that a man's own judgment 
must be the criterion, in determining what tine 
of conduct to pursue before he begins to 
preach ; and the opinion of the people to whom 



he ministers must determine whether it be 
desirable that he should continue to fill their 
pulpit."— (168— 173.) 

The sentiments of Philagatharches are ex- 
pressed still more strongly in a subsequent 
passage. 

" Here a question may arise — what line of 
conduct conscientious ministers ought to pur- 
sue, if laws were to be enacted, forbidding 
either all dissenting ministers to preach, or 
only lay preachers ; or forbidding to prea.ch 
in an unlicensed place ; and, at the same 
time, refusing to license persons and places, 
except under such security as the property 
of the parties would not meet, or under limi- 
tations to which their consciences could not 
accede. What has been advanced ought to 
outweigh every consideration of temporal 
interest; and if the evil genius of persecu- 
tion were to appear again, I pray God that 
we might all be faithful to Him who hath called 
us to preach the gospel. Under such circum- 
stances, let us continue to preach : if fined, let 
us pa)' the penalty, and persevere in preach- 
ing; and, when unable to pay the fine, or 
deeming it impolitic so to do, let us submit to 
go quietly to prison, but with the resolution 
still to preach upon the first opportunity, and, 
if possible, to collect a church even within 
the precincts of the gaol. He who, by these 
zealous exertions, becomes the honoured in- 
strument of converting one sinner unto God, 
will find that single seal to his ministerial la- 
bours an ample compensation for all his suf- 
ferings. In this manner the venerable apostle 
of the Gentiles both avowed and proved his 
sincere attachment to the cause in which he 
had embarked : — ' The Holy Ghost witnesseth, 
in every city, that bonds and afflictions abide 
me. But none of these things move me, neither 
count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might 
finish my course with joy, and the ministry 
which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to 
testify the gospel of the grace of God.' 

"In the early ages of Christianity martyr- 
dom was considered an eminent honour ; and 
many of the primitive Christians thrust them- 
selves upon the notice of their heathen per- 
secutors, that they might be brought to suffer 
in the cause of that Redeemer whom they 
ardently loved. In the present day Christians 
in general incline to estimate such rash ardour 
as a species of enthusiasm, and feel no dispo- 
sition to court the horrors of persecution ; yet, 
if such dark and tremendous days were to 
return in this age of the world, ministers 
should retain their stations; they should be 
true to their charge ; they should continue 
their ministrations, each man in his sphere, 
shining with all the lustre of genuine godli- 
ness, to dispel the gloom in which the nation 
would then be enveloped. If this line of con- 
duct were to be adopted, and acted upon with 
decision, the cause of piety, of nonconformity, 
and of itinerant preaching, must eventually 
triumph. All the gaols in the country would 
speedily be filled : those houses of correction 
which were erected for the chastisement of the 
vicious in the community, would be replen- 
ished with thousands of the most pious, active, 
and useful men in the kingdom, whose cha- 



94 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



racters are held in general esteem. But the 
ultimate result of such despotic proceedings is 
heyond the ken of human prescience :— pro- 
bably, appeals to the public and the legislature 
would teem from the press, and, under such 
circumstances, might diffuse a revolutionary 
spirit throughout the country."— (239— 243.) 

We quote these opinions at length, not be- 
cause they are the opinions of Philagatharches, 
but because we are confident that they are the 
opinions of ten thousand hot-headed fanatics, 
and that they would firmly and conscientiously 
be acted upon. 

Philagatharches is an instance (not uncom- 
mon, we are sorry to say, even among the most 
rational of the Protestant Dissenters) of a love 
of toleration combined with a love of persecu- 
tion. He is a Dissenter, and earnestly demands 
religious liberty for that body of men ; but as 
for the Catholics, he would not only continue 
their present disabilities, but load them with 
every new one that could be conceived. He 



expressly says that an Atheist or a Deist ma7 
be allowed to propagate their doctrines, but 
not a Catholic ; and then proceeds with all the 
customary trash against that sect which nine 
schoolboys out of ten now know how to refute. 
So it is with Philagatharches ; — so it is with 
weak men in every sect. It has ever been our 
object, and (in spite of misrepresentation and 
abuse) ever shall be our object, to put down 
this spirit — to protect the true interests, and to 
diffuse the true spirit, of toleration. To a well- 
supported national Establishment, effectually 
discharging its duties, we are very sincere 
friends. If any man, after he has paid his 
contribution to this great security for the exist- 
ence of religion in any shape, chooses to adopt 
a religion of his own, that man should be per- 
mitted to do so without let, molestation, or dis- 
qualification for any of the offices of life. We 
apologize to men of sen&e for sentiments so 
trite ; and patiently endure the anger which 
they will excite among those with whom they 
will pass for original. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



95 



CHAELES FOX.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1811.] 



Thovsh Mr. Fox's history was, of course, 
as much open to animadversion and rebuke 
as any other book, the task, we think, woukl 
have become any other person better than Mr. 
Rose. The whole of Mr. Fox's life was spent 
in opposing the profligacy and exposing the 
ignorance of his own court. In the first half 
of his political career, while Lord North was 
losing America, and in the latter half, while 
Mr. Pitt was ruining Europe, the creatures of 
the government were eternally exposed to the 
attacks of this discerning, dauntless, and most 
powerful speaker. Folly and corruption never 
had a more terrible enemy in the English 
House of Commons — one whom it was so im- 
possible to bribe, so hopeless to elude, and so 
difficult to answer. Now it so happened that, 
during the whole of this period, the historical 
critic of Mr. Fox was employed in subordinate 
offices of government; — that the detail of taxes 
passed through his hands ; — that he amassed 
a large fortune by those occupations ; — and 
that, both in the measures which he support- 
ed, and in the friends from whose patronage 
he received his emoluments, he was complete- 
ly and perpetually opposed to Mr. Fox. 

Again, it must be remembered, that very 
great people have very long memories for the 
injuries which they receive, or which they 
think they receive. No speculation was so 
good, therefore, as to vilify the memory of 
Mr. Fox, — nothing so delicious as to lower 
him in the public estimation, — no service so 
likely to be well rewarded — so eminently grate- 
ful to those of whose favour Mr. Rose had so 
often tasted the sweets, and of the value of 
whose patronage he must, from long experi- 
ence, have been so thoroughly aware. 

We are almost inclined to think that we 
might at one time have worked ourselves up 
to suspect Mr. Rose of being actuated by some 
of these motives : — not because we have any 
reason to think worse of that gentleman than 
of most of his political associates, but merely 
because it seemed to us so very probable that 
he should have been so influenced. Our sus- 
picions, however, were entirely removed by 
the frequency and violence of his own pro- 
testations. He vows so solemnly that he has 
no bad metive in writing his critique, that we 
find it impossible to withhold our belief in his 
purity. But Mr. Rose does not trust to his 
protestations alone. He is not satisfied with 
assurances that he did not write this book 
from any bad motive, but he informs us that 
his motive was excellent, — and is even obliging 
enough to tell us what that motive was. The 
Earl of Marchmont, it seems, was Mr. Rose's 
friend. To Mr. Rose he left his manuscripts ; 
and among these manuscripts was a narrative 



* A Vindication of Mr. Fox's History of the Early Part 
of the Reign of James the Second. By Samuel Heywood, 
Serjeant-at-Law. London. Johnson & Co. 1811. 



written by Sir Patrick Hume, an ancestor of 
the Earl of Marchmont, and one of the leaders 
in Argyle's rebellion. Of Sir Patrick Hume 
Mr. Rose conceives (a little erroneously to be 
sure, but he assures us he does conceive) Mr. 
Fox to have spoken disrespectfully ; and the 
case comes out, therefore, as clearly as possi- 
ble, as follows. 

Sir Patrick was the progenitor, and Mr. 
Rose was the friend and sole executor, of the 
Earl of Marchmont; and therefore, says Mr. 
Rose, I consider it as a sacred duty to vindi- 
cate the character of Sir Patrick, and, for that 
purpose, to publish a long and elaborate cri- 
tique upon all the doctrines and statements 
contained in Mr. Fox's history ! This appears 
to us about as satisfactory an explanation of 
Mr. Rose's authorship as the exclamation of the 
traveller was of the name of Stony Stratford. 

Before Mr. Rose gave way to this intense 
value for Sir Patrick, and resolved to write a 
book, he should have inquired what accurate 
men there were about in society ; and if he 
had once received the slightest notice of the 
existence of Mr. Samuel Heywood, serjeant- 
at-law, we are convinced he would have trans- 
fused into his own will and testament the feel- 
ings he derived from that of Lord Marchmont, 
and devolved upon another executor the sacred 
and dangerous duty of vindicating Sir Patrick 
Hume. 

The life of Mr. Rose has been principally 
employed in the painful, yet perhaps neces- 
sary, duty of increasing the burdens of his 
fellow-creatures. It has been a life of detail, 
onerous to the subject — onerous and lucrative 
to himself. It would be unfair to expect from 
one thus occupied any great depth of thought, 
or any remarkable graces of composition ; but 
we have a fair right to look for habits of pa- 
tient research and scrupulous accuracy. We 
might naturally expect industry in collecting 
facts, and fidelity in quoting them ; and hope, 
in the absence of commanding genius, to re- 
ceive a compensation from the more humble 
and ordinary qualities of the mind. How far 
this is the case, our subsequent remarks will 
enable the reader to judge. We shall not ex- 
tend them to any great length, as we have 
before treated on the same subject in our re- 
view of Mr. Rose's work. Our great object 
at present is to abridge the observations of 
Serjeant Heywood. For Serjeant Heywood, 
though a most respectable, honest, and en- 
lightened man, really does require an abridger. 
He has not the talent of saying what he has 
to say quickly ; nor is he aware that brevity 
is in writing what charity is to all other vir- 
tues. Righteousness is worth nothing without 
the one, nor authorship without the other. But 
whoever will forgive this little defect will find 
in all his productions great learning, immacu- 
late honesty, and the most scrupulous accu- 



96 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



racy. Whatever detections of Mr. Rose's in- j 
accuracies are made in this Review are to be 
entirely given to him ; and we confess our- 
selves quite astonished at their number and 
extent. 

" Among the modes of destroying persons 
(says Mr. Fox, p. 14,) in such a situation 
(i. e. monarchs deposed), there can be little 
doubt but that adopted by Cromwell and his 
adherents is the least dishonourable. Edward 
II., Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., had 
none of them long survived their deposal; 
but this was the first instance, in our history 
at least, when of such an act it could be truly 
said it was not done in a corner." 

What Mr. Rose can find in this sentiment to 
quarrel with, we are utterly at a loss to con- 
ceive. If a human being is to be put to death 
unjustly, is it no mitigation of such a lot that 
the death should be public ? Is any thing 
better calculated to prevent secret torture and 
cruelty 1 And would Mr. Rose, in mercy to 
Charles, have preferred that red-hot iron 
should have been secretly thrust into his en- 
trails 1 — or that he should have disappeared 
as Pichegru and Toussaint have disappeared 
in our times "? The periods of the Edwards 
and Henrys were, it is true, barbarous periods : 
but this is the very argument Mr. Fox uses. 
All these murders, he contends, were immoral 
and bad ; but that where the manner was the 
least objectionable, was the murder of Charles 
the First, — because it was public. And can 
any human being doubt, in the first place, that 
these crimes would be marked by less in- 
tense cruelty if they were public; and, second- 
ly, that they would become less frequent, where 
the perpetrators incurred responsibility, than 
if they were committed by an uncertain hand 
in secrecy and concealment ? There never 
was, in short, not only a more innocent, but a 
more obvious sentiment; and to object to it 
in the manner which Mr. Rose has done, is 
surely to love Sir Patrick Hume too much, — 
if there can be any excess in so very com- 
mendable a passion in the breast of a sole 
executor. 

Mr. Fox proceeds to observe, that " he who 
has discussed this subject with foreigners, 
must have observed, that the act of the execu- 
tion of Charles, even in the minds of those 
who condemn it, excites more admiration than 
disgust." If the sentiment is bad, let those 
who feel it answer for it. Mr. Fox only as- 
serts the fact, and explains, without justifying 
it. The only question (as concerns Mr. Fox) 
is, whether such is, or is not, the feeling of 
foreigners ; and whether that feeling (if it ex- 
ists) is rightly explained! We have no doubt 
either of the fact or of the explanation. The 
conduct of Cromwell and his associates was 
not to be excused in the main act ; but, in the 
manner, it was magnanimous. And among 
the servile nations of the Continent, it must 
naturally excite a feeling of joy and won- 
der, that the power of the people had for 
once been felt, and so memorable a lesson 
read to thos^ whom they must naturally con- 
sider as the great oppressors of mankind. 

The most unjustifiable point of Mr. Rose's 
accusation, however, is still to come. "If 



such high praise," says that gentleman, "was, 
in the judgment of Mr. Fox, due to Cromwell 
for the publicity of the proceedings against the 
king, how would he have found lemguage suf- 
ficiently commendatory to expi-ess his admi- 
ration of the magnanimity of those who 
brought Lewis the Sixteenth to an open trial 1" 
Mr. Rose accuses Mr. Fox, then, of approving 
the execution of Lewis the Sixteenth : but, on 
the 20th of December, 1792, Mr. Fox said, in 
the House of Commons, i»i the presence of Mr. 
Rose, 

"The proceedings with respect to the royal 
family of France are so far from being mag- 
nanimity, justice, or mercy, that they are di- 
rectly the reverse ; they are injustice, cruelty, 
and pusillanimity." And afterwards declared 
his wish for an address to his majesty, to 
which he would add an expression "of our 
abhorrence of the proceedings against the 
royal family of France, in which, I have no 
doubt, we shall be supported by the whole 
country. If there can be any means suggested 
that will be better adapted to produce the 
unanimous concurrence of this House, and of 
all the country, with respect to the measure 
now under consideration in Paris, I should be 
obliged to any person for his better suggestion 
upon the subject." Then, after stating that such 
address, especially if the Lords joined in it, must 
have a decisive influence in France, he added, 
"I have said thus much in order to contradict 
one of the most cruel misrepresentations of 
what I had before said in our late debates ; 
and that my language may not be interpreted 
from the manner in which other gentlemen 
have chosen to answer it. I have spoken 
the genuine sentiments of my heart, and I 
anxiously wish the House to come to some re- 
solution upon the subject." And on the follow- 
ing day, when a copy of instruction sent to 
Earl Gower, signifying that he should leave 
Paris, was laid before the House of Commons, 
Mr. Fox said, "he had heard it said, that the 
proceedings against the King of France are 
unnecessary. He would go a great deal far- 
ther, and say, he believed them to be highly 
unjust ; and not only repugnant to all the com- 
mon feelings of mankind, but also contrary to 
all the fundamental principles of law." — (p. 
20, 21.) 

On Monday the 28th January, he said, — 
" With regard to that part of the communi- 
cation from his majesty, which related to 
the late detestable scene exhibited in a neigh- 
bouring country, he could not suppose there 
were two opinions in that House ; he knew 
they were all ready to declare their ab- 
horrence of that abominable proceeding." — 
(p. 21.) 

Two days afterwards, in the debate on the 
message, Mr. Fox pronounced the condemna- 
tion and execution of the king to be 

— " an act as disgraceful as any that history 
recorded : and whatever opinions he might at 
any time have expressed in private conversa- 
tion, he had expressed none certainly in that 
House on the justice of bringing kings to trial: 
revenge being unjustifiable, and punishment 
useless, where it could not operate either Iff 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



97 



way of prevention or example ; he did not 
view with less detestation the injustice and 
inhumanity that had been committed towards 
that unhappy monarch. Not only were the 
rules of criminal justice — rules that more than 
any other ought to be strictly observed — viola- 
ted with respect to him : not only was he tried 
and condemned without existing law, to which 
he was personally amenable, and even con- 
trary to laws that did actually exist, but the 
degrading circumstances of his imprisonment, 
the unnecessary and insulting asperity with 
which he had been treated, the total want of re- 
publican Tnagnanimity in the whole transaction, 
(for even in that House it could be no offence 
to say, that there might be such a thing as 
magnanimity in a republic,) added every ag- 
gravation to the inhumanity and injustice." 

That Mr. Fox had held this language in the 
House of Commons, Mr. Rose knew perfectly 
well, when he accused that gentleman of ap- 
proving the murder of the King of France. 
Whatever be the faults imputed to Mr. Fox, 
duplicity and h)rpocrisy were never among the 
number; and no human being ever doubted 
but that Mr. Fox, in, this instance, spoke his 
real sentiments : but the love of Sir Patrick 
Hume is an overwhelming passion ; and no 
man who gives way to it, can ever say into 
what excesses he may be hurried. 

Non simul cuiquam conceditur, amare et sapere. 

The next point upon which Sergeant Hey- 
wood attacks Mr. Rose, is that of General 
Monk. Mr. Fox says of Monk, "that he ac- 
quiesced in the insult so meanly put upon the 
illustrious corpse of Blake, under whose au- 
spices and command he had performed the 
most creditable services of his life." This 
stoiy, Mr. Rose says, rests upon the authority 
of Neale, in his History of the Puritans. This 
is the first of many blunders made by Mr. 
Rose upon this particular topic : for Anthony 
Wood, in his Fasti Oxonienses, enumerating 
Blake among the bachelors, says, "His body 
was taken up, and, with others, buried in a pit 
in St. Margaret's church-yard adjoining, near to 
the back door of one of the prebendaries of 
Westminster, in which place it now remaineth, 
enjoying no other monument but what it reared 
by its valour, which time itself can hardly 
efface." But the difficulty is to find how the 
denial of Mr. Rose affects Mr. Fox's assertion. 
Mr. Rose admits that Blake's body was dug up 
by an order of the king ; and does not deny 
that it was done with the acquiescence of 
Monk. But if this be the case, Mr. Fox's po- 
sition that Blake was insulted, and that Monk 
acquiesced in the insult, is clearly made out. 
Nor has Mr. Rose the shadow of an authority 
for saying that the corpse of Blake was rein- 
terred ivith great decorxtm. Kennet is silent 
upon the subject. We have already given 
Serjeant Heywood's quotation from Anthony 
Wood; and this statement, for the present, 
rests entirely upon the assertion of Mr. Rose ; 
and upon that basis will remain to all eternity. 

Mr. Rose, who, we must say, on all occa- 
sions through the M'hole of this book, makes 
the greatest parade of his accuracy, states that 
the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Blake, 
13 



were taken up at the same time ; whereas the 
fact is, that those of Cromwell and Ireton were 
taken up on the 26th of January, and that of 
Blake on the 10th of September, nearly nine 
months afterwards. It ma)'^ appear frivolous 
to notice such errors as these ; but they lead 
to very strong suspicions in a critic of history 
and of historians. They show that those ha- 
bits of punctuality, on the faith of which he 
demands implicit confidence from his readers, 
really do not exist ; they prove that such a 
writer will be exact only when he thinks the 
occasion of importance, and as he himself is 
the only judge of that importance, it is neces- 
sary to examine his proofs in every instance, 
and impossible to trust him anywhere. 

Mr. Rose remarks that, in the weekly paper 
entitled Mercurius Rusticus, No. 4, where an 
account is given of the disinterment of Crom- 
well and Ireton, not a syllable is said respect- 
ing the corpse of Blake. This is very true ; 
but the reason (which does not seem to have 
occurred to Mr. Rose) is, that Blake's corpse 
was not touched till six months afterwards. 
This is really a little too much. That Mr. 
Rose shot;ld quit his usual pursuits, erect him- 
self into an historical critic, perch upon the 
body of the dead lion, impugn the accuracy of 
one of the greatest, as well as most accurate 
men of his time, — and himself be guilty of 
such gross and unpardonable negligence, looks 
so very much like an insensibility to shame, 
that we should be loth to characterize his con- 
duct by the severe epithets which it appears 
to merit, and which, we are quite certain, Sir 
Patrick, the defendee, would have been the 
first to bestow upon it. 

The next passage in Mr. Fox's work ob- 
jected to is that which charges Monk, at the 
trial of Argyle, " with having produced letters 
of friendship and confidence to take away the 
life of a nobleman, the zeal and cordiality of 
whose co-operation with him, proved by such 
documents, was the chief ground of his exe- 
cution." This accusation, says Mr. Rose, 
rests upon the sole authority of Bishop Bur- 
net ; and yet no sooner has he said this, than 
he tells us, Mr. Laing considers the bishop's 
authority to be confirmed by Cunningham and 
Baillie, both contemporary writers. Into Cun- 
ningham or Baillie Mr. Rose never looks to 
see whether or not they do really confirm the 
authority of the bishop ; and so gross is his 
negligence, that the very misprint from Mr. 
Laing's work is copied, and page 431 of Baillie 
is cited instead of 451. If Mr. Rose had really 
taken the trouble of referring to these books, 
all doubt of the meanness and guilt of Monk 
must have been instantly removed. "Monk 
was moved," says Baillie, "to send down four 
or Jive of Argyle' s letters to himself and others, 
promising his full compliance with them, that 
the king should not reprieve him." — Baillie's 
Letters, p. 451. "He endeavoured to make 
his defence," says Cunningham ; " but chiefly 
by the discoveries of Monk was condemned of 
high treason, and lost his head." — Cunning- 
ham's History, i. p. 13. 

Would it have been more than common de- 
cency required, if Mr. Rose, who had been ap- 
prised of the existence of these authorities, had 
I 



98 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



had recourse to them, before he impugned the 
accuracy of Mr. Fox 1 Or is it possible to read, 
without some portion of contempt, this slovenly 
and indolent corrector of supposed inaccura- 
cies in a man, not only so much greater than 
himself in his general nature, but a man who, 
as it turns out, excels Mr. Rose in his own little 
arts of looking, searching, and comparing ; and 
is as much his superior in the retail qualities 
which small people arrogate to themselves, as 
he was in every commanding faculty to the rest 
of his fellow creatures 1 

Mr. Rose searches Thurloe's State Papers ; 
but Serjeant Heywood searches them after 
Mr. Rose : and, by a series of the plainest 
references, proves the probability there is that 
Argyle did receive letters which might mate- 
rially have affected his life. 

To Monk's duplicity of conduct may be 
principally attributed the destruction of his 
friends, who were prevented, by their confi- 
dence in him, from taking measures to secure 
themselves. He selected those among them 
whom he thought fit for trial — sal as a commis- 
sioner upon their trial — and interfered not to 
save the lives even of those with whom he had 
lived in habits of the greatest kindness. 

"I cannot," says a witness of the most un- 
queslion ble authority, " I cannot forget one pas- 
sage that I saiu. Monk and his wife, before they 
were moved to the Tower, while they were yet 
prisoners at Lambeth House, came one evening 
to the garden, and caused them to be brought 
down, only to stare at them ; which was such a 
barbarism, for that man who had betrayed so 
many poor men to death and misery, that never 
hurt him, but had honoured him, and trusted 
their lives and interests with him, to glut his 
bloody eyes with beholding them in their bond- 
age, as no story can parallel the inhumanity 
of." — (p. 83.) Hutchinson's Memoirs, 378. 

This, however, is the man whom Mr. Fox, at 
the distance of a century and a half, may not 
mark with infamy, without incurring, from the 
candour of Mr. Rose, the imputation of repub- 
lican principles ; — as if attachment to monarchy 
could have justified, in Monk, the coldness, 
cruelty, and treachery of his character, — as if 
the historian became the advocate, or the enemy 
of any form of government, by praising the 
good, or blaming the bad men which it might 
produce. Serjeant Heywood sums up the whole 
article as follows : 

" Having examined and commented upon the 
evidence produced by Mr. Rose, than which ' it 
is hardly possible,' he says, ' to conceive that 
stronger could be formed in any case to estab- 
lish a negative,' we now safely assert that Mr. 
Fox had fully informed himself upon the sub- 
ject before he wrote, and was amply justified 
in the condemnation of Monk, and the conse- 
quent severe censures upon him. It has been 
already demonstrated that the character of 
Monk had been truly given, when of him he 
said, ' the army had fallen into the hands of 
one, than whom a baser could not be found in 
its lowest ranks.' The transactions between 
him and Argyle for a certain period of time 
were such as must naturally, if not necessarily, 
have led them into an epistolary correspond- 
ence; and it was in exact conformity with 



Monk's character and conduct to the regicides, 
that he should betray the letters written to him, 
in order to destroy a man whom he had, in the 
latter part of his command in Scotland, both 
feared and hated. If the fact of the production 
of these letters had stood merely on the testi- 
mony of Bishop Burnet, we have seen that 
nothing has been produced by Mr. Rose and 
Dr. Campbell to impeach it; on the contrary, 
an inquiry into the authorities and documents 
they have cited, strongly confirm it. But, as 
before observed, it is a surprising instance of 
Mr. Rose's indolence, that he should state the 
question to depend now, as it did in Dr. Camp- 
bell's time, on the bishop's authority solely. 
But that authority is, in itself, no light one. 
Burnet was almost eighteen years of age at the 
time of Argyle's trial ; he was never an unob- 
serving spectator of public events ; he was 
probably at Edinburgh, and, for some years 
afterwards, remained in Scotland, with ample 
means of information respecting events which 
had taken place so recently. Baillie seems 
also to have been upon the spot, and expressly 
confirms the testimony of Burnet. To these 
must be added Cunningham, who, writing as a 
person perfectly acquainted with the circum- 
stances of the transaction, says it was owing 
to the interference of Monk, who had been his 
great friend in Oliver's time, that he was sent 
back to Scotland, and brought to trial ; and that 
he was condemned chiefly by his discoveries. 
We may now ask where is the improbability 
of this story, when related of such a man 1 and 
what ground there is for not giving credit to a 
fact attested by three witnesses of veracity, each 
writing at a distance, and separate from each 
other? In this instance Bishop Burnet is so 
confirmed, that no reasonable being, who will 
attend to the subject, can doubt of the fact he 
relates being true ; and we shall hereafter prove 
that the general imputation against his accu- 
racy, made by Mr. Rose, is totally without 
foundation. If facts so proved are not to be 
credited, historians may lay aside their pens, 
and every man must content himself with the 
scanty pittance of knowledge he may be able 
to collect for himself in the very limited 
sphere of his own immediate observation." — 
(p. 86—88.) 

This, we think, is conclusive enough : bat 
we are happy to be enabled, out of our own 
store, to set this part of the question finally to 
rest, by an authority which Mr. Rose himself 
will probably admit to be decisive. Sir George 
Mackenzie, the great tory lawyer of Scotland in 
that day, and Lord Advocate to Charles IL 
through the greater part of his reign, was the 
leading counsel for Argyle on the trial alluded 
to. In 1678, this learned person, who was then 
Lord Advocate to Charles, published an elabo- 
rate treatise on the criminal law of Scotland ; 
in which, when treating of probation, or evi- 
dence, he observes, that missive letters, not 
written, but only signed by the party, should 
not be received in evidence ; and immediately 
adds, " And yet the Marquis of Argyle was con- 
vict of treason upon letters written by him 
TO General Monk ; these letters being only 
subscribed by him, and not holograph, and the 
subscription being proved per comparationem 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



9d 



literarum; which were very hard in other cases," 
&c. — Mackenzie's Criminals, first edit. p. 524, 
Part II. tit. 25, § 3. Now this, we conceive, is 
neither more nor less than a solemn profes- 
sional report of the case, — and leaves just as 
little room for doubt as to the fact, as if the 
original record of the trial had been recovered. 

Mr. Rose next objects to Mr. Fox's assertion, 
that " the king kept from his cabal ministry the 
real state of his connection with France — and 
from some of them the secret of what he was 
pleased to call his religion ;" and Mr. Fox 
doubts whether to attribute this conduct to 
the habitual treachery of Charles, or to an ap- 
prehension that his ministers might demand 
for themselves some share of the French 
money; which he was unwilling to give them. 
In answer to this conjecture, Mr. Rose quotes 
Barillon's Letters to Lewis XIV., to show that 
Charles's ministers were fully apprised of his 
money transactions with France. The letters 
so quoted were, however, written seveti years 
after the cabal ministry were in power — for Barillon 
did not come to England as ambassador till 
1677 — and these letters were not written till 
after that period. Poor Sir Patrick — It was 
for thee and thy defence this book was 
written ! ! ! ! 

Mr. Fox has said, that from some of the 
ministers of the cabal the secret of Charles's 
religion was concealed. It was known to Ar- 
lington, admitted by Mr. Rose to be a concealed 
Catholic ; it was known to Clifford, an avowed 
Catholic : Mr. Rose admits it not to have been 
known to Buckingham, though he explains the 
reserve, with respect to him, in a different way. 
He has not, however, attempted to prove that 
Lauderdale or Ashley were consulted; — on the 
contrary, in Colbert's letter of the 25th August, 
1670, cited by Mr. Rose, it is stated that Charles 
had proposed the traite simule, which should be 
a repetition of the former one in all things, 
except the article relative to the king's declaring 
himself a Catholic, and that the Protestant mi- 
nisters, Bi*ckingham, Ashlqpjjfcoper, and Lau- 
derdale, should be brought tone parties to it: — 
Can there be a stronger proof (asks Serjeant 
Heywood), that they were ignorant of the same 
treaty made the year before, and remaining 
then in force 1 Historical research is cer- 
tainly not the peculiar talent of Mr. Rose ; and 
as for the official accuracy of which he is so 
apt to boast, we would have Mr. Rose to remem- 
ber, that the term official accuracy has of late 
days become one of very ambiguous import. 
Mr. Rose, we can see, would imply by it the 
highest possible accuracy — as we see office pens 
advertised in the window of a shop, by way of 
excellence. The public reports of those, how- 
ever, who have been appointed to look into the 
manner in which public offices are conducted, 
by no means justify this usage of the term ; — 
and we are not without apprehensions, that 
Dutch politeness, Carthaginian faith, Boeotian 
genius, and official accuracy, may be terms 
equally current in the world ; and that Mr. Rose 
may, without intending it, have contributed to 
make this valualjle addition to the mass of our 
ironical phraseology. 

Speaking of the early part of James's reign, 
Mr. Fox says, it is by no means certain that he 



had yet thoughts of obtaining for his religion 
any thing more than a complete toleration ; and 
if Mr. Rose had understood the meaning of the 
French word etablissement, one of his many in- 
correct corrections of Mr. Fox might have been 
spared. A system of religion is said to be es- 
tablished when it is enacted and endowed by 
Parliament; but a toleration (as Serjeant Hey- 
wood observes) is established, when it is recog- 
nised and protected by the supreme power. 
And in the letters of Barillon, to which Mr. Rose 
refers for the justification of his attack upon 
Mr. Fox, it is quite manifest that it is in this 
latter sense that the word etablissement is used; 
and that the object in view was, not the substi- 
tution of the Catholic religion for the Estab- 
lished Church, but merely its toleration. In the 
first letter cited by Mr. Rose, James says, that 
" he knew well he should never be in safety 
unless liberty of conscience for them should be 
fully established in England." The letter of the 
24th of April is quoted by Mr. Rose, as if the 
French king had written, the establishment of the 
Catholic religion ; whereas the real words are, 
the establishment of the free exercise of the Catholic 
religion. The world are so inveterately resolved 
to believe, that a man who has no brilliant 
talents must be accurate, that Mr. Rose, in re- 
ferring to authorities, has a great and decided 
advantage. He is, however, in point of fact, as 
lax and incorrect as a poet ; and it is absolutely 
necessary, in spite of every parade of line, and 
page, and number, to follow him in the most 
minute particular. The Serjeant, like a blood- 
hound of the old breed, is always upon his 
track ; and always looks if there are any such 
passages in the page quoted, and if the passages 
are accurately quoted or accurately translated. 
Nor will he by any means be content with 
official accioracy, nor submit to be treated, in his- 
torical questions, as if he were hearing finan- 
cial statements in the House of Commons. 

Barillon writes, in another letter to Lewis 
XIV. — "What your majesty has most besides 
at heart, that is to say, for the establishment of 
a free exercise of the Catholic religion." On 
the 9th of May, Lewis writes to Barillon, that 
he is persuaded Charles will enaploy all his 
authority to establish the free exercise of the 
Catholic religion: he mentions also, in the 
same letter, the Parliament consenting to the 
free exercise of our religion. On the loth of 
June, he writes to Barillon — " There now re- 
mains only to obtain the repeal of the penal laws 
in favour of the Catholics, and the free exercise 
of our religion in all his states." Immediately 
after Monmouth's execution, when his views 
of success must have been as lofty as they 
ever could have been, Lewis writes — " It will 
be easy to the King of England, and as useful 
for the security of "his reign as for the repose 
of his conscience, to re-establish the exercise 
of the Catholic religion." In a letter of Ba- 
rillon, July 16th, Sunderland is made to say, 
that the king would always be exposed to the 
indiscreet zeal of those who would inflame the 
people against the Catholic religion, so long as 
it should not he more fully established. The 
French expression is tant qu'elk ne sera pas 
plus pleincment etablie ,■ and this Mr. Rose has 
had the modesty to translate, fill it shall be com- 



100 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pletely estahliahed, ami to mark the passage 
with italics, as of the greatest importance to 
his argument. These false quotations and 
translations being detected, and those passages 
of early writers, from which Mr. Fox had made 
up his opinion, brought to light, it is not possible 
to doubt, but that the object of James, before 
Monmouth's defeat, was not the destruction of 
the Protestant, but the toleration of the Catho- 
lic religion; and after the execution of Mon- 
mouth, Mr. Fox admits, that he became more 
bold and sanguine upon the subject of religion. 

We do not consider those observations of 
Serjeant Heywood to be the most fortunate in 
his book, where he attempts to show the re- 
publican tendency of Mr. Rose's principles. 
Of any disposition to principles of this nature, 
we most heartily acquit that right honourable 
gentleman. He has too much knowledge of 
mankind to believe their happiness can be pro- 
moted in the stormy and tempestuous regions 
of republicanism ; and, besides this, that sys- 
tem of slender pay, and deficient perquisites, 
to which the subordinate agents of govern- 
ment are confined in republics, is much too 
painful to be thought of for a single instant. 

We are afraid of becoming tedious by the 
enumeration of blunders into which Mr. Rose 
has fallen, and which Serjeant Heywood has 
detected. But the burthen of this sole execu- 
tor's song is accuracy — his own otficial accu- 
racy — and the little dependence which is to be 
placed on the accuracy of Mr. Fox. We will 
venture to assert, that, in the whole of his 
work, he has not detected Mr. Fox in one sin- 
gle error. Whether Serjeant Heywood has 
been more fortunate with respect to Mr. Rose, 
might be determined, perhaps with sufficient 
certainty, by our previous extracts from his 
remarks. But for some indulgent readers, 
these may not seem enough : and we must pro- 
ceed in the task, till we have settled Mr. Rose's 
pretensions to accuracy on a still firmer foun- 
dation. And if we be thought minutely se- 
vere, let it be remembered that Mr. Rose is 
himself an accuser; and if there is justice 
upon earth, every man has a right to pull sto- 
len goods out of the pocket of him who cries, 
"Stop thief r 

In the story which Mr. Rose states of the 
seat in Parliament sold for five pounds (Jour- 
nal of the Commons, vol. v.), he is wrong, both 
in the sum and the volume. The sum is four 
pounds; and it is told, not in the fifth volume, 
but the first. Mr. Rose states, that a perpetual 
excise was granted to the crown, in lieu of the 
profits of the court of wards ; and adds, that 
the question in favour of the crown was car- 
ried by a majority of two. The real fact is, 
that the half only of an excise upon certain 
articles was granted to government in lieu of 
these profits ; and this grant was carried with- 
' out a division. An attempt was made to grant 
the other half, and this was negatived by a ma- 
jority of two. The Journals are open ; — Mr. 
Rose reads them ; — he is officially accurate. 
What can the meaning be of these most ex- 
traordinary mistakes 1 

Mr. Rose says that, in 1679, the writ de hse- 
retico comhurendo had been a dead letter for 
more than a century. It would have been ex- 



tremely agreeable to Mr. Bartholomew Legate, 
if this had been the case ; for, in 1612, he was 
burnt at Smithfield for being an Arian. Mr. 
Wightman would probably have participated 
in the satisfaction of Mr. Legate ; as he was 
burnt also, the same year, at Lichfield, for the 
same oflence. With the same correctness, 
this scourge of historians makes the Duke of 
Lauderdale, who died in 1682, a confidential 
adviser of James II. after his accession in 1689. 
In page 13, he quotes, as written by Mr. Fox, 
that which was written by Lord Holland. 
This, however, is a familiar practice with him. 
Ten pages afterward, in Mr. Fox's Histoiy, he 
makes the same mistake. "Mr. Fox added" — 
whereas it was Lord Holland that added. The 
same mistake again, in p. 147 of his own book; 
and after this, he makes Mr. Fox the person 
who selected the appendix of Barillon's pa- 
pers; whereas it is particularly stated in the 
preface to the History, that this appendix was 
selected by Laing. 

Mr. Rose affirms, that compassing to levy 
war against the king was made high treason 
by the statute of 25 Edward the Third; and, 
in support of this affirmation, he cites Coke 
and Blackstone. His stern antagonist, a pro- 
fessional man, is convinced he has read nei- 
ther. The former says, "« compassing to levy 
war is no treason," (Inst. 3, p. 9 ;) and Black- 
stone, "a bare conspiracy to levy war does 
not amount to this species of treason." (Com. 
iv. p. 82.) This really does not look as if the 
Serjeant had made out his assertion. 

Of the bill introduced in 1685, for the pre- 
servation of the person of James II., Mr. Rose 
observes — " Mr. Fox has not told us for which 
of our modern statutes this bill was used as a 
model ; and it will be diflicult for any one to 
show such an instance." It might have been 
thought, that no prudent man would have made 
such a challenge, without a tolerable certainty 
of the ground upon which it was made. Ser- 
jeant Heywood answers the challenge by cit- 
ing the 36 Geo. III. c. 7, which is a mere copy 
of the act of James. 

In the fifth section of Mr. Rose's work is 
contained his grand attack upon Mr. Fox for 
his abuse of Sir Patrick Hume ; and his obser- 
vations upon this point admit of a fourfold an- 
swer. 1st, Mr. Fox does not use the words 
quoted by Mr. Rose ; 2dly, He makes no men- 
tion whatever of Sir Patrick Hume in the pas- 
sage cited by Mr. Rose; 3dly, Sir Patrick 
Hume is attacked by nobody in that history; 
4thly, If he had been so attacked he would 
have deserved it. The passage from Mr. Fox 
is this: — 

" In recounting the failure of his expedition, 
it is impossible for him not to touch upon what 
he deemed the misconduct of his friends ; and 
this is the subject upon which, of all others, 
his temper must have been most irritable. A 
certain description of friends (the words de- 
scribing them are omitted) were all of them, 
without exception, his greatest enemies, both 

to betray and destroy him : and and 

(the names again omitted) were the greatest 
cause of his rout, and his being taken, though 
not designedly, he acknowledges, but by igno- 
rance, cowardice, and faction. This sentence 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



101 



had scarce escaped him, when, notwithstand- 
ing the qualifying words with which his can- 
dour has acquitted the last mentioned persons of 
intentional treachery, it appeared too harsh to 
his gentle nature ; and, declaring himself dis- 
pleased with the hard epithets he had used, he 
desires that they may be put out of any ac- 
count that is to be given of these transactions." 
— Heywood, p. 365, 366. 

Argyle names neither the description of 
friends who were his greatest enemies, nor the 
two individuals who were the principal cause 
of the failure of his scheme. Mr. Fox leaves 
the blanks as he finds them. But two notes 
are added by the editor, which Mr. Rose might 
have observed are marked with an E. In the 
latter of them we are told, that Mr. Fox ob- 
serves, in a private letter, " Cochrane and Hume 
certainly filled up the two principal blanks." 
But is this communication of a private letter 
any part of Mr. Fox's history? And would it 
not have been equally fair in Mr. Rose to have 
commented upon any private conversation of 
Mr. Fox, and then to have called it his history] 
Or, if Mr. Fox had filled up the blanks in the 
body of his history, does it follow that he adopts 
Argyle's censure because he shows against 
whom it is levelled 1 Mr. Rose has described 
the charge against Sir Patrick Hume to be, of 
faction, cowardice, and treachery. Mr. Rose 
has more than once altered the terms of a pro- 
position before he has proceeded to answer it ; 
and, in this instance, the charge of treachery 
against Sir Patrick Hume is not made either 
in Argyle's letter, Mr. Fox's text, or the editor's 
note, or any where but in the imagination o-f 
Mr. Rose. The sum of it all is, that Mr. Rose 
first supposes the relation of Argyle's opinion 
to be the expression of the relator's opinion, 
that Mr. Fox adopts Argyle's insinuations be- 
cause he explains them ; — then he looks upon 
a quotation from a private letter, made by the 
editor, to be the same as if included in a work 
intended for publication by the author ; — then 
he remembers that he is the sole executor of 
Sir Patrick's grandson, whose blank is so 
filled up ; — and goes on blundering and blub- 
bering, — grateful and inaccurate, — teeming 
with false quotations and friendly recollections 
to the conclusion of his book. Multa gemens 
ignominiam. 

Mr. Rose came into possession of the Earl 
of Marchmont's papers, containing, among 
other things, the narrative of Sir Patrick Hume. 
He is very severe upon Mr. Fox for not having 
been more diligent in searching for original 
papers ; and observes, that if any application 
had been made to him (Mr. Rose), this narra- 
tive should have been at Mr. Fox's service. 
We should be glad to know, if Mr. Rose saw a 
person tumbled into a ditch, whether he would 
wait for a regular application till he pulled 
him outi Or, if he happened to espy the lost 
piece of silver for which the good woman was 
diligently sweeping the house, would he wait 
for formal interrogation before he imparted his 
discovery, and suffer the lady to sweep on till 
the question had been put to him in the most 
solemn forms of politeness 1 The established 
practice, we admit, is to apply, and to apply 
vigorously and incessantly, for sinecure places 



and pensions — or they cannot be had. This is 
true enough. But did any human being ever 
think of carrying this practice into literature, 
and compelling another to make interest for 
papers essential to the good conduct of his 
undertaking '? We are perfectly astonished at 
Mr. Rose's conduct in this particular ; and 
should have thought that the ordinary exercise 
of his good nature would have led him to a 
very dilFerent way of acting. 

" On the whole, and upon the most attentive con- 
sideration of every thing which lias been written 
lopon the subject, there does not appear to have 
been any intention of applying torture in the 
caseof the Earl of Argyle." (iiose, p. 182.) If 
thisei;ery</«Mghad included the following extract 
from Barillon, the above cited, and very dis- 
graceful inaccuracy of Mr. Rose would have 
been spared. "The Earl of Argyle has been 
executed at Edinburgh, and has left a full con- 
fession in writing, in which he discovers all 
those who have assisted him with money, and 
have aided his designs. This has saved him 
from the torture." And Argyle, in his letter to 
Mrs. Smith, confesses he has made discoveries. 
In his very inaccurate history of torture in the 
southern part of this island, Mr. Rose says, 
that except in the case of Felton, — in the at- 
tempt to introduce the civil law in Henry VI.'s 
reign, — and in some cases of treason in Mary's 
reign, torture was never attempted in this 
country. The fact, however, is, that in the 
reign of Henry VIII., Anne Askew was tor- 
tured by the chancellor himself. Simson was 
tortured in 1558; Francis Throgmorton in 
1571 ; Charles Baillie, and Banastie, the Duke 
of Norfolk's servant, were tortured in 1581 ; 
Campier, the Jesuit, was put upon the rack ; 
and Dr. Astlow is supposed to have been 
racked in 1558. So much for Mr. Ruse as the 
historian of punishments. We have seen him, 
a few pages before, at the stake, — where he 
makes quite as bad a figure as he does now 
upon the rack. Precipitation and error are 
his foibles. If he were to write the history of 
sieges, he would forget the siege of Troy; — if 
he were making a list of poets, he would leave 
out Virgil: — Csesar would not appear in his 
catalogue of generals; — and Newton would be 
overlooked in his collection of eminent mathe- 
maticians. 

In some cases, Mr. Rose is to be met only 
with flat denial. Mr. Fox does not call the sol- 
diers who were defending James against Ar- 
gyle authorized assassins ; but he uses that ex- 
pression against the soldiers who were murder- 
ing the peasants, and committing every sort of 
licentious cruelty in the twelve counties given 
up to military execution ; and this Mr. Rose 
must have known, by using the most ordinary, 
diligence in the perusal of the text, — and 
would have known it in any other history than 
that of Mr. Fox. 

"Mr. Rose, in his concluding paragraph, 
boasts of his speaking 'impersonally,' and he 
hopes it will be allowed justly, when he makes 
a general observation respecting the proper 
province of history. But the last sentence 
evidently sho^vs that, though he might be 
speaking justly, he was not speaking imper- 
sonally, if by that word is meant, without refe- 



10$ 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



rence to any person. His words are, 'But 
history cannot connect itself with party, with- 
out forfeiting its name ; without departing from 
the truth, the dignity, and the usefulness of its 
functions.' After the remarks he has made in 
some of his preceding pages, and the apology 
he has offered for Mr. Fox, in his last preceding 
paragraph, for having been mistaken in his 
view of some leading points, there can be no 
difficulty in concluding, that this general ob- 
servation is meant to be applied to the histori- 
cal work. The charge intended to be insinu- 
ated must be, that, in Mr. Fox's hands, history 
has forfeited the name by being connected with 
party; and has departed from the truth, the 
dignity, and the usefulness of its functions. It 
were to be wished that Mr. Rose had explained 
himself more fully; for, after assuming that 
the application of this observation is too ob- 
vious to be mistaken, there still remains some 
difficulty with respect to its meaning. If it is 
confined to such publications as are written 
under the title of histories, but are intended to 
serve t-he purposes of a party; and truth is 
sacrificed, and facts perverted, to defend and 
give currency to their tenets,.we do not dispute 
its propriety; but, if that is the character which 
Mr. Rose would give to Mr. Fox's labours, he 
has not treated him with candour, or even 
commo-n justice. Mr. Rose has never, in any 
one instance, intimated that Mr. Fox has wil- 
fully departed from truth, or strayed from the 
proper province of history, for the purpose of 
indulging his private or party feelings. But, 
if Mr. Rose intends that the observation should 
be applied to all histories, the authors of which 
have felt strongly the influence of political 
connections and principles, what must become 
of most of the histories of England "? Is the 
title of historian to be denied to Mr. Hume 1 
and in what class are to be placed Echard, 
Kennet, Rapin, Dalrymple, or Macpherson ! 
In this point of view the principle laid down is 
too broad. A person, though connected with 
party, may write an impartial history of events 
which occurred a century before ; and, till this 
last sentence, Mr. Rose has not ventured to 
intimate that Mr. Fox has not done so. On the 
contrary, he has declared his approbation of a 
great portion of the work; and his attempts to 
discover material errors in the remainder have 
uniformly failed in every particular. If it 
might be assumed that there existed in the book 
no faults, besides those which the scrutinizing 
eye of Mr. Rose has discovered, it might be 
justly deemed the most perfect work that ever 
came from the press; for not a single devia- 
tion from the strictest duty of an historian has 
been pointed out ; while instances of candour 
and impartiality present themselves in almost 
every page; and Mr. Rose himself has ac- 
knowledged and applauded many of them." — 
(pp. 422—424.) 

These extracts from both books are sufficient 
to show the nature- of Serjeant Hey wood's ex- 
amination of Mr. Rose, — the boldness of this 
latter gentleman's assertions, — and the extreme 
inaccufacy of the researches upon which these 
assertions are founded. If any credit could be 
gained from such a book as Mr. Rose has pub- 



lished, it could be gained from accuracy alone. 
Whatever the execution of his book had been, 
the world would have remembered the infinite 
disparity of the two authors, and the long po- 
litical opposition in which they lived — if that, 
indeed, can be called opposition, where the 
thunderbolt strikes, and the clay yields. They 
would have remembered also that Hector was 
dead ; and that every cowardly Grecian could 
now thrust his spear into the hero's body. But 
still, if Mr. Rose had really succeeded in ex- 
posing the inaccuracy of Mr. Fox, — if he 
could have fairly shown that authorities were 
overlooked, or slightly examined, or wilfully 
perverted, — the incipient feelings to which 
such a controversy had given birth must have 
yielded to the evidence of facts ; and Mr. Fox, 
however qualified in other particulars, must 
have appeared totally defective in that laborious 
industry and scrupulous good faith so indis- 
pensable to every historian. But he absolutely 
comes out of the contest not worse even in a 
single tooth or nail — unvilified even by a wrong 
date — without one misnomer proved upon him 
— immaculate in his years and days of the 
month — blameless to the most musty and 
limited pedant that ever yellowed himself 
amidst rolls and records. 

But how fares it with his critic 1 He rests 
his credit with the world as a man of labour, — 
and he turns out to be a careless inspector of 
proofs, and an historical sloven. The species 
of talent which he pretends to is humble, — 
and he possesses it not. He has not done that 
which all men may do, and which every man 
ought to do, who rebukes his superiors for 
not doing it. His claims, too, it should be 
remembered, to these every-day qualities, are 
by no means enforced wirh gentleness and 
humility. He is a braggadocio of minuteness 
— a swaggering chronologer ; — a man bristling 
up with small facts — prurient with dates — 
wantoning in obsolete evidence — loftily dull, 
and haughty in his drudgery ; — and yet all this 
is pretence. Drawing is no very unusual 
power in animals ; but he cannot draw; he is 
not even the ox which he is so fond of being. 
In attempting to vilify Mr. Fox, he has only 
shown us that there was no labour from which 
that great man shrunk, and that no object con- 
nected with his history was too minute for his 
investigation. He has thoroughly convinced 
us that Mr. Fox was as industrious, and as ac- 
curate, as if these were the only qualities upon 
which he had ever rested his hope of fortune 
or of fame. Such, indeed, are the customary 
results when little people sit down to debase 
the characters of great men, and to exalt them- 
selves upon the ruins of what they have pulled 
down. They only provoke a spirit of inquiry, 
which places every thing in .its true light and 
magnitude, — shows those who appear little to . 
be still less, and displays new and unexpected I 
excellence in others who were before known f 
to excel. These are the usual consequences 
of such attacks. The fame of Mr. Fox has 
stood this, and will stand much ruder shocks. 

Non hiemes illam, non jlahra neq^ie imhres 
Convellunt ; immota manet, multosque per annos 
3Iulta viriim volvens durando scBCula vincit. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



103 



MAD auAKEns; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1814.] 



The Quakers always seem to succeed in any 
institution which they undertake. The gaol at 
Philadelphia will remain a lasting monument 
of their skill and patience ; and, in the plan 
and conduct of this retreat for the insane, they 
have evinced the same wisdom and perse- 
verance. 

The present account is given us by Mr. 
Tuke, a respectable tea-dealer, living in York, 
— and given in a manner which we are quite 
sure the most opulent and important of his 
customers could not excel. The long account 
of the subscription, at the beginning of the 
book, is evidently made tedious for the Quaker 
market; and Mr. Tuke is a little too much 
addicted to quoting. But, with these trifling 
exceptions, his book does him very great 
credit; — it is full of good sense and humanity, 
right feelings and rational views. The retreat 
for insane Quakers is situated about a mile 
from the city of York, upon an eminence com- 
manding the adjacent country, and in the midst 
of a garden and fields belonging to the institu- 
tion. The great principle on which it appears 
to be conducted is that of kindness to the pa- 
tients. It does not appear to them, because a 
man is mad upon one particular subject, that 
he is to be considered in a state of complete 
mental degradation, or insensible to the feel- 
ings of kindness and gratitude. When a mad- 
man does not do what he is bid to do, the 
shortest method, to be sure, is to knock him 
down ; and straps and chains are the species 
of prohibition which are the least frequently 
disregarded. But the Society of Friends seem 
rather to consult the interest of the patient 
than the ease of his keeper; and to aim at the 
government of the insane, by creating in them 
the kindest disposition towards those who have 
the command over them. Nor can any thing 
be more wise, humane, or interesting, than the 
strict attention to the feelings of their patients 
which seems to prevail in their institutions. 
The following specimens of their disposition 
upon this point we have great pleasure in lay- 
ing before our readers : — 

" The smallness of the court," says Mr. Tuke, 
"would be a serious defect, if it was not 
generally compensated by taking such patients 
as are suitable into the garden ; and by fre- 
quent excursions into the city, or the surround- 
ing country, and into the fields of the institu- 
tion. One of these is surrounded by a walk 
interspersed with trees and shrubs. 

"The superintendent has also endeavoured 
to furnish a source of amusement to those pa- 



* Description of the Retreat, an Institution near i'ork, 
for Insa/ne Persons of the Society of Friends. Containing- 
an account of its Origin and Progress, the Modes of Treat- 
ment, and a Statement of Cases. By Samuel Tuke. 
York, 1813. 



tients whose walks are necessarily more cir 
cumscribed, by supplying each of the courts 
with a number of animals, such as rabbits, 
sea gulls, hawks, and poultry. These crea- 
tures are generally very familiar with the 
patients ; and it is believed they are not only 
the means of innocent pleasure, but that the 
intercourse with them sometimes tends to 
awaken the social and benevolent feelings." — 
(p. 95, -96.) 

Chains are never permitted at the Retreat ; 
nor is it left to the option of the lower attend- 
ants when they are to impose an additional 
degree of restraint upon the patients; and this 
compels them to pay attention to the feelings 
of the patients, and to attempt to gain an influ- 
ence over them by kindness. Patients who 
are not disposed to injure themselves are merely 
confined by the strait waistcoat, and left to 
walk about the room, or lie down on the bed, 
at pleasure ; and even in those cases where 
there is a strong tendency to self-destruction, 
as much attention is paid to the feelings and 
ease of the patient as is consistent with his 
safety. 

"Except in cases of violent mania, which is 
far from being a frequent recurrence at the 
Retreat, coercion, when requisite, is considered 
as a necessary evil ; that is, it is thought ab- 
stractedly to have a tendency to retard the cure, 
by opposing the influence of the moral reme- 
dies employed. It is therefore used very spar- 
ingly; and the superintendent has often assured 
me, that he would rather run some risk than 
have recourse to restraint where it was not 
absolutely necessary, except in those cases 
where it was likely to have a salutary moral 
tendency. 

" I feel no small satisfaction in stating, upon 
the authority of the superintendents, that dur- 
ing the last year, in which the number of pa- 
tients has generally been sixty-four, there has 
not been occasion to seclude, on an average, 
two patients at one time. I am also able to 
state, that although it is occasionally necessary 
to restrain, by the waistcoat, straps, or other 
means, several patients at one time, yet that 
the average number so restrained does not ex- 
ceed four, including those who are secluded. 

"The safety of those who attend upon the 
insane is certainly an object of great import- 
ance ; but it is worthy of inquiry whether it 
may not be attained without materially inter- 
fering with another object, — the recovery of the 
patient. It may also deserve inquiry, whether 
the extensive practice of coercion, which ob- 
tains in some institutions, does not arise from 
erroneous views of the character of insane 
persons; from indifl^'erence to their comfort; 
or from having rendered coercion necessary 
by previous unkind treatment. 



104 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"The power of judicious kindness over this 
unhappy class of society is much greater than 
is generally imagined. It is, perhaps, not too 
much to apply to kind treatment the words of 
our great poet, — 

' She can unlock 
The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell.' 

Milton. 

" In no instances has this power been more 
strikingly displayed, or exerted with more 
beneficial effects, than in those deplorable 
cases in which the patient refuses to take food. 
The kind persuasions and ingenious arts of the 
superintendents have been singularly success- 
ful in overcoming this distressing symptom ; 
and very few instances now occur in which it 
is necessary to employ violent means for sup- 
plying the patient with food. 

" Some patients, who refuse to partake of the 
family meals, are induced to eat by being taken 
into the larder, and there allowed to help them- 
selves. Some are found willing to eat when 
food is left with them in their rooms, or when 
they can obtain it unobserved by their attend- 
ants. Others, whose determination is stronger, 
are frequently induced, by repeated persuasion, 
to take a small quantity of nutritious liquid; 
and it is equally true in these, as in general 
cases, that every breach of resolution weakens 
the power and disposition to resistance. 

" Sometimes, however, persuasion seems to 
strengthen the unhappy determination. In one 
of these cases the attendants were completely 
wearied with their endeavours ; and, on remov- 
ing the food, one of them took a piece of meat 
which had been repeatedly offered to the pa- 
tient, and threw it under the fire-grate, at the 
same time exclaiming that she should not have 
it. The poor creature, who seemed governed 
by the rule of contraries, immediately rushed 
from her seat, seized the meat from the ashes, 
and devoured it. For a short time she was 
induced to eat, by the attendants availing 
themselves of this contrary disposition ; but it 
was soon rendered unnecessary by the removal 
of this unhappy feature of the disorder." — (p. 
166, 167, 168, 169.) 

When it is deemed necessary to apply any 
mode of coercion, such an overpowering force 
is employed as precludes all possibility of suc- 
cessful resistance ; and most commonly, there- 
fore, extinguishes every idea of making any 
at all. An attendant upon a madhouse ex- 
poses himself to some risk — and to some he 
ought to expose himself, or he is totally unfit 
for h'is situation. If the security of the attend- 
ants were the only object, the situation of the 
patients would soon become truly desperate. 
The business is, not to risk nothing, but not to 
risk too much. The generosity of the Quakers, 
and their courage in managing mad people, 
are placed, by this institution, in a very strik- 
ing point of view. This cannot be better illus- 
trated than by the two following cases : — 

"The superintendent was one day walking 
in a field adjacent to the house, in company 
with a patient who was apt to be vindictive on 
very slight occasions. An exciting circum- 
stance occurred. The maniac retired a few 
paces, and seized a large stone, which he im- 
mediately held up, as in the act of throwing 



at his companion. The superintendent, in no 
degree ruffled, fixed his eye upon the patient, 
and in a resolute tone of voice, at the same 
time advancing, commanded him to lay down 
the stone. As he approached, the hand of the 
lunatic gradually sunk from its threatening 
position, and .permitted the stone to drop to the 
ground. He then submitted to be quietly led 
to his apartment." 

" Some years ago, a man, about thirty-four 
years of age, of almost herculean size and 
figure, was brought to the house. He had 
been afflicted several times before; and so 
constantly, during the present attack, had he 
been kept chained, that his clothes were con- 
trived to be taken off and put on by means of 
strings, without removing his manacles. They 
were, however, taken off when he entered the 
Retreat, and he was ushered into the apart- 
ment where the superintendents were supping. 
He was calm: his attention appeared to be 
arrested by his new situation. He was de- 
sired to join in the repast, during which he 
behaved with tolerable propriety. After it was 
concluded the su^perintendent conducted him 
to his apartment, and told him the circum- 
stances on which his treatment would depend; 
that it was his anxious Avish to make every 
inhabitant in the house as comfortable as pos- 
sible; and that he sincerely hoped the patient's 
conduct would render it unnecessary for him 
to have recourse to coercion. The maniac was 
sensible of the kindness of his treatment. He 
promised to restrain himself; and he so com- 
pletely succeeded, that, duringhis stay, no coer- 
cive means were ever employed towards him. 
This case affords a striking example of the effi- 
cacy of mild treatment. The patient was fre- 
quently very vociferous, and threatened his at- 
tendants, who, in their defence, were very desir- 
ousofrestraininghimbythe jacket. The super- 
intendent on these occasions went to his apart- 
ment: and though the first sight of him Seemed 
rather to increase the patient's irritation, yet, 
after sitting some time quietly beside him, the 
violent excitement subsided, and he would 
listen with attention to the persuasions and 
arguments of his friendly visitor. After such 
conversations the patient was generally better 
for some days or a week; and in about four 
months he was discharged perfectly recovered. 
" Can it be doubted that, in this case, the 
disease had been greatly exasperated by the 
mode of management? or that the subsequent 
kind treatment had a great tendency to pro- 
mote his recovery]"— (p. 172, 173, 146, 147.) 
And yet, in spite of this apparent contempt 
of danger, for eighteen years not a single acci- 
dent has happened to the keepers. 

In the day room the sashes are made of 
cast-iron, and give to the building the security 
of bars, without their unpleasant appearance. 
With the same laudable attention to the feel- 
ings, of these poor people, the straps of their 
strait waistcoats are made of some showy 
colour, and are not unfrequently considered 
by them as ornaments. No advantage what- 
ever has been found to arise from reasoning 
with patients on their particular delusions: it 
is found rather to exasperate than convince 
them. Indeed, that state of mind would hardly 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



105 



deserve the name of insanity where argument 
was sufficient for the refutation of error. 

The classification of patients according to 
their degree of convalescence is very properly 
attended to at the Retreat, and every assist- 
ance given to returning reason by the force of 
example. We were particularly pleased with 
the following specimens of Quaker sense and 
humanity : — 

"The female superintendent, who possesses 
an uncommon share of benevolent activity, 
and who has the chief management of the fe- 
male patients, as well as of the domestic de- 
partment, occasionally gives a general invita- 
tion to the patients to a tea-party. All who 
attend dress in their best clothes, and vie with 
each other in politeness and propriety. The 
best fare is provided, and the visitors are 
treated with all the attention of strangers. The 
evening generally passes in the greatest har- 
mony and enjoyment. It rarely happens that 
any unpleasant circumstance occurs. The 
patients control, in a wonderful degree, their 
different propensities; and the scene is at 
once curious and affectingly gratifying. 

" Some of the patients occasionally pay visits 
to their friends in the city; and female visitors 
are appointed every month by the committee 
to pay visits to those of their own sex, to con- 
verse with them, and to propose to the super- 
intendents, or the committee, any improve- 
ments which may occur to them. The visitors 
sometimes take tea with the patients, who are 
much gratified with the attention of their 
friends, and mostly behave with propriety. 

"It will be necessary here to mention that 
the visits of former intimate friends have fre- 
quently been attended with disadvantage to 
the patients, except when convalescence had 
.so far advanced as to afford a prospect of a 
speedy return to the bosom of society. It is, 
however, very certain that, as soon as reason 
begins to return, the conversation of judicious 
indifferent persons greatly increases the com- 
fort, and is considered almost essential to the 
recovery of many patients. On this account 
the convalescents of every class are frequently 
introduced into the society of the rational 
parts of the family. They are also permitted 
to sit up till the usual time for the family to 
retire to rest, and are allowed as much liberty 
as their state of mind will admit." — (p. 178, 
179.) 

To the effects of kindness in the Retreat are 
superadded those of constant employment. 
The female patients are employed as much as 
possible in sewing, knitting, and domestic 
affairs ; and several of the convalescents assist 
the attendants. For the men are selected those 
species of bodily employments most agreeable 
to the patient, and most opposite to the illu- 
sions of his disease. Though the effect of 
fear is not excluded from the institution, yet 
the love of esteem is considered as astillmore 
powerful principle. 

"That fear is not the only motive which 

operates in producing self-restraint in the 

minds of maniacs, is evident from its being 

often exercised in the presence of strangers 

14 



who are merely passing through the house; 
and which, I presume, can only be accounted 
for from that desire of esteem which has been 
stated to be a powerful motive to conduct. 

" It is, probably, from encouraging the action 
of this principle, that so much advantage has 
been found, in this institution, from treating 
the patient as much in the manner of a rational 
being as the state of his mind will possibly 
allow. The superintendent is particularly at- 
tentive to this point in his conversation with 
the patients. He introduces such topics as he 
knows will most interest them ; and which, at 
the same time, allows them to display their 
knowledge to the greatest advantage. If the 
patient is an agriculturist, he asks him ques- 
tions relative to his art ; and frequently con- 
sults him upon any occasion in which his 
knowledge may be useful. I have heard one 
of the worst patients in the house, who, pre- 
viously to his indisposition, had been a consi- 
derable grazier, give very sensible directions 
for the treatment of a diseased cow. 

" These considerations are undoubtedly very 
material as they regard the comfort of insane 
persons ; but they are of far greater import- 
ance as they relate to the cure of the disorder. 
The patient, feeling himself of some conse- 
quence, is induced to support it by the exertion 
of his reason, and by restraining those dispo- 
sitions which, if indulged, would lessen the 
respectful treatment he receives, or lower his 
character in the eyes of his companions and 
attendants. 

" They who are unacquainted with the cha- 
racter of insane persons are very apt to con- 
verse with them in a childish, or, which is 
worse, in a domineering manner ; and hence 
it has been frequently remarked, by the pa- 
tients at the Retreat, that a stranger who has 
visited them seemed to imagine they were 
children. 

" The natural tendency of such treatment is 
to degrade the mind of tlie patient, and to 
make him indifferent to those moral feelings 
which, under judicious direction and encou- 
ragement, are found capable, in no small de- 
gree, to strengthen the power of self-restraint, 
and which render the resort to coercion in many 
cases unnecessary. Even when it is absolutely 
requisite to employ coercion, if the patient pro- 
mises to control himself on its removal, great 
confidence is generally placed upon his word. 
I have known patients, such is their sense of 
honour and moral obligation under this kind 
of engagement, hold, for a long time, a suc- 
cessful struggle with the violent propensities 
of their disorder ; and such attempts ought to 
be sedulously encouraged by the attendant. 

" Hitherto we have chiefly considered those 
modes of inducing the patient to control his 
disordered propensities which arise from an 
application to the general powers of the mind ; 
but considerable advantage may certainly be 
derived, in this part of moral management, 
from an acquaintance with the previous habits, 
manners, and prejudices of the individual. 
Nor must we forget to call to our aid, in en- 
deavouring to promote self-restraint, the mild 
but powerful influence of the precepts of our 
holy religion. Where these have been strongly 



106 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



imbued in early life, they become little less 
than principles of our nature : and their re- 
straining power is frequently felt, even under 
the delirious excitement of insanity. To en- 
courage the influence of religious principles 
over the mind of the insane is considered of 
great consequence as a means of cure. For 
this purpose, as well as for others still more 
important, it is certainly right to promote in 
the patient an attention to his accustomed 
modes of paying homage to his Maker. 

"Many patients attend the religious meet- 
ings of the society held in the city ; and most 
of them are assembled, on a first day after- 
noon, at which time the superintendent reads 
to them several chapters in the Bible. A pro- 
found silence generally ensues ; during which, 
as well as at the time of reading, it is very 
gratifying to observe their orderly conduct, 
and the degree in which those who are much 
disposed to action restrain their different pro- 
pensities."— (p. 158—161.) 

Very little dependence is to be placed on me- 
dicine alone for the cure of insanity. The ex- 
perience, at least, of this well-governed insti- 
tution is very unfavourable to its efficacy. 
Where an insane person happens to be dis- 
eased in body as well as in mind, medicine is 
not only of as great importance to him as to 
any other person, but much greater ; for the 
diseases of the body are commonly found to 
aggravate those of the mind ; but against mere 
insanity, unaccompanied by bodily derange- 
ment, it appears to be almost powerless. 

There is one remedy, however, which is very 
frequently employed at the Retreat, and which 
appears to have been attended with the hap- 
piest effect, and that is the warm bath, — the 
least recommended, and the most important, 
of all remedies in melancholy madness. Un- 
der this mode of treatment, the number of re- 
coveries, in cases oi melancholia, has been very 
unusual ; though no advantage has been found 
from it in the case of mania. 

At the end of the work is given a table of 
all the cases which have occurred in the insti- 
tution from its first commencement. It appears 
that, from its opening in the year 1796 to the 
end of 1811, 149 patients have been admitted. 
Of this number 61 have been recent cases: 
31 of these patients have been maniacal; of 
whom 2 have died, 6 remain, 21 hare been 
discharged perfectly recovered, 2 so much im- 
proved as not to require further confinement. 
The remainder, 30 recent cases, have been 
those of melancholy madness ; of whom 5 have 
died, 4 remain, 19 have been discharged cured, 
and 2 so much improved as not to require 
further confinement. The old cases, or, as 
they are commonly termed, incurable cases, 
are divided into 61 cases of mania, 21 of me- 
lancholia, and 6 of dementia ; afibrding the 
following tables : — 

" Mania. 
"11 died. 

31 remain in the house. 
5 have been removed by. their friends im- 
proved. 
10 have been discharged perfectly recovered. 
4 so much improved as not to require fur- 
ther confinement." 



" Melancholia. 
•' 6 died. 
6 remain. 

1 removed somewhat improved. 
6 perfectly cured. 

2 so much improved as not to require for- J 

ther confinement." 

" Dementia. 
" 2 died. 
2 remain. 
2 discharged as unsuitable objects." 

The following statement shows the ages of 
patients at present in the house : — 

" 15 to 20 inclusive 2 

20 to 30 — 8 

30 to 40 — 12 

40 to 50 — 7 

60 to 70 — 11 

70 to 80 — 4 

80 to 90 — 2" 

Of 79 patients it appears that 

"12 went mad from disappointed afifectibiLS. 

2 from epilepsy. 
49 from constitutional causes. 

8 from failure in business. 

4 from hereditary disposition to madness- 

2 from injury of the skull. 

1 from mercury. 

1 from parturition." 

The following case is extremely curious; 
and we wish it had been authenticated by name, 
place, and signature. 

" A young woman, who was employed as a 
domestic servant by the father of the relator, 
when he was a boy, became insane, and at 
length sunk into a 3tate of perfect idiocy. In 
this condition she remained for many years, 
when she was attacked by a typhus fever; 
and my friend, having then practised some 
time, attended her. He was surprised to ob- 
serve, as the fever advanced, a development 
of the mental powers. During that period of 
the fever, when others were delirious, this 
patient was entirely rational. She recognised 
in the face of her medical attendant the son of 
her old master, whom she had known so many 
years before ; and she related many circum- 
stances respecting his family, and others which 
had happened to herself in her earlier days. 
But, alas ! it was only the gleam of reason. 
As the fever abated, clouds again enveloped 
the mind : she sunk into her former deplora- 
ble state, and remained in it until her death, 
which happened a few years afterwards. I 
leave to the metaphysical reader further spe- 
culation on this, certainly, very curious case." 
-(p. 137.) 

Upon the whole, we have little doubt that 
this is the best managed asylum for the insane 
that has ever yet been established ; and a part 
of the explanation no doubt is, that the Quakers 
take more pains than other people with their 
madmen. A mad Quaker belongs to a small 
and rich sect ; and is, therefore, of greater im- 
portance than any other mad person of the 
same degree in life. After every allowance, 
however, which can be made for the feelings 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



107 



of sectaries, exercised towards their own dis- 
ciples, the Quakers, it must be allowed, are a 
very charitable and humane people. They are 
always ready with their money, and, what is 
of far more importance, with their time and 
attention, for every variety of human mis- 
fortune. 

They seem to set themselves down systema- 
tically before the difficulty, with the wise con- 
viction that it is to be lessened or subdued only 
by great labour and thought; and that it is 
always increased by indolence and neglect. 
In this instance, they have set an example of 
courage, patience, and kindness, which cannot 
be too highly commended, or too widely dif- 



fused ; and which, we are convinced, will gra- 
dually bring into repute a milder and better 
method of treating the insane. For the aver- 
sion to inspect places qf this sort is so great, 
and the temptation to neglect and oppress the 
insane so strong, both from the love of power, 
and the improbability of detection, that we 
have no doubt of the existence of great abuses 
in the interior of many madhouses. A great 
deal has been done for prisons ; but the order 
of benevolence has been broken through by 
this preference ; for the voice of misery may 
sooner come up from a dungeon, than the op- 
pression of a madm£in be healed by the hand 
of justice.f 



AMEEICA.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1818.] 



These four books are all very well worth 
reading, to any person who feels, as we do, 
the importance and interest of the subject of 
which they treat. They contain a great deal 
of information and amusement; and will pro- 
bably decide the fate, and direct the footsteps, 
of many human beings, seeking a better lot 
than the Old World can afford them. Mr. Hall 
is a clever, lively man, very much above the 
common race of writers ; with very liberal and 
reasonable opinions, which he expresses with 
great boldness, — and an inexhaustible fund of 
good humour. He has the elements of wit in 
him ; but sometimes is trite and flat when he 
means to be amusing. He writes verses, too, 
and is occasionally long and metaphysical : 
but, upon the whole, we think highly of Mr. 
Hall ; and deem him, if he is not more than 
twenty-five years of age, an extraordinary 
young man. He is not the less extraordinary 
for being a lieutenant of Light Dragoons — as 
it is certainly somewhat rare to meet with an 
original thinker, an indulgent judge of man- 
ners, and a man tolerant of neglect and famili- 
arity, in a youth covered with tags, feathers, 
and martial foolery. 

Mr. Palmer is a plain man, of good sense 
and slow judgment. Mr. Bradbury is a bota- 
nist, who lived agood deal among the savages. 
but worth attending to. Mr. Fearon is a much 
abler writer than either of the two last, but no 

* 1. Travels in Canada and the United States, in 1816 
and 1817. By Lieutenant Francis Hall, 14th Light 
Dragoons, H. P. London. Longman & Co. 1818. 

2. Journal of Travels in the United States of JVorth Ame- 
rica, and in Lower Canada, performed in the year 1817, S^c. 
Sec. By John Palmer. London. .Sherwood, Neely & 
Jones. 1818. 

3. A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles 
through the Eastern and Western States of America ; con- 
tained in Eight Reports, addressed to the Thirty-nine Eng- 
lish Families by whom the Author was deputed, in June, 
1817, to ascertain whether any and what Part of the United 
States would be suitable for their Residence. With Re- 
marks on Mr. Birkbeck's ".ATotes" and "Letters." By 
Henry Bbadshaw Fearon. London. Longman & Co. 
1818. 

4. Travels in the Interior of America, in the years 1809, 
1810, and 1811, ^-c. By John Bradbury, F. L. S. Lond. 
8vo. London. Sherwood, Neely & Jones. 1817. 



lover of America, — and a little given to exag- 
geration in his views of vices and prejudices. 
Among other faults with which our govern- 
ment is chargeable, the vice of impertinence 
has lately crept into our cabinet; and the 
Americans have been treated with ridicule and 
contempt. But they are becoming a little too 
powerful, Ave take it, for this cavalier sort of 
management ; and are increasing with a rapi- 
dity which is really no matter of jocularity to 
us, or the other powers of the Old World. In 
1791, Baltimore contained 13,000 inhabitants; 
in 1810, 46,000 ; in 1817, 60,000. In 1790, it pos- 
sessed 13,000 tons of shipping; in 1798,59,000; 
in 1805,72,000; in 1810, 103,444. The pro- 
gress of Philadelphia is as follows : — 

Houses. Inhabitants. 
" In 1683 there were in the city 80 and 60O 

1700 700 5,000 

1749 2,076 15,000 

1760 2,969 20^00 

1769 4,474 30,000 

1776 5,460 40,000 

1783 ... - - 6,000 42,000 

1806 . - - . . 13,000 90,000 

1810 22,769 100,000 

"Now it is computed there are at least 
120,000 inhabitants in the city and suburbs, of 
which 10,000 are free coloured people." — Pal- 
mer, p. 254, 255. 

The population of New York (^the city), in 
1805, was 60,000; it is now 120,000. Their 
shipping, at present, amounts to 300,000 tons. 
The population of the state of New York was, 
at the accession of his present majesty, 87,000, 
and is now nearly 1,000,000. Kentucky, first 
settled in 1773, had, in 1792, a population of 
100,000 ; and in 1810, 406,000. Morse reckons 
the whole population of the western territory, 
in 1790, at 6,000 ; in 1810 it was near half a 
million ; and will probably exceed a million in 
1820. These, and a thousand other equally 

+ The Society of Friends haveb«en extremely fortu- 
nate in the choice of their male and female superintend- 
ents at the asylum, Mr. and Mrs. Jephson. It is not easy 
to find a greater combination of good sense and good 
feeling than these two persons possess : — but then the 
merit of selecting them rests wiih their employers 



108 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



strong proofs of their increasing strength, tend 
to extinguish pleasantr}', and provoke thought. 

We were surprised and pleased to find from 
these accounts that the Americans on the Red 
River and the Arkansas River have begun to 
make sugar and wine. Their importation of 
wool into this country is becoming also an 
object of some consequence ; and they have 
inexhaustible supplies of salt and coal. But 
one of the great sources of wealth in America 
is and will be an astonishing command of in- 
land navigation. The Mississippi, flowing 
from the north to the Gulf of Mexico, through 
seventeen degrees of latitude ; the Ohio and 
the Alleghany almost connecting it with the 
Northern Lakes; the Wabash, the Illinois, the 
Missouri, the Arkansas, the Red River, flowing 
from the confines of New Mexico ; — these 
rivers, ali navigable, and most of them already 
frequented by steamboats, constitute a facility 
of internal communication not, we believe, to 
be paralleled in the whole world. 

One of the great advantages of the American 
government is its cheapness. The American 
king has about 5000/. per annum, the vice-king 
1000/. They hire their Lord Liverpool at 
about a thousand per annum, and their Lord 
Sidmouth (a good bargain) at the same sum. 
Their Mr. Crokers are inexpressibly reason- 
able, — somewhere about the price of an Eng- 
lish doorkeeper, or bearer of a mace. Life, 
however, seems to go on very well, in spite of 
these low salaries ; and the purposes of go- 
vernment to be very fairly answered. What- 
ever may be the evils of universal suffrage in 
other countries, they have not yet been felt in 
America ; and one thing at least is established 
by her experience, that this institution is not 
necessarily followed by those tumults, the 
dread of which excites so much apprehension 
in this country. In the most democratic states, 
where the payment of direct taxes is the only 
qualification of a voter, the elections are car- 
ried on with the utmost tranquillity ; and the 
whole business, by taking votes in each parish 
or section, concluded all over the state in a 
single day. A great deal is said by Fearon 
about Caucus, the cant word of the Americans 
for the committees and part}' meetings in 
which the business of the elections is prepared 
— the influence of which he seems to consider 
as prejudicial. To us, however, it appears 
to be nothing more than the natural, fair, and 
unavoidable influence which talent, popularity 
and activity always must have upon such 
occasions. What other influence can the 
leading characters of the democratic party in 
Congress possibly possess 1 Bribery is entirely 
out of the question — equally so is the influence 
of family and fortune. What then can they 
do, with their caucus or without it, but recom- 
mend 1 And what charge is it against the 
American government to say that those mem- 
bers of whom the people have the highest 
opinion meet together to consult whom they 
shall recommend for president, and that their 
recommendation is successful in their differ- 
ent states] Could any friend to good order 
wish other means to be employed, or other re- 
sults to follow? No statesman can wish to 
exclude influence, but only bad influence; — 



not the iafluence of sense and character, but 
the influence of money and punch. 

A very disgusting feature in the character 
of the present English government is its ex- 
treme timidity, and the cruelty and violence to 
which its ti^midity gives birth. Some hot- 
headed young person, in defending the princi- 
ples of liberty, and attacking those abuses 
to which all governments are liable, passes 
the bounds of reason and moderation, or is 
thought to have passed them by those whose 
interest it is to think so. What matters it 
whether he has or has not? You are strong 
enough to let him alone. With such institu- 
tions as ours he can do.no mischief; perhaps 
he may owe his celebrity to your opposition; 
or, if he must be opposed, write against him, 
— set Candidus, Scrutator, Vindex, or any of 
the conductitious penmen of government to 
write him down ; — any thing but the savage 
spectacle of a poor wretch, perhaps a very 
honest man, contending in vain against the 
weight of an immense government, pursued 
by a jealous attorney, and sentenced, by some 
candidate, perhaps, for the favour of the crown, 
to the long miseries of the dungeon.* A still 
more flagrant instance may be found in our 
late suspensions of the habeas corpus act 
Nothing was trusted to the voluntary activity 
of a brave people, thoroughly attached "to their 
government — nothing to the good sense and 
prudence of the gentlemen and yeomen of the 
country — nothing to a little forbearance, pa- 
tience, and watchfulness. There was no other 
security but despotism; nothing but the aliena- 
tion of that right which no king nor minister 
can love, and which no human beings but the 
English have had the valour to win, and the 
prudence to keep. The contrast between our 
government and that of the Americans, upon 
the subject of suspending the habeas corpus, 
is drawn in so very able a manner by Mr. 
Hall, that we must give the passage at large. 

" It has ever been the policy of the federal- 
ists to * strengthen the hands of government.' 
No measure can be imagined more effectual 
for this purpose, than a law Avhich gifts the 
ruling powers with infallibilit}'^ ; but no sooner 
was it enacted, than it revealed its hostility to 
the principles of the American system, by 



♦ A great deal is said about the independence and in- 
tegrity of English judges. In causes between individuals 
they are strictly independent and upright ; but they have 
strong temptations to be otherwise, in cases where the 
crown prosecutes for libel. Such cases often involve 
questions of party, and are viewed with great passion 
and agitation by the minister and his friends. Judges 
have often favours to ask for their friends and families, 
and dignities to aspire to for themselves. It is human 
nature, that such powerful motives should create a great 
bias against the prisoner. Suppose the chief justice of 
any court to be in an infirm state of health, and a go- 
vernment libel-cause to be tried by one of the puisne 
judges,— of what immense importance is it to that man 
to be called a strong friend to government — how injuri- 
ous to his natural and fair hopes to be called lukewarm, 
or addicted to popular notions — and how easily the run- 
ners of the government would attach such a character to 
him ! The useful inference from these observations is, 
that, in all government cases, the jury, instead of being 
influenced by the cant phrases about the integrity of 
English judges, should suspect the operation of such 
motives— watch the judge with the most acute jealousy 
— and compel him to be honest, by throwing themselves 
into the opposite scale whenever he is inclined to be 
otherwise. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



109 



generating oppression under the cloak of de- 
fending social order. 

"If there ever was a period when circum- 
stances seemed to justify what are called ener- 
getic measures, it was during the administra- 
tions of Mr. Jefferson and his successor. A 
disastrous war began to rage, not only on the 
frontiers, but in the very penetralia of the re- 
public. To oppose veteran troops, the ablest 
generals, and the largest fleets in the world, 
the American government had raw recruits, 
officers who had never seen an enemy, half a 
dozen frigates, and a population unaccustomed 
to sacrifices, and impatient of taxation. To 
crown these disadvantages, a most important 
section of the Union, the New England states, 
openly set up the standard of separation and 
rebellion. A convention sat for the express 
purpose of thwarting the measures of govern- 
ment; while the press and pulpit thundered 
every species of denunciation against whoever 
should assist their own country in the hour 
of danger.* And this was the work, not of 
jacobins and democrats, but of the stanch 
friends of religion and social order, who had 
been so zealously attached to the government, 
while it was administered by their own party, 
that they suffered not the popular breath ' to 
visit the president's breech too roughly.' 

" The course pursued, both by Mr. Jefferson 
and Mr. Madison throughout this season of 
difliculty, merits the gratitude of their country, 
and the imitation of all governments pretend- 
ing to be free. 

" So far were they from demanding any ex- 
traordinary powers from Congress, that they 
did not even enforce, to their full extent, those 
with which the}^ were by the constitution in- 
vested. The process of reasoning, on which 
they probably acted, may be thus stated. The 
majority of the nation is with us, because the 
war is national. The interests of a minority 
suflfer; and self-interest is clamorous when 
injured. It carries its opposition to an ex- 
treme inconsistent with its political duty. 
Shall we leave it in an undisturbed career of 
faction, or seek to put it down with libel and 
sedition laws 1 In the first case it will grow 
bold from impunity; its proceedings will be 
more and more outrageous : but every step it 
takes to thwart us will be a step in favour of 
the enemy, and, consequently, so much ground 
lost in public opinion. But, as public opinion 
is the only instrument by which a minority 
can convert a majority to its views, impunity, 
by revealing its motives, affords the surest 
chance of defeating its intent. In the latter 
case, we quit the ground of reason to take 
that of force ; we give the factious the advan- 
tage of seeming persecuted; by repressing 

* "In Boston, associations were entered into for the 
purpose of preventing the lilling up of government 
loans. Individuals disposed to subscribe were obliged 
to do it in secret, and conceal their names, as if the 
action had been dishonest." — Vide 'Olive Branch,' p. 
307. At the same time, immense runs were made by 
the Boston banks on those of the Central and Southern 
states ; while the specie thus drained was transmitted to 
Canada, in payment for smuggled goods and British go- 
vernment bills, which were drawn in Quebec, and dis- 
posed of in great numbers, on advantageous terms, to 
moneyed men in the states. Mr. Henry's mission is the 
best proof of the result anticipated by our government 
from these proceedings in New England. 



intemperate discussion, we confess ourselves 
liable to be injured by it. If we seek to shield 
our reputation by a libel-law, we acknowledge, 
either that our conduct will not bear investi- 
gation, or that the people are incapable of 
distinguishing betwixt truth and falsehood : 
but for a popular government to impeach the 
sanctity of the nation's judgment is to over- 
throw the pillars of its own elevation. 

" The event triumphantly proved the cor- 
rectness of this reasoning. The federalists 
awoke from the delirium of factious intoxica- 
tion, and found themselves covered with con- 
tempt and' shame. Their country had been 
in danger, and they gloried in her distress. 
She had exposed herself to privations from 
which they had extracted profit. In her tri- 
umphs they had no part, except that of having 
mourned over and depreciated them. Since 
the war federalism has been scarcely heard 
oV'—Hall, 508—511. 

The Americans, we believe, are the first 
persons who have discarded the tailor in the 
administration of justice, and his auxiliary 
the barber — two persons of endless importance 
in codes and pandects of Europe. A judge 
administers justice, without a calorific wig 
and particoloured gown, in a coat and panta- 
loons. He is obeyed, however; and life and 
property are not badly protected in the United 
States. We shall be denounced by the lau- 
reate as atheists and jacobins ; but we must 
say, that we have doubts whether one atom 
of useful influence is added to men in impor- 
tant situations by any colour, quantity, or con- 
figuration of cloth and hair. The true pro- 
gress of refinement, we conceive, is to discard 
all the mountebank drapery of barbarous 
ages. One row of gold and fur falls ofi' after 
another from the robe of power, and is picked 
up and worn by the parish beadle and the ex- 
hibitor of wild beasts. Meantime, the afflicted 
wiseacre mourns over equality of garment ; 
and wotteth not of two men, whose doublets 
have cost alike, how one shall command and 
the other obey. 

The dress of lawyers, however, is, at all 
events, of less importance than their charges. 
Law is cheap in America: in England, it is 
better, in a mere pecuniary point of view, to 
give up forty pounds than to contend for it in 
a court of common law. It costs that sum in 
England to Avin a cause ; and, in the court of 
equity, it is better to abandon five hundred or 
a thousand pounds than to contend for it. We 
mean to say nothing disrespectful of the chan- 
cellor — who is an upright judge, a very great 
lawyer, and zealous to do all he can ; but we 
believe the Court of Chancery to be in a state 
which imperiously requires legislative correc- 
tion. We do not accuse it of any malversa- 
tion, but of a complication, formality, entan- 
glement, and delay, which the life, the wealth, 
and the patience of man cannot endure. How 
such a subject comes not to have been taken 
up in the House of Commons, we are wholly 
at a loss to conceive. We feel for climbing 
boys as much as anybody can do ; but what 
is a climbing boy in a chimney to a full-grown 
suitor in the Master's ofKce. And whence 
comes it, in the midst of ten thousand com» 
K 



no 



WORKS OF THE RtV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



passions and charities, that no Wilberforce, 
or Sister Fry, has started up for the suitors in 
Chancery"!* and why, in the name of these 
afflicted and attorney-worn people, are there 
united in their judge three or four offices, any 
one of which is sufficient to occupy the whole 
time of a very able and active man ? 

There are no ver}^ prominent men at present 
in America ; at least none whose fame is 
strong enough for exportation. Monroe is a 
man of plain, unaffected good sense. Jefier- 
son, we believe, is still alive ; and has always 
been more remarkable, perhaps, for the early 
share he took in the formation of the republic, 
than from any very predominant superiority 
of understanding. Mr. Hall made him a 
visit : — 

"I slept a night at Monticello, and left it in 
the morning with such a feeling as the travel- 
ler quits the mouldering remains of a Grecian 
temple, or the pilgrim a fountain in the desert. 
It would indeed argue great torpor both of 
understanding and heart, to have looked with- 
out veneration and interest on the man who 
drew up the declaration of American indepen- 
dence ; who shared in the councils by which 
her freedom was established ; whom the un- 
bought voice of his fellow-citizens called to the 
exercise of a dignity from which his own mo- 
deration impelled him, when such example 
was most salutary, to withdraw ; and who, 
while he dedicates the evening of his glorious 
days to the pursuits of science and literature, 
shuns none of the humbler duties of private 
life ; but, having filled a seat higher than that 
of kings, succeeds with graceful dignity to 
that of the good neighbour, and becomes the 
friendly adviser, lawyer, physician, and even 
gardener of his vicinity. This is the 'still 
small voice' of philosophy, deeper and holier 
than the lightnings and earthquakes which 
have preceded it. What monarch would ven- 
ture thus to exhibit himself in the nakedness 
of his humanity? On what royal brow would 
the laurel replace the diadem'?" — Hall, 384, 
385. 

Mr. Fearon dined with another of the Ex- 
Kings, Mr. Adams. 

" The ex-president is a handsome old gen- 
tleman of eighty-four; — his lady is seventy- 
six; — she has the reputation of superior ta- 
lents, and great literary acquirements. I was 
not perfectly a stranger here ; as. a few days 
previous to this, I had received the honour of 
an hospitable reception at their mansion. 
Upon the present occasion the minister (the 
day being Sunday) was of the dinner party. 
As the table of a ' late King' may amuse 
some of you, take the following particulars : — 
first course, a pudding made of Indian corn, 
molasses, and butter; — second, veal, bacon, 
neck of mutton, potatoes, cabbages, carrots, 

* This is still one of the great uncorrected evils of the 
country. Nothing can be so utterly absurd as to leave 
the head of the Court of Chancery a political officer, aiul 
to subject forty millions of litigated property to all the 
delays and interruptions which are occasioned by his 
present multiplicity of offices. (1839.)— The Chancellor 
is Speaker of the House of Lords ; he might as well be 
made Archbishop of Canterbury; — it is one of the great- 
est of existing follies. 



and Indian beans ; Madeira wine, of which 
each drank two glasses. We sat down to din- 
ner at one o'clock; at two, nearly all went 
a second time to church. For tea, we had 
pound-cake, sweet bread and butter, and bread 
made of Indian corn and lye (similar to our 
brown home-made). Tea was brought from 
the kitchen, and handed round by a neat, white 
servant-girl. The topics of conversation were 
various — England, America, religion, politics, 
literature, science, Dr. Priestley, Miss Edge- 
worth, Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Kean, France, Shak- 
speare, Moore, Lord Byron, Cobbett, American 
Revolution, the traitor General Arnold. 

" The establishment of this political patri- 
arch consists of a house two stoyes high, con- 
taining, I believe, eight rooms ; of two men and 
three maid-servants ; three horses, and a plain 
carriage. How great is the contrast between 
this individual — a man of knowledge and in- 
formation — without pomp, parade, or vicious 
and expensive establishments, as compared 
with the costly trappings, the depraved cha- 
racters, and the profligate expenditure of 

house, and ! What a lesson in this 

does America teach ! There are now in this 
land no less than three Cincinnati!" — Fearon, 
111—113. 

The travellers agree, we think, in complain- 
ing of the insubordination of American child- 
ren — and do not much like American ladies. 
In their criticisms upon American gasconade, 
theyforget that vulgar people of all countries are 
full of gasconade. The Americans love titles. 
The following extract from the Boston Senti- 
nel of last August (1817), is quoted by Mr. 
Fearon. 

" ' Dinner to Mr. Adams. — Yesterday a pub- 
lic dinner wa's given to the Hon. John Q. 
Adams, in the Exchange Coffee-House, by 
his fellow-citizens of Boston. The Hon. Wm. 
Gray presided, assisted by the Hon. Harrisoii 
Gray Otis, George Blake, Esq., and .the Hon. 
Jonathan Mason, vice-presidents. Of the 
guests were, the Hon. Mr. Adams, late presi- 
dent of the United States, his Excellency Go- 
vernor Brooks, his Honour Lt. Gov. Phillips, 
Chief Justice Parker, Judge Story, President 
Kirkland, Gen. Dearborn, Com. Hull, Gen. 
Miller, several of the reverend clergy, and 
ipany public officers, and strangers of emi- 
nence.' " 

They all, in common with Mr. Birkbeck. 
seem to be struck with the indolence of the 
American character. Mr. Fearon makes the 
charge ; and gives us below the right expla- 
nation of its cause. 

" The life of boarders at an American tavern 
presents the most senseless and comfortless 
mode of killing time which I have ever seen. 
Every house of this description that I have 
been in, is thronged to excess; and there is 
not a man who appears to have a single earth- 
ly object in view, except spitting, and smoking 
segars. I have not seen a book in the hands 
of any person since I left Philadelphia. Ob- 
jectionable as these habits are, they afford de- 
cided evidence of the prosperity of that coun- 
try, which can admit so large a body of its 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Ill 



■citizens to waste in indolence three-fourths of 
their lives, and would also appear to hold out 
encouragement to Englishmen with English 
habits, who could retain their industry amid a 
nation of indolence, and have sufficient firmness 
to live in America, and yet bid defiance to the 
deadly example of its natives." — Fearon, p. 
252, 253. 

Yet this charge can hardly apply to the north- 
eastern parts of the Union. 

The following sample of American vulgarity 
is not unentertaining. 

"On arriving at the tavern door the landlord 
makes his appearance. — Landlord. Your ser- 
vant, gentlemen, this is a fine day. — Answer. 
Very fine. — Land. You've got two nice creatures,- 
they are right elegant matches. Ans. Yes, we 
bought them for matches. — Land. They cost a 
heap of dollars, (a pause, and knowing look) ; 
200 I calculate. Ans. Yes, they cost a good sum. 
Land. Possible ! (a pause) ; going westward to 
Ohio, gentlemen? Ans. We are going to Phila- 
delphia. — Land. Philadelphia, ah ! that's a 
dreadful large place, three or four times as big 
as Lexington. Ans. Ten times as large. — Land. 
Is it, by George ! what a mighty heap of houses, 
(a pause) ; but I reckon you was not reared in 
Philadelphia. Ans. Philadelphia is not our 
native place. — Land. Perhaps aicay up in 
Canada. Ans. No; we are from England. — 
Land. Is it possible ! well, I calculated you were 
from abroad, (pause) ; how long have you been 
from the old country? Ajis. We left England 
last March. — Land. And in August here you are 
in Kentuck- Well, I should have guessed you 
had been in the state some years; you speak 
almost as good English as we do ! 

"This dialogue is not a literal copy; but it 
embraces most of the frequent and improper 
applications of words used in the back country, 
with a few New England phrases. By the log- 
house farmer and tavern keeper, they are used 
as often, and as erroneously, as they occur in 
the above discourse." — Palmer, p. 129, 130. 

This is of course intended as a representation 
of the manners of the low, or, at best, the mid- 
dling class of people in America. 

The four travellers, of whose works we are 
giving an account, made extensive tours in 
every part of America, as well in the old as in 
the new settlements; and, generally speaking, 
we should say their testimony is in favour of 
American manners. We must except, perhaps, 
Mr. Fearon; — and yet he seems to have very 
little to say against them. Mr. Palmer tells us 
that he found his companions, oflScers and far- 
mers, unobtrusive, civil and obliging; — that 
what the servants do for you, they do with ala- 
crity; — that at their tables d'hote ladies are treat- 
ed with great politeness. We have real plea- 
sure in making the following extract from Mr. 
Bradbury's tour. 

"In regard to the manners of the people west 
of the Alleghanies, it would be absurd to expect 
that a general character could be now formed, 
or that it will be, for many years yet to come. 
The population is at present compounded of a 
great number of nations, not yet amalgamated, 
consisting of emigrants from every state in the 
Union, mixed with English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, 



Swiss, Germans, French and almost from every 
country in Europe. In some traits they partake 
in common with the inhabitants of the Atlantic 
states, which results from the nature of their 
government. That species of hauteur which 
one class of society in some countries shows 
in their intercourse with the other, is here utterly 
unknown. By their constitution, the existence 
of a privileged order, vested by birth with here- 
ditary privileges, honours or emoluments, is for 
ever interdicted. If, therefore, we should here 
expect to find that contemptuous feeling in man 
for man, we should naturally examine amongst 
those clothed with judicial or military authority; 
but we should search in vain. The justice on 
the bench, or the officer in the field, is respected 
and obeyed whilst discharging the functions of 
his office, as the representative or agent of the 
law, enacted for the good of all,- but should he 
be tempted to treat even the least wealthy of his 
neighbours o-r fellow-citizens with contumely, 
he would soon find that he could not do it with 
impunity. Travellers from Europe, in passing 
through the western country, or indeed any part 
of the United States, ought to be previously ac- 
quainted with this part of the American charac- 
ter, and more particularly if they have been in 
the habit of treating with contempt, or irritating 
with abuse, those whom accidental circum- 
stances may have placed in a situation to ad- 
minister to their wants. Let no one here in- 
dulge himself in abusing the waiter or ostler at 
an inn ; that waiter or ostler is probably a citizen, 
and does not, nor cannot conceive, that a situa- 
tion in which he discharges a duty to society, 
not in itself dishonourable, should subject him 
to insult: but this feeling, so far as I have ex- 
perienced, is entirely defensive. I have travelled 
near 10,000 miles in the United States, and 
never met with the least incivility or affront. 

"The Americans, in general, are accused by 
travellers of being inquisitive. If this be a 
crime, the western people are guilty; but, for 
my part, I may say that it is a practice that I 
never was disposed to complain of, because I 
always found them as ready to answer a question 
as to ask one, and therefore I always came off a 
gainer by this kind of barter; and if any tra- 
veller does not, it is his own fault. As this leads 
me to notice their general conduct to strangers, 
I feel myself bound, by gratitude and regard to 
truth, to speak of their hospitality. In my tra- 
vels through the inhabited parts of the United 
States, not less than 2000 miles was through 
parts where there were no taverns, and where 
a traveller is under the necessity of appealing 
to the hospitality of the inhabitants. In no one 
instance has my appeal been fruitless ; although, 
in many cases, the furnishing of a bed has been 
evidently attended with inconvenience, and in a 
great many instances no remuneration would 
be received. Other European travellers have 
experienced this liberal spirit of hospitality, and 
some have repaid it by calumny." — Bradbury, 
p. 304—306. 

We think it of so much importance to do 
justice to other nations, and to lessen that hatred 
and contempt which race feels for race, that we 
subjoin two short passages from Mr. Hall to the 
same effect. 



112 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"I had bills on Philadelphia, and applied to a 
respectable storekeeper, that is, tradesman, of the 
village, to cash me one; the amount, however, 
was beyond any remittance he had occasion to 
make, but he immediately offered me whatever 
sum I might require for my journey, with no 
better security than my word for its repayment 
at Philadelphia: he even insisted on my taking 
more than I mentioned as sufficient. I do not 
believe this trait of liberality would surprise an 
American ; for no one in the states, to whom I 
mentioned it, seemed to consider it as more 
than any stranger of respectable appearance 
might have looked for, in similar circumstan- 
ces: but it might well surprise an English 
traveller, who had been told, as I had, that the 
Americans never failed to cheat and insult every 
Englishman who travelled through their coun- 
try, especially if they knew him to be an officer. 
This latter particular they never failed to inform 
themselves of, for they are by no means bashful 
in inquiries : but if the discovery operated in 
any way upon their behaviour, it was rather 
to my advantage ; nor did I meet with a sin- 
gle instance of incivility betwixt Canada and 
Charleston, except at the Shenandoah Point, 
from a drunken English deserter. My testimony 
in this particular, will certainly not invalidate 
the complaints of many other travellers, who, I 
doubt not, have frequently encountered rude 
treatment, and quite as frequently deserved it; 
but it will at least prove the possibility of tra- 
versing the United States without insult or 
interruption, and even of being occasionally 
surprised by liberality and kindness." — Hall, p. 
25.5, 256. 

" I fell into very pleasant society at Washing- 
ton. Strangers who intend staying some days 
in a town, usually take lodgings at a boarding- 
house, in preference to a tavern : in this way 
they obtain the best society the place affords ; 
for there are always gentlemen and frequently 
ladies, either visitors or temporary lesidents, 
who live in this manner to avoid the trouble of 
housekeeping. At Washington, during the sit- 
tings of Congress, the boarding-houses are di- 
vided into messes, according to the political 
principles of the inmates, nor is a stranger 
admitted without some introduction, and the 
consent of the whole company. I chanced to 
join a democratic mess, and name a few of its 
members with gratitude, for the pleasure their 
society gave me — Commodore Decatur and his 
lady, the Abbe Correa, the great botanist and 
plenipotentiary of Portugal, the Secretary of the 
Navy, the Secretary of the Navy Board, known 
'as the author of a humorous publication entitled 
'John Bull and Broiher Jonathan,' with eight 
or ten members of Congress, principally from 
the western states, which are generally consi- 
dered as most decidedly hostile to England, but 
whom I did not on this account find less good- 
humoured and courteous. It is from thus living 
in daily intercourse with the leading characters 
of the country, that one is enabled to judge with 
some degree of certainty of the practices of its 
government; for to know the paper theory is 
nothing, unless it be compared with the instru- 
ments employed to carry it into effect. A poli- 
tical constitution may be nothing but a cabalistic 



form, to extort money and power from the peoplie; ■ 
but then the jugglers must be in the dark, and I 
"no admittance behind the curtain." This way T 
of living affords, too, the best insight into the 
best part of society : for if in a free nation the 
depositaries of the public confidence be ignorant 
or vulgar, it is a very fruitless search to look 
for the opposite qualities in those they represent; 
whereas, if these be well-informed in mind and 
manners, it proves at the least an inclination 
towards knowledge and refinement in the gene- 
ral mass of citizens by whom they are selected. 
My own experience obliges me to a favourable 
verdict in this particular. I found the little circle 
into which I had happily fallen full of good sense 
and good humour, and never quitted it without 
feeling myself a gainer, on the score either of 
useful information or of social enjoyment." — 
/fa//,p. 329— 331. 

In page 252 Mr. Hall pays some very hand- 
some compliments to the gallantry, high feeling 
and humanity of the American troops. Such 
passages reflect the highest honour upon Mr. 
Hall. They are full of courage as well as kind- 
ness, and will never be forgiven at home. 

Literature the Americans have none — no na- 
tive literature, we mean. It is all imported. They 
had a Franklin, indeed; and may afford to live 
for half a century on his fame. There is, or 
was a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems; 
and his baptismal name was Timothy. There 
is also a small account of Virginia by Jefferson, 
and an epic by Joel Barlow; and some pieces 
of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should 
the Americans write books, when a six weeks' 
passage brings them, in their own tongue, our 
sense, science and genius, in bales and hogs- 
heads? Prairies, steam-boats, grist-mills, are 
their natural objects for centuries to come. 
Then, when they have got to the Pacific Ocean 
— epic poems, plays, pleasures of memory and 
all the elegant gratifications of an ancient people 
who have tamed the wild earth, and set down 
to amuse themselves. — This is the natural 
march of human affairs. 

The Americans, at least in the old states, are 
a very religious people : but there is no sect 
there which enjoys the satisfaction of excluding 
others from civil offices; nor does any denomi- 
nation of Christians lake for their support a 
tenth of produce. Their clergy, however, are 
respectable, respected, and possess no small 
share of influence. The places of worship in 
Philadelphia in 1810, were as follows: — Pres- 
byterian, 8; Episcopalian, 4; Methodists, 5; 
Catholic, 4; Baptist, 5; Quakers, 4; Fighting 
Quakers, 1 ; Lutheran, 3; Calvinist,3; Jews, 2; 
Universalists, 1 ; Swedish Lutheran, 1; Mora- 
vian, 1; Congregationalists, 1; Unitarians, 1; 
Covenanters,!; Black Baptists, 1 ; Black Epis- 
copalians, 1 ; Black Methodists, 2. The Metho- 
dists, Mr. Palmer tells us, are becoming the most 
numerous sect in the United States. 

Mr. Fearon gives us this account of the state 
of religion at New York. 

"Upon this interesting topic I would repeat, 
what, indeed, you are already acquainted with, 
that kgalU/ there is the most unlimited liberty. 
There is no state religion, and no government 
prosecution of individuals for conscience sake 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



11» 



Whether those halcyon days, which I think 
would attend a similar state of things in Eng- 
land, are in existence here, must be left for 
future observation. There are five Dutch Re- 
formed churches; six Presbyterian; three As- 
sociated Reformed ditto, one Associated Pres- 
byterian; one Reformed ditto; five Methodist; 
two diUo for blacks,- one German Reformed; one 
Evangelical Lutheran; one Moravian; four 
Trinitarian Baptist; one Universalist; two Ca- 
tholic; three Quaker; eight Episcopalian; one 
Jews' Synagogue; and to this I would add a 
small meeting which is but little known, at 
■which the priest is dispensed with, every mem- 
ber following what they call the apostolic plan 
of instructing each other, and ' building one 
another up in their most holy faith.' The Pres- 
byterian and Episcopalian, or Church of Eng- 
land sects, take the precedence in numbers and 
in respectability. Their ministers receive from 
two to eight thousand dollars per annum. AH 
the churches are well filled : they are the fash- 
ionable places for display; and the sermons and 
talents of the minister offer never-ending sub- 
jects of interest when social converse has been 
exhausted upon the bad conduct and inferior 
nature of niggars (negroes) ; the price of flour 
at Liverpool; the capture of the Guerriere,- and 
the battle of New Orleans. The perfect equali- 
ty of all sects seems to have deadened party 
feeling: controversy is but little known." — 
Fearon, p. 45, 46. 

The absence of controversy, Mr. Fearon 
,<5 seems to imagine, has produced indifference ; 
and he heaves a sigh to the memory of depart- 
ed oppression. " Can it be possible (he asks) 
that the non-existence of religious oppression 
has lessened religious knowledge, and made 
men superstitiously dependent upon outward 
form, instead of internal purity 1" To which 
question (a singular one from an enlightened 
man like Mr. Fearon), we answer, that the ab- 
sence of religious oppression has not lessened 
religious knowledge, but theological animosity; 
and made men more dependent upon pious ac- 
tions, and less upon useless and unintelligible 
wrangling.* 

The great curse of America is the institution 
of slavery — of itself far more than the foulest 
blot upon their national character, and an evil 
which counterbalances all the excisemen, licens- 
ers, and tax-gatherers of England. No virtu- 
ous man ought to trust his own character, or 
the character of his children, to the demoral- 
izing effects produced by commanding slaves. 
Justice, gentleness, pity and humility soon give 
way before them. Conscience suspends its func- 
tions. The love of command — the impatience 
of restraint, get the better of every other feel- 
ing; and cruelty has no other limit than fear. 

"'There must doubtless,' says Mr. Jefferson, 
'be an unhappy influence on the manners of 
the people produced by the existence of slavery 
among us. The whole commerce between mas- 



* Mr. Fearon mentions a religious lottery for building 
a Presbyterian church. What will Mr. Littleton say to 
this? he is hardly prepared, we suspect, for this union of 
Calvin and the Little Go. Every advantage will be made 
of it by the wit and eloquence of his fiscal opponent ; — 
nor will it pass unheeded by Mr. Bish. 
15 



ter and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most/ 
boisterous passions; the most unremitting des- 
potism on the one part, and degrading submis- 
sions on the other. Our children see this, and 
learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative ani- 
mal. The parent storms, the child looks on, 
catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the 
same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives 
loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, 
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can- 
not but be stamped by it with odious peculiari- 
ties. The man must be a prodigy who can 
retain his morals and manners undepraved by 
such circumstances.' — Notes, p. 241." — Hall, p. 
459. 

The following picture of a slave song is quot- 
ed by Mr. Hall from the "Letters on Virginia." 

" 'I took the boat this morning, and crossed 
the ferry over to Portsmouth, the small town 
which I told you is opposite to this place. It 
was court-day, and a large crowd of people was 
gathered about the door of the court-house. I 
had hardly got upon the steps to look in, when 
my ears were assailed by the voice of singing; 
and turning round to discover from what quarter 
it came, I saw a group of about thirty negroes, 
of different sizes and ages, following a rough- 
looking white man, who sat carelessly lolling in 
his sulky. They had just turned round the cor- 
ner, and were coming up the main street to pass 
by the spot where I stood, on their way out of 
town. As they came nearer, I saw some of 
them loaded with chains to prevent their escape; 
while others had hold of each other's hands, 
strongly grasped, as if to support themselves in 
their atfliction. I particularly noticed a poor 
mother, with an infant suckling at her breast 
as she walked along, while two small children 
had hold of her apron on either side, almost 
running to keep up with the rest. They came 
along singing a little wild hymn, of sweet and 
mournful melody, flying, by a divine instinct of 
the heart, to the consolation of religion, the last 
refuge of the unhapp}^ to support them in their 
distress. The sulky now stopped before the 
tavern, at a little distance beyond the court- 
house, and the driver got out. ' My dear sir,' 
said I to a person who stood near me, 'can you 
tell me what these poor people have been doingl 
What is their crime 1 and what is to be their 
punishment]' ' 0,' said he, 'it's nothing at all 
but a parcel of negroes sold to Carolina; and 
that man is their driver, who has bought them.' 
'But what have they done, that they should be 
sold into banishment r 'Done,' said he, 'no- 
thing at all, that I know of; their masters wanted 
money, I suppose, and these drivers give good 
prices.' Here the driver having supplied him- 
self with brandy, and his horse with water, 
(the poor negroes, of course, wanted nothing,) 
stepped into his chair again, cracked his whip, 
and drove on, while the miserable exiles fol- 
lowed in funeral procession behind him.' " — 
Hall, 358—360. 

The law by which slaves are governed in the 
Carolinas, is a provincial law as old as 1740, 
but made perpetual in 1783. By this law it is 
enacted, that every negro shall be presumed a 
slave, unless the contrary appear. The 9th 
clause allows two justices of the peace, and 
k2 



114 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



three freeholders, power to put them to any 
manner of death; the evidence against them 
may be without oath. — No slave is to traffic on 
his own account. — Any person murdering a 
slave is to pay 100/. — or 14/. if he cuts out the 
tongue of a slave. — Any white man meeting 
seven slaves together on an high road, may 
give them twenty lashes each. — No man must 
teach a slave to write, under penalty of 100/. 
currency. We have Mr. Hall's authority for 
the existence and enforcement of this law at the 
present day. Mr. Fearon has recorded some 
facts still more instructive. 

" Observing a great many coloured people,par- 
ticularly females, in these boats, I concluded that 
they were emigrants, who had proceeded thus 
far on their route towards a settlement. The fact 
proved to be, that fourteen of the flats were 
freighted with human beings for sale. They 
had been collected in the several states by slave 
dealers, and shipped from Kentucky for a mar- 
ket. They were dressed up to the best advan- 
tage, on the same principle that jockeys do 
horses upon sale. The following is a specimen 
of advertisements on this subject. 

'twenty dollahs heward 

"'Will be paid for apprehending and lodging 
in jail, or delivering to the subscriber, the fol- 
lowing slaves, belonging to Joseph Irvin, of 
Iberville. — TOM, a very light mulatto, blue eyes, 
5 feet 10 inches high, appears to be about 
35 years of age; an artful fellow — can read 
and write, and preaches occasionally. — CHAR- 
LOTTE, a black wench, round and full faced, 
tall, straight and likely — about 25 years of age, 
and wife of the above-named Tom. — These 
slaves decamped from their owner's plantation 
on the night of the 14th September inst.' " — 
Fearm, p. 270. 

"The three 'African churches,' as they are 
called, are for all thos« native Americans who 
are black, or have any shade of colour darker 
than white. These persons, though many of them 
are possessed of the rights of citizenship, are not 
admitted into the churches which are visited by 
whites. There exists a penal law, deeply writ- 
ten in the fnind of the whole white population, 
which subjects their coloured fellow-citizens to 
unconditional contumely and never-ceasing in- 
sult. No respectability, however unquestionable, 
— no property, however large, — no character, 
however unblemished, will gain a man, whose 
body is (in American estimation) cursed with 
even a twentieth portion of the blood of his 
African ancestry, admission into society!!! 
They are considered as mere Pariahs — as out- 
casts and vagrants upon the face of the earth! 
I make no reflection upon these things, but 
leave the facts for your consideration." — Ibid., 
p. 168, 169. 

That such feelings and such practices should 
exist among men who know the value of liberty, 
and profess to understand its principles, is the 
consummation of wickedness. Every Ameri- 
can M'ho loves his country, should dedicate his 
whole life, and every faculty of his soul, to 
efl^ace this foul stain from its character. If 
nations rank according to their wisdom and 
their virtue, what right has the American, a 



scourger and murderer of slaves, to compare 
himself with the least and lowest of the Ett« 
ropean nations? — much more with this great 
and humane country, where the greatest lord 
dare not lay a finger upon the meanest peasant^ 
What is freedom, where all are not free? where 
the greatest of God's blessings is limited, with 
impious caprice, to the colour of the bodyl 
And these are the men who taunt the English 
with their corrupt Parliament, with their buying 
and selling votes. Let the world judge which 
is the most liable to censure — we who, in the 
midst of our rottenness, have torn off the 
manacles of slaves all over the world; — or 
they who, with their idle purity and useless 
perfection, have remained mute and careless, 
while groans echoed and whips clanked round 
the very walls of their spotless Congress. We 
wish well to America — we rejoice in her pros- 
perity — and are delighted to resist the absurd 
impertinence with which the character of her 
people is often treated in this country: but the 
existence of slavery in America is an atrocious 
crime, with which no measures can be kept — 
for which her situation afibrds no sort of apology 
— which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the 
boast of it disgusting. 

As for emigration, every man, of course, must 
determine for himself A carpenter under thirty 
years of age, who finds himself at Cincinnati 
with an axe over his shoulder, and ten pounds 
in his pocket, will get rich in America, if the 
change of climate does not kill him. So will a 
farmer who emigrates early with some capital. 
But any person with tolerable prosperity here 
had better remain where he is. There are 
considerable evils, no doubt, in England: but 
it would be madness not to admit that it is, 
upon the whole, a very happy country, — and we 
are much mistaken if the next twenty years 
will not bring with it a great deal of internal 
improvement. The country has long been 
groaning under the evils of the greatest foreign 
war we were ever engaged in; and we are just 
beginning to look again into our home affairs. 
Political economy has made an astonishing pro- 
gress since they were last investigated; and 
every session of Parliament brushes off some 
of the cobwebs and dust of our ancestors.* 
The Apprentice Laws have been swept away; 
the absurd nonsense of the Usury Laws will 
probably soon follow; Public Education and 
Saving Banks have been the invention of these 
last ten years ; and the strong fortress of bigotry 
has been rudely assailed. Then, with all its 
defects, we have a Parliament of inestimable 
value. If there be a place in any country where 
500 well-educated men can meet together and 
talk with impunity of public affairs, and if what 
they say is published, that country must im- 
prove. It is not pleasant to emigrate into a 
country of changes and revolution, the size and 
integrity of whose empire no man can predict. 



* In a scarcity which occurred little more than twenty 
years ago, every judge, (except the lord chancellor, then 
Justice of the Common Pleas, and Serjeant Remington,) 
when they charged the grand jury, attributed the scarcitJT 
to the combinations of the farmers; and complained of it 
aa a very serious evil. Such doctrines would not novr be 
tolerated in the mouth of a schoolboy. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



115 



The Americans are a very sensible, reflecting 
people, and have conducted their affairs ex- 
tremely well ; but it is scarcely possible to con- 
ceive that such an empire should very long 
remain undivided, or that the dwellers on the 
Columbia should have common interest with 
the navigators of the Hudson and the Delaware. 
England is, to be sure, a very expensive coun- 
try ; but a million of millions has been expended 
in making it habitable and comfortable; and 
this is a constant source of revenue, or, what is 
the same thing, a constant diminution of ex- 
pense to every man living in it. The price an 
Englishman pays for a turnpike road is not 
equal to the tenth part of what the delay would 
cost him without a turnpike. The New River 
Company brings water to every inhabitant of 
London at an infinitely less price than he could 
dip for it out of the Thames. No country, in 



fact, is so expensive as one which human be- 
ings are just beginning to inhabit; — where there 
are no roads, no bridges, no skill, no help, no 
combination of powers, and no force of capital. 
How, too, can any man take upon himself to 
say that he is so indifferent to his country that 
he will not begin to love it intensely, when he 
is 5000 or 6000 miles from if? And what a 
dreadful disease Nostalgia must be on the banks 
of the Missouri ! Severe and painful poverty 
will drive us all anywhere: but a wise man 
should be quite sure that he has so irresistible 
a plea, before he ventures on the Great or the 
Little Wabash. He should be quite sure that 
he does not go there from ill temper — or to be 
pitied — or to be regretted — or from ignorance of 
what is to happen to him — or because he is a 
poet — but because he has not enough to eat here, 
and is sure of abundance where he is going. 



116 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



GAME LAWS.* 



[Edikbckgh Review, 1819.] 



The evil of the Game Laws, in their present 
state, has long been felt, and of late years has 
certainly rather increased than diminished. We 
believe that they cannot long remain in their 
present state ; and we are anxious to express 
our opinion of those changes which they ought 
to experience. 

We thoroughly acquiesce in the importance 
of encouraging those field sports which are so 
congenial to the habits of Englishmen, and 
which, in the present state of society, afford the 
only effeciual counterbalance to the allurements 
of great towns. We cannot conceive a more 
pernicious condition for a great nation, than 
that its aristocracy should be shut up from one 
year's end to another in a metropolis, while the 
mass of its rural inhabitants are left to the 
management of factors and agents. A great 
man returning from London to spend his sum- 
mer in the country, diffuses his intelligence, 
improves manners, communicates pleasure, re- 
strains the extreme violence of subordinate 
politicians, and makes the middling and lower 
classes belter acquainted with, and more attach- 
ed to their natural leaders. At the same time, 
a residence in the country gives to the makers 
of laws an opportunity of studying those interests 
"which they may afterwards be called upon to 
protect and arrange. Nor is it unimportant to 
the character of the higher orders themselves, 
that they should pass a considerable part of the 
year in the midst of these their larger families; 
that they should occasionally be thrown among 
simple, laborious, frugal people, and be stimu- 
lated to resist the prodigality of courts, by view- 
ing with their own eyes the merits and the 
wretchedness of the poor. 

Laws for the preservation of game are not 
only of importance, as they increase the amuse- 
ments of the country, but they may be so con- 
structed as to be perfectly just. The game 
which my land feeds is certainly mine; or, in 
other words, the game which all the land feeds 
certainly belongs to all the owners of the land; 
and the only practical way of dividing it is, to 
give to each proprietor what he can take on his 
own ground. Those who contribute nothing to 
the support of the animal, can have no possible 
right to a share in the distribution. To say of 
animals, that they are feras Natura, means only, 
that the precise place of their birth and nurture 
is not known. How they shall be divided, is a 
matter of arrangement among those whose col- 
lected property certainly has produced and fed 
them; but the case is completely made out 
against those who have no land at all, and who 
cannot, therefore, have been in the slightest de- 
gree instrumental to their production. If a large 



Tliru Letui > oii the Game Laws. RestFenner, Black & 
Co. London, 1818. 



pond were divided by certain marks into four 
parts, and allotted to that number of proprietors, 
the fish contained in that pond would be, in the 
same sense,/era; Natura. Nobody could tellia 
which particular division each carp had been, 
born and bred. The owners would arrange 
their respective rights and pretensions in the 
best way they could; but the clearest of all pos- 
sible propositions would be, that the four pro- 
prietors, among them, made a complete title to 
all the fish ; and that nobody but them had the 
smallest title to the smallest share. This we 
say in answer to those who contend that there 
is no foundation for any system of game laws; 
that animals born wild are the property of the 
public ; and that their appropriation is nothing 
but tyranny and usurpation. 

In addition to these arguments, it is perhaps 
scarcely necessary to add, that nothing which 
is worth having, which is accessible, and sup- 
plied only in limited quantities, could exist at 
all, if it was not considered as the property of 
some individual. If every body might take 
game wherever they found it, there would soon 
be an end of every species of game. The ad- 
vantage would not be extended to fresh classes, 
but be annihilated for all classes. Besides all 
this, the privilege of killing game could not be 
granted without the privilege of trespassing on 
landed property; — an intolerable evil, which 
would entirely destroy the comfort and privacy 
of a country life. 

But though a system of game laws is of great 
use in promoting country amusements, and 
may, in itself, be placed on a footing of justice, 
its effects, we are sorry to say, are by no means 
favourable to the morals of the poor. 

It is impossible to make an uneducated man 
understand in what manner a bird hatched no- 
body knows where, — to-day living in my field, 
to-morrow in yours, — should be as sti'ictly pro- 
perty as the goose whose whole history can be 
traced, in the most authentic and satisfactory 
manner, from the egg to the spit. The argu- 
ments upon which this depends are so contrary 
to the notions of the poor, — so repugnant to 
their passions, — and, perhaps, so much above 
their comprehension, that they are totally una- 
vailing. The same man who would respect an 
orchard, a garden or an hen-roost, scarcely 
thinks he is committing any fault at all in in- 
vading the game-covers of his richer neigh- 
bour ; and as soon as he becomes wearied of 
honest industry, his first resource is in plunder- 
ing the rich magazine of hares, pheasants and 
partridges — the top and bottom dishes, which on 
every side of his village are running and flying 
before his eyes. As these things cannot be 
done Avith safety in the day, they must be done 
in the night; — and in this manner a lawless 
marauder is often formed, who proceeds from 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



117 



one infringement of law and property to an- its power of growing partridges 1 That he may 



other, till he becomes a thoroughly bad and 
corrupted member of society. 

These few preliminary observations lead na- 
turally to the two principal considerations which 
are to be kept in view, in reforming the game 
laws ; — to preserve, as far as is consistent with 
justice, the amusements of the rich and to di- 
minish, as much as possible, the temptations of 
the poor. And these ends, it seems to us, will 
be best answered, 

1. By abolishfng qualifications. 2. By giving 
to every man a property in the game upon his 
land. 3. By allowing game to be bought by any 
body, and sold by its lawful possessors.* 

Nothing can be more grossly absurd than the 
present state of the game laws, as far as they 
concern the qualification for shooting. In Eng- 
land, no man can possibly have a legal right to 
kill game, who has not 100/. a year in land rent. 
With us in Scotland, the rule is not quite so 
inflexible, though in principle not very different. 
But we shall speak to the case which concerns 
by far the greatest number : and certainly it is 
scarcely possible to imagine a more absurd and 
capricious limitation. For what possible reason 
is a man, who has only 90/. per annum in land, 
not to kill the game which his own land nou- 
rishes ? If the legislature really conceives, as 
we have heard surmised by certain learned 
squires, that a person of sucli a degree of for- 
tune should be confined to profitable pursuits, 
and debarred from that pernicious idleness into 
which he would be betrayed by field sports, it 
would then be expedient to make a qualification 
for bowls or skittles — to prevent small land- 
owners from going to races or following a pack 
of hounds — and to prohibit to men of a certain 
income, every other species of amusement as 
well as this. The only instance, however, in 
which this paternal care is exercised, is that in 
which the amusement of the smaller landowner 
is supposed to interfere with those of his richer 
neighbour. He may do what he pleases, and 
elect any other species of ruinous idleness but 
that in which the upper classes of society are 
his rivals. 

; Nay, the law is so excessively ridiculous in 
the case of small landed proprietors, that on a 
property of less than 100/. per annum, no human 
being has the right of shooting. It is not con- 
fined but annihilated. The lord of the manor 
may be warned off by the proprietor; and the 
proprietor may be informed against by any 
body who sees him sporting. . The case is still 
stronger in the instance of large farms. In 
Northumberland, and on the borders of Scot- 
land, there are large capitalists who farm to the 
amount of two or three thousand per annum, 
who have the permission of their distant non- 
resident landlords to do what they please with 
the game, and yet who dare not fire off a gun 
upon their own land. Can any thing be more 
utterly absurd and preposterous, than that the 
landlord and the wealthy tenant together cannot 
make up a title to the hare which is fattened 
upon the choicest produce of their land 1 That 
the landlord, who can let to farm the fertility of 
the land for growing wheat, cannot let to farm 



reap by deputy, but cannot on that manor shoot 
by deputyl Is it possible that any respectable 
magistrate could fine a farmer for killing a hare 
upon his own grounds with his landlord's con- 
sent, without feeling that he was violating every 
feeling of common sense and justice ? 

Since the enactment of the game laws, there 
has sprung up an entirely new species of pro- 
perty, which of course is completely overlooked 
by their provisions. An Englishman may pos- 
sess a million of money in funds or merchan- 
dize — may be the. Baring or the flbpe of Europe 
— provide to government the sudden means of 
equipping fleets and armies, and yet be without 
the power of smiting a single partridge, though 
invited by the owner of the game to participate 
in his amusement. It is idle to say that the 
difliculty may be got over by purchasing land : 
the question is, upon what principle of justice 
can the existence of the difficulty be defended 1 
If the right of keeping men-servants was con- 
fined to persons who had more than 100/. a year 
in the funds, the difficulty might be got over by 
every man who would change his landed pro- 
perty to that extent. But what could justify so 
capricious a partiality to one species of pro- 
perty 1 There might be some apology for such 
laws at the time they were made ; but there can 
be none for their not being now accommodated 
to the changes which time has introduced. If 
you choose to exclude poverty from this species 
of amusement, and to open it to wealth, why is 
it not opened to every species of wealth 1 What 
amusement can there be morally lawful to an 
holder of turnip land, and criminal in a posses- 
sor of exchequer bills 1 What delights ought 
to be tolerated to long annuities, from which 
wheat and beans should be excluded? What 
matters whether it is scrip or short-horned cattle? 
If the locus quo is conceded — if the trespass is 
waived — and if the qualification for any amuse- 
ment is wealth, let it be any probable wealth — 
Dives agris, dives positis infcpnore nummis. 



* All this has since been established. 



It will be very easy for any country gentleman 
who wishes to monopolize to himself the plea- 
sures of shooting, to let to his tenant every other 
right attached to the land, except the right of 
killing game; and it will be equally easy, in 
the formation of a new game act, to give to the 
landlord a summary process against his tenant, 
if such tenant fraudulently exercises the privi- 
leges he has agreed to surrender. 

The case which seems most to alarm coun- 
try gentlemen, is that of a person possessing a 
few acres in the heart of a manor, who might, 
by planting food of which they are fond, allure 
the game into his own little domain, and thus 
reap an harvest prepared at the expense of the 
neighbour who surrounded him. But, under 
the present game laws, if the smaller posses- 
sion belongs to a qualified person, the danger 
of intrusion is equally great as it would be un- 
der the proposed alteration ; and the danger from 
the poacher would be the same in both cases. 
But if it is of such great consequence to keep 
clear from all interference, may not such apiece 
of land be rented or bought 1 Or, may not the 
food which tempts the game be sown in the same 
abundance in the surrounding as in the enclosed 



118 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



land After all, it is only common justice, that 
he whose property is surrounded on every side 
by a preserver of game, whose corn and turnips 
are demolished by animals preserved for the 
amusement of his neighbour, should himself be 
entitled to that share of game which plunders 
upon his land. The complaint which the landed 
grandee makes is this. "Here is a man who 
has only a twenty-fourth part of the land, and 
he expects a twenty-fourth part of the game. 
He is so captious and litigious, that he will not 
be contented to supply his share of the food 
without requiring his share of what the food pro- 
duces. I want a neighbour who has talents only 
for suffering, not one who evinces such a fatal 
disposition for enjoying." Upon such princi- 
ples as these, many of the game laws have been 
constructed, and are preserved. The interfer- 
ence of a very small property with a very large 
one ; the critical position of one or t,wo fields, 
is a very serious source of vexation on many 
other occasions besides those of game. He 
who possesses a field in the middle of ray pre- 
mises, may build so as to obstruct my view ; 
and may present to me the hinder parts of a 
barn, instead of one of the finest landscapes in 
nature. Nay, he may turn his fields into tea- 
gardens, and destroy my privacy by the intro- 
duction of every species of vulgar company. 
The legislature, in all these instances, has pro- 
vided no remedy for the inconveniences which 
a small property, by such intermixture, may in- 
flict upon a large one, but has secured the same 
rights to unequal proportions. It is very diffi- 
cult to conceive why these equitable principles 
are to be violated in the case of game alone. 

Our securities against that rabble of sports- 
men which the abolition of qualifications might 
be supposed to produce, are, the consent of the 
owner of the soil as an indispensable prelimi- 
nary, guarded by heavy penalties — and the price 
of a certificate, rendered, perhaps, greater than 
it is at present. It is impossible to conceive 
why the owner of the soil, if the right of game 
is secured to him, has not a right to sell, or grant 
the right of killing it to whom he pleases — just 
as much as he has the power of appointing 
whom he pleases to kill his ducks, pigeons and 
chickens. The danger of making the poor idle 
IS a mere pretence. It is monopoly calling in 
the aid of hypocrisy, and tyranny veiling itself 
in the garb of philosophical humanity. A poor 
man goes to wakes, fairs and horse-races, with- 
out pain and penalty; a little shopkeeper, when 
his work is over, may go to a buUbait, or to the 
cock-pit ; but the idea of his pursuing an hare, 
even with the consent of the landowner, fills the 
Bucolic senator with the most lively apprehen- 
sions of relaxed industry and ruinous dissipation. 
The truth is, if a poor man does not offend against 
morals or religion, and supports himself and his 
family without assistance, the law has nothing 
to do with his amusements. The real barriers 
against increase of sportsmen (if the proposed 
alteration were admitted), are, as we have before 
said, the prohibition of the landowner ; the tax 
to the state for a certificate ; the necessity of 
labouring for support. — Whoever violates none 
of these rights, and neglects none of these duties 
in his sporting, sports without crime ; — and to 
punish him would be gross and scandalous ty- 
ranny 



The next alteration which we would propose 
is that game should be made property ; that is, 
that every man should have a right to the game 
found upon his land — and that the violation of 
it should be punished as poaching now is, by 
pecuniary penalties, and summary conviction 
before magistrates. This change in the game 
laws would be an additional defence of game: 
for the landed proprietor has now no other 
remedy against the qualified intruder upon his 
game, than an action at law for a trespass on 
the land ; and if the trespasser has received no 
notice, this can hardly be called any remedy at 
all. It is now no uncommon practice for per- 
sons who have the exterior, and perhaps the 
fortunes of gentlemen, as they are travelling 
from place to place, to shoot over manors where 
they have no property, and from which, as 
strangers, they cannot have been warned. In 
such case (which, we repeat again, is by no 
means one of rare occurrence), it would, under 
the reformed system, be no more difficult for the 
lord of the soil to protect his game, than it would 
be to protect his geese and ducks. But though 
game should be considered as property it should 
still be considered as the lowest species of pro- 
perty — because it is in its nature more vague 
and mutable than any other species of property, 
and because depredations upon it are carried on 
at a distance from the dwelling, and without 
personal alarm to the proprietors. It would be 
very easy to increase the penalties, in proportion 
to the number of oflTences committed by the same 
individual. 

The punishments which country gentlemen 
expect by making game property, are the pun- 
ishments affixed to offences of a much higher 
order: but country gentlemen must not be al- 
lowed to legislate exclusively on this, more than 
on any other subject. The very mention of 
hares and partridges in the country, too often 
puts an end to common humanity and common 
sense. Game must be protected; but protected 
without violating those principles of justice, 
and that adaptation of punishment to crime, 
which (incredible as it may appear), are of in- 
finitely greater importance than the amusements 
of country gentlemen. 

W^e come now to the sale of game. — The 
foundation on which the propriety of allowing 
this partly rests, is the impossibility of prevent- 
ing it. There exists, and has sprung up since 
the game laws, an enormous mass of wealth, 
which has nothing to do with land. Do the 
country gentlemen imagine that it is in the 
power of human laws to deprive the three per 
cents of pheasants 1 That there is upon earth, 
ail", or sea, a siifgle flavour (cost what crime it 
may to procure it), that mercantile opulence 
will not procure 1 Increase the difficulty, and 
you enlist vanity on the side of luxury; and 
make that be sought for as a display of wealth, 
which was before valued only for the gratifica- 
tion of appetite. The law may multiply penal- 
ties by reams. Squires may fret and justices 
commit, and gamekeepers and poachers con- 
tinue their nocturnal wars. There must be 
game on Lord Mayor's day, do what you will. 
You may multiply the crimes by which it is pro- 
cured ; but nothing can arrest its inevitable pro- 
gress, from the wood of the esquire to the spit 



WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. 



119 



of the citizen. The late law for preventing the | 
sale of game produced some little temporary 
difficulty in London at the beginning of the sea- 
son. The poulterers were alarmed, and came 
to some resolutions. But the alarm soon began 
to subside and the difficulties to vanish. In 
another season, the law will be entirely nugatory 
and forgotten. The experiment was tried of 
increased severity, and a law passed to punish 
poachers with transportation who were caught 
poaching in the night time with arms. What 
has the consequence been 1 — Not a cessation of 
poaching, but a succession of village guerillas; 
— an internecive war between the gamekeepers 
and marauders of game: — the whole country 
flung into brawls and convulsions, for the unjust 
and exorbitant pleasures of country genilemen. 
The poacher hardly believes he is doing any 
wrong in taking partridges and pheasants. He 
would admit the justice of being transported for 
stealing sheep ; and his courage in such a 
transaction would be impaired by a conscious- 
ness he was doing wrong: but he has no such 
feeling in taking game; and the preposterous 
punishment of transportation makes him despe- 
rate, and not timid. Single poachers are gathered 
into large companies, for their mutual protec- 
tion; and go out, not only with the intention of 
taking game, but of defending what ihey take 
with their lives. Such feelings soon produce a 
rivalry of personal courage, and a thirst of re- 
venge between the villagers and the agents of 
power. We extract the following passages on 
this subject from the Three Letters on the Game 
Laws. 

"The first and most palpable effect has natu- 
rally been, an exaltation of all the savage and 
desperate features in the poacher's character. 
The war between him and the gamekeeper has 
necessarily become a ' bellum internecivum.'' A 
marauder may hesitate perhaps at killing his 
fellow man, when the alternative is only six 
months' imprisonment in the county jail ; but 
when the alternative is to overcome the keeper, 
or to be torn from his family and connections, 
and sent to hard labour at the antipodes, we 
cannot be much surprised that murders and 
midnight combats have considerably increased 
this season; or that information, such as the 
following, has freqxiently enriched the columns 
of the country newspapers." 

'"Poaching. — Richard Barnett was on Tues- 
day convicted before T. Clutterbuck, Esq., of 
keeping and using engines or wires for the de- 
struction of game in the parish of Dunkerton, 
and fined 51. He was taken into custody by C. 
Coates, keeper to Sir Charles Bamfylde, Bart., 
who found upon him seventeen wire-snares. 
The new act that has just passed against these 
illegal practices, seems only to have irritated 
the offenders, and made them more daring and 
desperate. The following is a copy of an anony- 
mous circular letter, which has been received 
by several magistrates, and other eminent cha- 
racters in this neighbourhood. 

" ' Take notice. — We have lately heard and 
seen that there is an act passed, and whatever 
poacher is caught destroying the game, is to be 
transported for seven years. — This is English 
Kbertyf 

" 'Now, we do swear to each other, that the 

Vox. I.— 8 



first of our company that this law is inflicted 
on, that there shall not one gentleman's seat 
in our country escape the rage of fire. We are 
nine in number, and we will burn every gentle- 
man's house of note. The first that impeaches 
shall be shot. We have sworn not to impeach. 
You may think it a threat, but they will find it 
reality. The game-laws were too severe be- 
fore. The Lord of all men sent these animals 
for the peasants as well as for the prince. God 
will not let his people be oppressed. He will 
assist us in our undertaking, and we will exe- 
cute it with caution.'" — Bath Paper. 

"'Death of a Poacher. — On the evening 
of Saturday se'ennight, about eight or nine 
o'clock, a body of poachers, seven in number, 
assembled by mutual agreement on the estate 
of the Hon. John Dutton at Sherborne, Glouce- 
stershire, for the purpose of taking hares and 
other game. With the assistance of two dogs, 
and some nets and snares which they brought 
with them, they had succeeded in catching nine 
hares, and were carrying them away, when 
they were discovered by the gamekeeper and 
seven others who were engaged with him in 
patroling the different covers, in order to pro- 
tect the game from nightly depredators. Imme- 
diately on perceiving the poachers, the keeper 
summoned them in a civil and peaceable man- 
ner to give up their names, the dogs, imple- 
ments, &c. they had with them, and the game 
they had taken ; at the same time assuring 
them, that his party had firearms (which were 
produced for the purpose of convincing and 
alarming them), and representing to them the 
folly of resistance, as, in the event of an affray, 
they must inevitably be overpowered by supe- 
rior numbers, even without firearms, which 
they were determined not to resort to unless 
compelled in self-defence. Notwithstanding this 
remonstrance of the keeper, the men unanimous- 
ly refused to give up on any terms, declaring, 
that if they were followed, they would give them 
" a brush," and would repel force by force. The 
poachers then directly took off their great coats, 
threw them down with the game, &c. behind 
them, and approached the keepers in an atti- 
tude of attack. A smart contest instantly en- 
sued, both parties using only the sticks or blud- 
geons they carried: and such was the confusion 
during the battle, that some of the keepers were 
occasionally struck by their own comrades 
in mistake for their opponents. After they 
had fought in this manper about eight or ten 
minutes, one of the poachers named Robert 
Simmons, received a violent blow upon his left 
temple, which felled him to the ground, where 
he lay, crying out murder, and asking for mer- 
cy. The keepers very humanely desired that 
all violence might cease on both sides: upon 
which three of the poachers took to flight and 
escaped, and the remaining three, together with 
Simmons, were secured by the keepers. Sim- 
mons, by the assistance of the other men, walked 
to the keeper's house, where he was placed in a 
chair: but he soon after died. His death was 
no doubt caused by the pressure of blood upon 
the brain, occasioned by the rupture of a vessel 
from the blow he had received. The three 
poachers who had been taken were committed 
to Northleach prison. The inquest upon the 



C120 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



body of Simmons was taken on Monday, before 
W. Trigge, Gent., Coroner; and the above ac- 
count is extracted from the evidence given upon 
that occasion. The poachers were all armed 
with bludgeons, except the deceased, who had 
provided himself with the thick part of a flail, 
made of firm knotted crabtree, and pointed at 
the extremity, in order to thrust with, if occa- 
sion required. The deceased was an athletic 
muscular man, very active, and about twenty- 
eight years of age. He resided at Bowie, in 
Oxfordshire, and has left a wife but no child. 
The three prisoners were heard in evidence; 
and all concurred in stating that the keepers 
were in no way blameable, and attributed their 
disaster to their own indiscretion and impru- 
.■dence. Several of the keepers' party were so 
much beat as to be now confined to their beds. 
The two parties are said to be total strangers 
•to each other, consequently no malice prepense 
could have existed between them ; and as it 
appeared to the jury, after a most minute and 
-deliberate investigation, that the confusion dur- 
the aflfray was so great, that the deceased 



was as likely to be struck by one of his own 
party as by the keepers', they returned a ver- 
dict of— Manslaughter against some person or 
persons unknown.' 

" Wretched as the first of these productions 
is, I think it can scarcely be denied, that both 
its spirit and its probable consequences are 
wholly to be ascribed to the exasperation natu- 
rally consequent upon the severe enactment just 
alluded to. And the last case is at least a strong 
proof that severity of enactment is quite inade- 
quate to correct the evil."— (P. 356-359.) 

Poaching will exist in some degree, let the 
laws be what they may; but the most certain 
method of checking the poacher seems to be by 
underselling him. If game can be lawfully sold, 
the quantity sent to market will be increased, 
the price lowered, and, with that, the profits and 
temptations of the poacher. Not only would the 
prices of the poacher be lowered, but we much 
doubt if he would find any sale at all. Licenses 
to sell game might be confined to real poulterers, 
and real occupiers of a certain portion of land. 
It might be rendered penal to purchase it from 
any but licensed persons ; and in this way the 
facility of the lawful, and the danger of the un- 
lawful trade, would either annihilate the poach- 
er's trade, or reduce his prices so much, that it 
would be hardly worth his while to carry it on. 
What poulterer in London, or in any of the large 
towns, would deal with poachers, and expose 
himself to indictment for receiving stolen goods, 
when he might supply his customers at fair 
prices by dealing with the lawful proprietor of 
game? Opinion is of more power than law. 
Such conduct would soon become infamous; 
and every respectable tradesman would be 
shamed out of it. The consumer himself would 
rather buy his game of a poulterer at an increase 
of price, than pick it up clandestinely, and at a 
great risk, though a somewhat smaller price, 
from porters and boothkeepers. Give them a 
chance of getting it fairly, and they will not get 
it unfairly. At present, no one has the slightest 
shame at violating a law which every body feels 
to be absurd and unjust. 
Poultry-houses are sometimes robbed; — but 



stolen poultry is rarely oflfered to sale ; — at least, 
nobody pretends that the shops of poulterers and 
the tables of moneyed gentlemen are supplied 
by these means. Out of one hundred geese that 
are consumed at Michaelmas, ninety-nine come 
into the jaws of the consumer by honest means; 
— and yet, if it had pleased the country gentle- 
men to have goose laws as well as game laws; 
— if goose-keepers had been appointed, and the 
sale and purchase of this savoury bird prohi- 
bited, the same enjoyments would have been 
procured by the crimes and convictions of the 
poor; and the periodical gluttony of Michaelmas 
have been rendered as guilty and criminal, as it 
is indigestible and unwholesome. Upon this 
subject we shall quote a passage from the very 
sensible and spirited letters before us. 

"In favourable situations, game would be 
reared and preserved for the express purpose of 
regularly supplying the market in fair and open 
competition ; which would so reduce its price, 
that I see no reason why a partridge should be 
dearer than a rabbit, or a hare and pheasant than 
a duck or goose. This is about the proportion 
of price which the animals bear to each other in 
France, where game can be legally sold, and is 
regularly brought to market; and where, by the 
way, game is as plentiful as in any cultivated 
country in Europe. The price so reduced would 
never be enough to compensate the risk and pe- 
nalties of the unlawful poacher, who must there- 
fore be driven out of the market. Doubtless, the 
great poulterers of London and the commercial 
towns, who are the principal instigators of poach- 
ing, would cease to have any temptation to con- 
tinue so, as they could fairly and lawfully pro- 
cure game for their customers at a cheaper rate 
from the regular breeders. They would, as they 
now do for rabbits and wild-fowl, contract with 
persons to rear and preserve them for the regu- 
lar supply of their shops, which would be a much 
more commodious and satisfactory, and less 
hazardous way for them, than the irregular and 
dishonest and corrupting methods now pursued. 
It is not saying very much in favour of human 
nature to assert, that men in respectable stations 
of society had rather procure the same ends by 
honest than dishonest means. Thus would all 
the temptations to ofiTend against the game laws, 
arising from the change of society, together with 
the long chain of moral and political mischiefs, 
at once disappear. 

" But then, in order to secure a sufficient breed 
of game for the supply of the market, in fair and 
open competition, it will be necessary to author- 
ize a certain number of persons, likely to breed 
game for sale, to take and dispose of it when 
reared at their expense. For this purpose, I 
would suggest the propriety of permitting by law- 
occupiers of land to take and kill game, for sale 
or otherwise, on their own occupations only, un- 
less, Cif tenants,) they are specifically prohibited 
by agreement with their landlord ; reserving the 
game and the power of taking it to himself, (as 
is now frequently done in leases.) This per- 
mission should not, of course, operate during 
the current leases, unless by agreement. With 
this precaution, nothing could be fairer than 
such an enactment ; for it is certainly at the ex- 
pense of the occupier that the game is raised and- 
maintained : and unless he receive an equivalent 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



121 



for it, either by abatement of rent upon agree- 
ment, or by permission to take and dispose of it, 
he is certainly an injured man. Whereas it is 
perfectly just that the owner of the land should 
have the option either to increase his rent by 
leaving the disposal of his game to his tenant, 
or vice versa. Game would be held to be (as in 
fact it is) an outgoing from the land, like tithe 
and other burdens, and therefore to be consi- 
dered in a bargain ; and land would cither be let 
game-free, or a special reservation of it made by 
agreement. 

"Moreover, since the breed of game must 
always depend upon the occupier of the land, 
who may, and frequently does, destroy every 
head of it, or prevent its coming to maturity, 
unless it is considered in his rent; the license 
for which I am nowcontending, by affording an 

■inducement to preserve the breed in particular 
spots, would evidently have a considerable ef- 
fect in increasing the stock of game in other 
parts, and in the country at large. There would 
be introduced a general system of protection 

• depending upon individual interest, instead of a 
general system of destruction. I have, therefore, 
very little doubt that the provision here recom- 
mended would, upon the whole, add facilities to 
the amusements of the sportsman, rather than 
subtract from them. A sportsman without land 
might also hire from the occupier of a large 
tract of land the privilege of shooting over it, 
which would answer to the latter as well as 
sending his game to the market. In short, he 
■might in various ways get a fair return, to which 
he is well entitled for the expense and trouble 
incurred in rearing and preserving that particu- 
lar species of stock upon his land." — (P. 337 — 
339.) 

There are sometimes 400 or ."lOO head of game 
killed in great manors on a single day. We 
think it highly probable the greater part of this 
harvest (if the game laws were altered) would 
go to the poulterer, to purchase poultry or fish 

. for the ensuing London season. Nobody is so 
poor and so distressed as men of very large for- 
tunes, who are fond of making an unwise dis- 
play to the world ; and if they had recourse to 
these means of supplying game, it is impossible 
to suppose that the occupation of the poacher 
could be continued. — The smuggler can com- 
pete with the spirit merchant on account of the 
great duty imposed by the revenue ; but where 
there is no duty to be saved, the mere thief — 
the man who brings the article to market with 
a halter around his neck — the man of whom it 
is disreputable and penal to buy — who hazards 
life, liberty and property, to procure the articles 
which he sells ; such an adventurer can never 
be long the rival of him who honestly and fairly 
produces the articles in which he deals. — Fines, 
imprisonments, concealment, loss of character, 
are great deductions from the profits of any 
trade to which they attach, and great discou- 
ragement to its pursuit. 

It is not the custom at present for gentlemen 
to sell their game ; but the custom would soon 
begin, and public opinion soon change. It is 
not unusual for men of fortune to contract with 
their gardeners to supply their own table and to 
send the residue to market, or to sell their veni- 
son ; and the same thing might be done with the 
16 



manor. If game could be bought, it would not 
be sent in presents: — barn-door fowls are never 
so sent, precisely for this reason. 

The price of game would, under the system 
of laws of which we are speaking, be further 
lowered by the introduction of foreign game, the 
sale of which, at present prohibited, would tend 
very much to the preservation of English game 
by underselling the poacher. It would not be 
just, if it were possible, to confine any of the 
valuable productions of nature to the use of 
one class of men, and to prevent them from 
becoming the subject of barter, when the pro- 
prietor wished so to exchange them. It would 
be just as reasonable that the consumption of 
salmon should be confined to the proprietors of 
that sort of fishery — that the use of charr should 
be limited to the inhabitants of the lakes — that 
maritime Englishmen should alone eat oysters 
and lobsters as that every other class of the 
community than landowners should be prohibit- 
ed from the acquisition of game. 

It will be necessary, whenever the game laws 
are revised, that some of the worst punishments 
now inflicted for an infringement of these laws 
should be repealed. To transport a man for 
seven years, on account of partridges, and to 
harass a poor wretched peasant in the Crown 
Office, are very preposterous punishments for 
such offences; humanity revolts against them — 
they are grossly tyrannical — and it is disgrace- 
ful that they should be suffered to remain on our 
statute books. But the most singular of all 
abuses, is the new class of punishments which 
the squirarchy have themselves enacted ag'ainst 
depredations on game. The law says, that an 
unqualified man who kills a pheasant, shall pay 
five pounds ; but the squire says he shall be shot; 
—and accordingly he places a spring-gun in the 
path of the poacher, and does all he can to take 
away his life. The more humane and mitigated 
squire mangles him with traps; and the supra- 
fine country gentleman only detains him in ma- 
chines, which prevent his escape, but do not 
lacerate their captive. Of the gross illegality of 
such proceedings, there can be no reasonable 
doubt. Their immorality and cruelty are equally 
clear. If they are not put down by some decla- 
ratory law, it will be absolutely necessary that 
the judges, in their invaluable circuits of Oyer 
and Terminer, should leave two or three of his 
majesty's squires to a fate too vulgar and indeli- 
cate to be alluded to in this journal. 

Men have certainly a clear right to defend 
their property; but then it must be by such 
means as the law allows: — their houses by pis- 
tols, their fields by actions for trespass, their 
game by information. There is an end of law, 
if every man is to measure out his punishment 
for his own wrong. Nor are we able to distin- 
guish between the guilt of two persons, — the one 
of whom deliberately shoots a man whom he 
sees in his fields — the other of whom purposely 
places such instruments as he knows will shoot 
trespassers upon his fields. Better that it should 
be lawful to kill a trespasser face to face than 
to place engines which will kill him. The tres- 
passer may be a child — a wom^n — a son or 
friend. The spring-gun cannot accommodate^ 
itself to circumstances, — the squire or the game-* 
keeper may. 



122 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



These, then, are our opinions respecting the 
alterations in the game laws, which, as ihey now 
stand, are perhaps the only system which could 
possibly render the possession of game so very 
insecure as it now is. We would give to every 
man an absolute property in the game upon his 
land, with full powe/ to kill — to permit others to 
kill — and to sell; — we would punish any viola- 
tion of that property by summary conviction, and 
pecuniary penalties — rising in value according 
to the number of offences. This would of course 
abolish all qualifications; and we sincerely be- 
lieve it would lessen the profits of selling game il- 
legally, so as very materially tolessen the number 
of poachers. It would make game as an article 
of food, accessible to all classes, without infring- 
ing the laws. It would limit the amusement of 



country gentlemen within the boundaries of jus- 
tice — and would enable the magistrate cheerful- 
ly and conscientiously to execute laws, of the 
moderation and justiceof which he must be tho- 
roughly convinced. To this conclusion, too, we 
have no doubt, we shall come at the last. After 
many years of scutigeral folly-r-loaded prisons* 
— nightly battles — poachers tempted — and fami- 
lies ruined, these principles will finally prevail, 
and make law once more coincident with rea- 
son and justice. 

* In the course of the last year, no fewer than twtivt 
hundred persons were committed for ofTences against the 
game ; besides those wlio ran away from their families 
for the fear of commitment This ig no slight quaiuity of 
misery 



BOTANY BAY.* 

[Ebikbcrsh Retiew, 1819.] 



This land of convicts and kangaroos is be- 
ginning to rise into a very fine and flourishing 
settlement : — And great indeed must be the natu- 
ral resources, and splendid the endowments of 
that land that has been able to survive the sys- 
tem of neglectf and oppression experienced 
from the mother country, and the series of igno- 
rant and absurd governors that have been se- 
lected for the administration of its affairs. But 
mankind live and flourish not only in spite of 
storms and tempests, but (which could not have 
^een anticipated previous to experience) in 
spite of colonial secretaries expressly paid to 
watch over their interests. The supineness 
and profligacy of public officers cannot always 
overcome the amazing energy with which hu- 
man beings pursue their happiness, nor the sa- 
gacity with which they determine on the means 
by which that end is to be promoted. Be it our 
care, however, to record for the future inhabit- 
ants of Australasia, the political sufferings of 
their larcenous forefathers ; and let them appre- 
ciate, as they ought, that energy which founded 
a mighty empire in spite of the afilicting blun- 

*1. A Statistical, Historical and Folilical Description cf the 
Colony of New South Wales, and t'te dependent Settlements 
in Van Diemen's Land; vjith a particular Enumeration of 
Hie Advantages which these colonies offer for Emigration. 
and their Superiority in many respects over those possessed 
by the United States of America. By W. C. Wentworth, 
Esq., a Native of tlie Colony. Whittaker. London. 1819. 

2. Letter to Viscount Sidmouth, Secretary of State for tiie 
Home Department, on the Transportation Laws, the State of 
the Hulks, and of the Colonies in New So^ith Wales. By 
tlie Hon. Henry Grey Bennet, M. P. Ridgway. London, 
1819. 

3. O'Hara's History of New South Wales. Hatchard. 
London, 1818. 

t One and no small excuse for the misconduct of colo- 
nial secretaries is, the enormous quantity of business liy 
which they are distracted. There should be two or three 
colonial secretaries instead of one : the office is dreadfully 
* overweighed. The government of the colonies is com- 
monly a series of blunders. 



ders and marvellous cacosconomy of their go- 
vernment. 

Botany Bay is situated in a fine climate, rather 
Asiatic than European, — with a great variety of 
temperature, — but favourable on the whole to 
health and life. It, conjointly with Van Die- 
men's Land, produces coal in great abundance, 
fossil salt, slate, lime, plumbago, potter's clay; 
iron ; white, yellow and brilliant topazes; alum 
and copper. These are all the important fossil 
productions which have been hitherto disco- 
vered; but the epidermis of the country has 
hardly as yet been scratched; and it is most 
probable that the immense mountains which 
divide the eastern and western settlements, Ba- 
thurst and Sydney, must abound with every spe- 
cies of mineral wealth. The harbours are ad- 
mirable; and the whole world, perhaps, cannot 
produce two such as those of Port Jackson and 
Derwent. The former of these is land-locked 
for fourteen miles in length, and of the most 
irregular form ; its soundings are more than 
sufficient for the largest ships; and all the na- 
vies of the world might ride in safety within it. 
In the harbour of Derwent there is a road-stead 
forty-eight milee in length, completely land- 
locked; — varying in breadth from eight to two 
miles, — in depth from thirty to four fathoms, — 
and affording the best anchorage the whole way. 

The mean heat, during the three summer 
months, December, January, and February, is 
about 80° at noon. The heat which such a de- 
gree of the thermometer would seem to indicate, 
is considerably tempered by the sea-breeze, 
which blows with considerable force from nine 
in the morning till seven in the evening. The 
three autumn months are March, April and 
May, in which the thermometer varies from 55° 
at night to 7.5° at noon. The three winter months 
are June, July, and August. During this inter* 



4 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



123 



val, the mornings and evenings are very chilly, 
and the nights excessively cold; hoar-frosts are 
frequent; ice, half an inch thick, is found twenty 
miles from the coast; the mean temperature, at 
daylight, is from 40° to 45,° and at noon, from 
^5° to 60°. In the three months of spring, the 
thermometer varies from 60° to 70°. The cli- 
mate to the westward of the mountains is colder. 
Heavy falls of snow take place during the win- 
ter; the frosts are more severe, and the winters 
of longer duration. All the seasons are much 
more distinctly marked, and resemble much 
more those of this country. 

Such is the climate of Botany Bay; and, in 
this remote part of the earth. Nature (having 
made horses, oxen, ducks, geese, oaks, elms, 
and all regular and useful productions for the 
rest of the world), seems determined to have a 
"bit of play, and to amuse herself as she pleases. 
Accordingly, she makes cherries with the stone 
on the outside ; and a monstrous animal, as tali 
as a grenadier, with the head of a rabbit, a tail 
as big as a bed-post, hopping along at the rate 
of five hops to a mile, with three or four young 
kangaroos looking out of its false uterus to see 
what is passing. Then comes a quadruped as 
big as a large cat, with the eyes, colour and 
skin of a mole, and the bill and web-feet of a 
duck — puzzling Dr. Shaw, and rendering the 
latter half of his life miserable, from his utter 
inability to determine whether it was a bird or 
a beast. Add to this a parrot, with the legs of 
a sea-gull; a skate with the head of a shark; 
and a bird of such monstrous dimensions, that 
a side bone of it will dine three real carniverous 
Englishmen; — together with many other pro- 
ductions that agitate Sir Joseph, and fill him 
with mingled emotions of distress and delight. 

The colony has made the following pro- 
gress : — 

Stock in 1788. Stock in 1S17. 

Horned Cattle - 5 Do. - 44,753 

Horses ... 7 Do. - 3,072 

Sheep ... 29 Do. - 170,920 

Hogs ... 74 Do. - 17,842 

Land in cultivation acres. Do. - 47,564 
Inhabitants - - 1000 Do. - 20,379 

The colony has a bank, with a capital of 
20,000/. ; a newspaper ; and a capital (the town of 
Sydney) containing about 7000 persons. There 
is also a Van Diemen's Land Gazette. The 
perusal of these newspapers, which are regu- 
larly transmitted to England, and may be pur- 
chased in London, has afforded us considerable 
amusement. Nothing can paint in a more lively 
manner the state of the settlement, its disadvan- 
tages and prosperities, and the opinions and 
manners which prevail there. 

" On Friday, Mr. James Squires, settler and 
brewer, wailed on his excellency at Govern- 
ment House, with two vines of. hops taken 
from his own grounds, &c. — As a pubhc recom- 
pense for the unremitted attention shown by the 
grower in bringing this valuable plant to such 
a high degree of perfection, his excellency has 
directed a cow to be given to Mr. Squires from 
the government herd." — O'Hara, p. 255. 

" To Parents and Guardians. 
" A person who flatters herself her character 
will bear the strictest scrutiny, being desirous 



of receiving into her charge a proposed number 
of children of her own sex, as boarders, respect- 
fully acquaints parents and guardians that she 
is about to situate herself either in Sydney or 
Paramatta, of which notice will be shortly given. 
She doubts not, at the same time, that her as. 
siduity in the inculcation of moral principles in 
the youthful mind, joined to an unremitting at- 
tention and polite diction, will insure to her the 
much-desired confidence of those who may 
think proper to favour her with such a charge. — 
Inquiries on the above subject will be answered 
by G. Howe, at Sydney, who will make known 
the name of the advertiser." — (p. 270.) 

" Lost, 
" (supposed to be on the governor's wharf,) 
two small keys, a tortoise shell comb, and a 
packet of papers. Whoever may have found 
them, will, on delivering them to the printer, 
receive a reward of half a gallon of spirits." — 
(p. 272.) 

" To the Public. 
" As we have no certainty of an immediate 
supply of paper, we cannot promise a publica- 
tion next week." — (p. 290.) 

" Fashionable Intelligence, Sept. 7th. 
" On Tuesday his excellency the late gover- 
nor, and Mrs. King, arrived in town from Para- 
matta ; and yesterday Mrs. King returned thither, 
accompanied by Mrs. Putland." — (Ibid.) 

" To be sold by private Contract, by Mr. Sevan, ' 

"An elegant four-wheeled chariot, with platfj 
mounted harness for four horses complete; r'" 
handsome lady's side-saddle and bridle, y^^y 
be viewed, on application to Mr. Bev/^* 
(p. 347.) / 

" From the Derwent Star. ' 
" Lieutenant Lord, of the Royal M-^"'"^^' ^.^^o, 
after the death of Lieutenani-Gov/'^oj' Collins, 
succeeded to the command of tb settlement at 
Hobart Town, arrived at Port^^ckson in the 
Hunter, and favours us with -^e perusal ol the 
ninth number published of /« Dtnoent Star and 
Van Diemm's Land Inte/gencer ; from which 
we copy the following e/racts.' —(p. 353.) 
« A/Card. 
" The subscribers/o the Sydney Race Course 
are informed that me Stewards have made ar- 
ran<'enients for two balls during the race week, 
viz., on Tuesday and Thursday.— Tickets, at 
7s. 6d. each, to be had at Mr. E. Wills's, George 
Stjeet.— An ordinary for the subscribers and 
their friends each day of the races, at Mr. Wills's. 
Dinner on table at five o'clock."— (p. 356.) 

" Ttie Ladies' Cup. 
" The ladies' cup, which was of very superior 
workmansh'p, won by Chase, was presented 
to Captain Richie by Mrs. M'Quarie; who, ac- 
companied by his excellency, honoured each 
day's race with her presence, and who, with 
her usual affability, was pleased to preface the 
donation with the following short address.— 'In 
the name of the Ladies of New South Wales, I 
have the pleasure to present you with this cup. 
Give me leave to congratulate you on being the . 
successful candidate for it; and to hope that it 



124 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



is a prelude to future success and lasting pros- 
perity.'"— (P- 357.) 

"Butchers. 
"Now killing, at Matthew Pimpton's, Cum- 
berland street, Rocks, beef, mutton, pork, and 
lamb. By retail, Is. 4^?. per lib. Mutton by the 
carcass, Is. per lib. sterling, or 14c?. currency; 
warranted to weigh from 10 lib. to 12 lib. per 
quarter. Lamb per diito. — Captains of ships 
supplied at the wholesale price, and with punc- 
tuality. — N.B. Beef, pork, mutton, and lamb, at 
E. Lamb's, Hunter street, at the above prices." 
-(p. 376.) 

^^Salt Pork and Flair from Otaheite. 
"On sale, at the warehouse of Mrs. S. Willis, 
96 George street, a large quantity of the above 
articles, well cured, being the Mercury's last 
importation from Otaheite. The terms per cask 
are \0d. per lib. sterling, or Is. currency. — 
N.B. For the accommodation of families, it will 
be sold in quantities not less than 112 lib." — (p. 
377.) 

"Painting. — A Card. 
" Mr. J. W. Lewin begs leave to inform his 
friends and the public in general, that he intends 
opening an academy for painting on the days of 
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from the hours 
of 10 to 12 in the forenoon. — Terms 5s. a les- 
son: Entrance 20s. — N.B, The evening academy 
for drawing continued as usual." — (p. 384.) 

'^Sale of Rams. 
" Ten rams of the Merino breed, lately sold 
^^ auction from the flocks of John M'Arthur, 
^^^ produced upwards of 200 guineas." — (p. 

"MK Joneses Vacation Ball, December I2th. 

" Mrs.TQjjgg^ ^j(}j great respect, informs the 
parents a^ guardians of the young ladies en- 
trusted to h^ tuition, that the vacation ball is 
fixed for Tut^^y o^q 22d instant, at the semi- 
nary, No. 45 Catiereagh street, Sydney. Tickets 
7s. 6d. each."-(j. ggg!) 

"Sporting Intelligence. 

"A fine hunt took p^ce the 8th instant at the 
Nepean, of which the v^Uowing is the account 
given by a gentleman prfeent. ' Having cast off 
by the government hut on the Nepean, and 
drawn the cover in that n^ighbourhocd for a 
native Dog unsuccessfully, we tried the forest 
ground for a Kangaroo, which we soon found. 
It went off in excellent style along the sands by 
the river side, and crossed to the Cow-pasture 
Plains, running a circle of about two miles; 
then recrossed, taking a direction for Mr. Camp- 
bell's stock-yard, and from thence at the back 
of Badge Allen Hill, to the head of Boorrooba- 
ham Creek, where he was headed; from thence 
he took the main range of hills between the 
Badge Allen and Badge Allenabinjee, in a 
straight direction for Mr. Throsbey's farm, 
•where the hounds ran into him; and he was' 

killed, after a good run of about two hours.' 

The weight of the animal was upwards of 120 
lib."— (p. 380.) 

Of the town of Sydney, Mr. Wentworth ob- 
serves, that there are in it many public build- 
ingB, as well as houses of individuals, that would 



not disgrace the best parts of London ; but this 
description we must take the liberty to consider 
as more patriotic than true. We rather suspect 
it was penned before Mr. Wentwonh was in 
London; for he is (be it said to his honour) a 
native of Botany Bay. The value of lands (in 
the same spirit he adds) is half as great in 
Sydney as in the best situations in London ; and 
is daily increasing: The proof of this which 
Mr. Wentworth gives is, that "it is not a com- 
modious house which can be rented for 100/. 
per annum unfurnished." The town of Sydney 
contains two good public schools, for the educa- 
tion of 224 children of both sexes. There are 
establishments, also, for the diffusion of educa- 
tion in every populous district throughout the 
colony; the masters of these schools are allowed 
stipulated salaries from the Orphans' fund. Mr. 
Wentworth states that one-eighth part of the 
whole revenue of the colony is appropriated to 
the purposes of education ; this eighth he com- 
putes at 2500/. Independent of these institutions, 
there is an Auxiliary Bible Society, a Sunday 
School, and several good private schools. This 
is all as it should be : the education of the poor, 
important everywhere, is indispensable at Bota- 
l\y Bay. Nothing but the earliest attention to 
the habits of children can restrain the erratic 
finger from the contiguous scrip, or prevent the 
hereditary tendency to larcenous abstraction. 
The American arrangements respecting the 
education of the lower orders is excellent. 
Their unsold lands are surveyed, and divided 
into districts. In the centre of every district, 
an ample and well-selected lot is provided for 
the support of future schools. We wish this 
had been imitated in New Holland ; for we are 
of opinion that the elevated nobleman, Lord 
Sidmouth, should imitate what is good and wise, 
even if the Americans are his teachers. Mr. 
Wentworth talks of 15,000 acres set apart for 
the support of the Female Orphan Schools; 
which certainly does sound a little extravagant: 
but then 50 or 100 acres of this reserve are 
given as a portion to each female orphan ; so 
that all this pious tract of ground will be soon 
married away. This dotation of women, in a 
place where they are scarce, is amiable and 
foolish enough. There is a school also for the 
education and civilization of the natives, we 
hope not to the exclusion of the children of con- 
victs, who have clearly a prior claim upon pub- 
lic charity. 

Great exertions have been made in public 
roads and bridges. The present governor has 
wisely established toll-gates in all the principal 
roads. No tax can be more equitable, and no 
money more beneficially employed. The herds 
of wild cattle have either perished through the 
long droughts, or been destroyed by the remote 
settlers. They have nearly disappeared; and 
their extension is a good rather than an evil. A 
very good horse for cart or plough may now be 
bought for 51. to 10/.; working oxen for the same 
price ; fine young breeding ewes from 1/. to 3/., 
according to the quality of the fleece. So lately 
as 1808, a cow and calf were sold by public 
auction for 105/.; and the price of middling 
cattle was from 80/. to 100/. A breeding mare 
was, at the same period, worth from 150 to 200 
guineas; and ewes from 10/. to 20/. The inhabit- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



125 



ants of New South Wales have now 2000 years 
before them of cheap beef and mutton. The 
price of land is of course regulated by its situa- 
tion and quality. Four years past, an hundred 
and fifty acres of very indifferent ground, about 
three quarters of a mile from Sydney, were 
sold, by virtue of an execution, in lots of 12 
acres each, and averaged 14/. per acre. This 
is the highest price given for land not situated 
in a town. The general average of unimproved 
land is .5/. per acre. In years when the crops 
have not suffered from flood or drought, wheat 
sells for 9s. per bushel; maize for 3s. 6rf.; barley 
for 5s.; oats for 4s. 6d.; potatoes for 6s. per cwt. 
By the last accounts received from the colony, 
mutton and beef were 6d. per lib.; veal 8d.\ pork 
9d. Wheat 8s. 8d. per bushel; oats 4s., and 
barley 5s. per ditto. Fowls 4s. 6d. per couple ; 
ducks 6s. per ditto ; geese 5s. each ; turkeys 7s. 
6d. each ; eggs 2s Gd. per dozen ; butter 2s. 6d. 
per lib. There are manWacturers of coarse 
woollen cloths, hats, earthenware, pipes, salt, 
candles, soap. There are extensive breweries 
and tanneries; and all sorts of mechanics and 
artificers necessary for an infant colony. Car- 
penters, stone masons, bricklayers, wheel and 
plough Wrights, and all the most useful descrip- 
tion of artificei^, can earn from 8s. to 10s. per 
day. Great attention has been paid to the im- 
provement of wool; and it is becoming a very 
considerable article of export to this country. 

The most interesting circumstance in the 
accounts lately received from Botany Bay, is 
the discovery of the magnificent river on the 
western side of the Blue Mountains. The pub- 
lic are aware that a fine road has been made 
from Sydney to Bathurst, and a new town 
founded at the foot of a western side of these 
mountains, a distance of 140 miles. The coun- 
try in the neighbourhood of Bathurst has been 
described as beautiful, fertile, open, and emi- 
nently fit for all the purposes of a settlement. 
The object was to find a river; and such an one 
has been found, the description of which it is 
impossible to read without the most lively in- 
terest. The intelligence is contained in a dis- 
patch from Mr. Oxley, surveyor-general of the 
settlement, to the governor, dated 30lh August, 
1817. 

"' On the 19th, we were gratified by falling in 
with a river running through a most beautiful 
country, and which I would have been well con- 
tented to have believed the river we were in 
search of. Accident led us down this stream 
about a mile, when we were surprised by its 
junction with a river coming from the south, of 
such width and magnitude, as to dispel all 
doubts as to this last being the river we had so 
long anxiously looked for. Short as our resour- 
ces were, we could not resist the temptation this 
beautiful country offered us to remain two days 
on the junction of the river, for the purpose of 
examining the vicinity to as great an extent as 
possible. 

"'Our examination increased the satisfac- 
lion we had previously felt. As far as the eye 
could reach in every direction, a rich and pic- 
turesque country extended, abounding in lime- 
stone, slate, good timber and every other requi- 
site that could render an uncul/iva/ed country 
desirable. The soil cannot be excelled; whilst 



a noble river of the first magnitude affords the 
means of conveying its productions from one 
part to the other. Where I quitted it, its course 
was northerly ; and we Avere then north of the 
parallel of Poft Stevens, being in latitude 32** 
45' south, and 148° 58' east longitude. 

" ' It appeared to me that the Macquarrie had 
taken a north-north-west course from Bathurst, 
and that it must have received immense acces- 
sions of water in its course from that place. 
Weviewed it at a period best calculated to form 
anacc urate judgment of its importance, when 
itwas neither swelled by floods beyond its na- 
turial and usual height, nor contracted within 
limits by summer droughts. Of its magnitude 
when it should have received the streams we 
had crossed, independent of any it may receive 
from the east, which, from the boldness and 
height of the country, I presume must be at 
least as many, some idea may be formed, when 
at this point it exceeded in breadth and apparent 
depth, the Hawkesbury at Windsor. Many of 
the branches were of grander and more ex- 
tended proportion than the admired one on the 
Nepean river from the Warragambia to Emu 
plains. 

" ' Resolving to keep as near the river as pos- 
sible during the remainder of our course to 
Bathurst, and endeavour to ascertain, at least 
on the west side, what waters fell into it, on the 
22d we proceeded up the river; and between the 
point quitted and Bathurst, crossed the sources 
of numberless streams, all running into the 
Macquarrie. Two of them were nearly as large 
as that river itself at Bathurst. The country 
whence all these streams derive their source 
was mountainous and irregular, and appeared 
equally so on the east side of the Macquarrie. 
This description of country extended to the im- 
mediate vicinity of Bathurst; but to the west of 
those lofty ranges the country was broken into 
low, grassy hills and fine valleys, watered by 
rivulets rising on the west side of the moun- 
tains, which, on their eastern side, pour their 
waters directly into the Macquarrie. 

"'These westerly streams appeared to me to 
join that which I had at first sight taken for the 
Macquarrie ; and when united, fall into it at the 
point at which it was first discovered on the 
19th inst. 

" ' We reached this place last evening, with- 
out a single accident having occurred during 
the whole progress of the expedition, M'hich 
from this point has encircled, with the parallels 
of 34° 0' south and 32° south, and between the 
meridians of 149° 4.3' and 143° 40' east, a space 
of nearly one thousand miles.' " — Wentworth, 
pp. 72—75. 

The nearest distance from the point at which 
Mr. Oxley left off, to any part of the western 
coast, is very little short of 2000 miles. The 
Hawkesbury, at Windsor, (to which he com- 
pares his new river in magnitude,) is 250 yards 
in breadth, and of sufficient depth to float a 74 
gun ship. At this point it has 2000 miles in a 
straight line to reach the ocean; and if it winds 
as rivers commonly do wind, it has a space to 
flow over of between .5000 and 6000 miles. The 
course and direction of the river have since be- 
come the object of two expeditions, one by land 
under Mr. Oxley, the other by sea under Lieu- 
i2 



126 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tenant King, to the results of which we look for- 
ward with great interest. Enough of the country 
on the western side of the Blue Mountains has 
been discovered, to show that the settlement 
has been made on the wrong side. The space 
between the Mountains and the Eastern Sea is 
not above 40 miles in breadth, and the five or 
six miles nearest the coast are of very barren 
land. The country, on the other side, is bound- 
less, fertile, well watered, and of very greai 
beauty. The importance of such a river as the 
Macquarrie is incalculable. We cannot help 
remarking here, the courtly appellations in 
which Geography delights; — the river Hawkes- 
hury; the town of Windsor ow its banks; Bathurst 
Plains; Nepean River. Shall we never hear of 
the Gulf of Tierney ; Brougham Point; or the 
Straits of Mackintosh on the river Grey? 

The mistakes which have been made in set- 
tling this fine colony are of considerable im- 
portance, and such as must very seriously retard 
its progress to power and opulence. The first 
we shall mention is the settlement on the 
Hawkesbury. Every work of nature has its 
characteristic defects. Marshes should be sus- 
pected of engendering disease — a volcanic 
country of eruptions — rivers of overflowing. A 
very liitle portion of this kind of reflection would 
have induced the disposers of land in New 
South Wales to have become a little better 
acquainted with the Hawkesbury before they 
granted land on its banks, and gave that direc- 
tion to the tide of setUement and cultivation. It 
turns out that the Hawkesbury is the embou- 
chure through which all the rain that falls on 
the eastern side of the Blue Mountain makes its 
way to the sea; and accordingly, without any 
warning, or any fall of rain on the settled part 
of the river, the stream has often risen from 70 
to 90 feet above its common level. 

"These inundations often rise seventy or 
eighty feet above low water mark; and the in- 
stance of what is still emphatically termed 'the 
great flood,' attained an elevation of ninety-three 
feet. The chaos of confusion and distress that 
presents itself on these occasions cannot be 
easily conceived by any one who has not been 
a witness of its horrors. An immense expanse 
of water, of which the eye cannot in many di- 
rections discover the limits, everywhere inter- 
spersed with growing timber, and crowded with 
poultry, pigs, horses, cattle, stacks and houses, 
having frequently men, women and children, 
clinging to them for protection and shrieking 
out in an agony of despair for assistance: — 
such are the principal objects by which these 
scenes of death and devastation are charac- 
terized. 

"These inundations are not periodical, but 
they most generally happen in the month of 
March. Within the last two years there have 
been no fewer than four of them, one of which 
was nearly as high as the great flood. In the 
six years preceding, there had not been one. 
Since the establishment of the colony, they have 
happened, upon an average, about once in three 
years 

"The principal cause of them is the conti- 
guity of this river to the Blue Mountains. The 
Grose and Warragambia rivers, from which 
two sources it derives its principal suppl}', issue | 



direct from these mountains; and the Nepean 
river, the other principal branch of it, runs along 
the base of them for fifty or sixty hiiles; and re- 
ceives, in its progress, from the innumerable 
mountain torrents connected with it, the whole 
of the rain which these mountains collect in 
that great extent. That this is the principal 
cause of these calamitous inundations has been 
fully proved; for shortly after the plantation of 
this colony, the Hawkesbury overflowed its 
banks (which are in general about thirty feet 
in height,) in the midst of harvest, when not a 
single drop of rain had fallen on the Port Jack- 
son side of the mountains. Another great cause 
of the inundations which take place in this and 
the other rivers in the colony, is the small fall 
that is in them and the consequent slowness of 
their currents. The current in the Hawkesbury, 
even when the tide is in full ebb, does not exceed 
two miles an hour. The water, therefore, which 
during the rains rushes in torrents from the 
mountains, cannot escape with suflicient rapidi- 
ty; and from its immense accumulation soon 
overtops the banks of the river and covers the 
whole of the low country." — Wentworih, pp. 
24-26. 

It appears to have been a great oversight not 
to have built the town of Sydney «pon a regular 
plan. Ground was granted, in the first instance, 
without the least attention to this circumstance; 
and a chaos of pigstyes and houses was pro- 
duced, which subsequent governors have found 
it extremely difficult to reduce to a state of order 
and regularity. 

Regularity is of consequence in planning a 
metropolis; but fine buildings are absurd in the 
infant state of any country. The various go- 
vernors have unfortunately displayed rather too 
strong a taste for architecture — forgetting that 
the real Palladio for Botany Ba.y, in its present 
circumstances, is he who keeps out the sun, wind 
and rain with the smallest quantity of bricks 
and mortar. 

The appointment of Governor Bligh appears 
to have been a very serious misfortune to the 
colony — at such an immense distance from the 
mother-countr}', with such an uncertainty of 
communication, and with a population so pecu- 
liarly circumstanced. In these extraordinary 
circumstances, the usual jobbing of the treasury 
should really be laid aside, and some little at- 
tention paid to the selection of a proper person. 
It is common, we know, to send a person who 
is somebody's cousin ; but, when a new empire 
is to be founded, the treasury should send out, 
into some other part of the town, for a man of 
sense and character. 

Another very great absurdity which has been 
committed at Botany Bay, is the diminution of 
their strength and resources by the foundation 
of so many subordinate settlements. No sooner 
had the settlers unpacked their boxes at Port 
Jackson, than a fresh colony was settled in 
Norfolk Island under Lieutenant King, which 
was afterwards abandoned, after considerable 
labour and expense, from the want of a harbour: 
besides four or five settlements on the main. 
land, two or three thousand persons, under a 
lieutenant-governor, and regular officers, are 
settled in Van Diemen's Lanel. The difficulties 
of a new colony are such, that the exertions of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



127 



all the arms and legs are wanted merely to 
cover their bodies and fill their bellies : the 
passage from one settlement to another, neces- 
sary for common intercourse, is a great waste 
of strength; ten thousand men, within a given 
compass, will do much more for the improve- 
ment of a country than the same number spread 
over three times the space — will make more 
miles of roads, clear more acres of wood, and 
build more bridges. The judge, the windmill, 
and the school, are more accessible; and one 
judge, one windmill, and one school, may do 
instead of two; — there is less waste of labour. 
We do not, of course, object to the natural ex- 
pansion of a colony over uncultivated lands — 
the more rapidly that takes place the greater is 
the prosperity of the settlement; but we repro- 
bate the practice of breaking the first population 
of a colony, by the interposition of government, 
into small detached portions, placed at great 
intervals. It is a bad economy of their re- 
sources ; and as such, is very properly objected 
to by the committee of the House of Commons. 
This colony appears to have sufl^ered a good 
deal from the tyranny as well as the ignorance 
of its governors. On the 7ih of December, 1816, 
Governor Macquarrie issued the following or- 
der: — 

"His excellency is also pleased further to 
declare, order and direct, that in consideration 
of the premises, the under-mentioned sums, 
amounts and charges, and no more, wiih re- 
gard to and upon the various denominations of 
work, labour and services, described and set 
forth, shall be allowed, claimed or demandable 
within this territory and its dependencies in 
respect thereof." — Weniworth, pp. 105, 106. 

And then follows a schedule of every species 
of labour, to each of which a maximum is af- 
fixed. We have only to observe, that a good 
stout inundation of the Hawkesbury would be 
far less pernicious to the industry of the colony 
than such gross ignorance and absurdity as this 
order evinces. Young surgeons are examined 
in Surgeon's Hall on the methods of cutting off 
legs and arms before they are alloued to prac- 
tise surgery. An examination on the principles 
of Adam Smith, and a license from Mr. Ricardo, 
seem to be almost a necessary preliminary for 
the appointment of governors. We must give 
'another specimen of Governor Macquarrie's 
acquaintance with the principles of political 
economy. 

" General Orders- 

"His excellency has observed, with much 
concern, that, at the present time of scarcity, 
most of the garden ground attached to the allot- 
ments, whereon different descriptions of per- 
sons have been allowed to build huts, are totally 
neglected, and no vegetable growing thereon : 
— as such neglect in the occupiers, points them 
out as unfit to profit by such indulgence, those 
who do not put the garden ground attached to 
the allotments they occupy in cultivation, on 
or before the 10th day of July next, will be dis- 
possessed (except in cases wherein ground is 
held by lease), and more industrious persons 
put in possession of them; as the present ne- 
cessities of the settlement require every exer- 
tion being used to supply the wants of families, 



by the ground attached to their dwellings being 
made as productive as possible. — By command 
of his excellency. G. Blaxwell, Sec. Govern- 
ment House, Sydney, June 2\st, 1806." — CHara, 
p. 275. 

This compulsion to enjoy, this despotic bene- 
volence, is something quite new in the science 
of government. 

The sale of spirits was, first of all, mono- 
polized by the government, and then let out 
to individuals for the purpose of building an 
hospital. Upon this subject Mr. Bennet ob- 
serves, — 

"Heretofore all ardent spirits brought to the 
colony were purchased by the government, and 
served out at fixed prices to the officers, civil 
and military, according to their ranks; hence 
arose a discreditable and gainful trade on tl'ie 
part of these officers, their wives and mis- 
tresses. The price of spirits at times was so 
high, that one and two guineas have been given 
for a single bottle. The thirst after ardent 
spirits became a mania among the settlers: all 
the writers on the state of the colony, and all 
who have resided there, and have given testi- 
mony concerning it, describe this rage and 
passion for drunkenness as prevailing in all 
classes, and as being the principal foundation 
of all the crimes committed there. This ex- 
travagant propensity to drunkenness was taken 
advantage of by the governor, to aid him in 
the building of the hospital. Mr. Wentworth, 
(he surgeon, Messrs. Riley and Blaxwell, ob- 
tained permission to enter a certain quantity of 
spirits; — they were to pay a duty of five or 
seven shillings a gallon on the quantity they in- 
troduced, which duty was to be set apart for the 
erection of the hospital. To prevent any other 
spirits from being landed, a monopoly was 
given to these contractors. As soon as the 
agreement was signed, these gentlemen sent 
off to Rio Janeiro, the Mauritius and the East 
Indies, for a large quantity of rum and arrack, 
which they could purchase at 'about the rate of 
2.5. or 2.S. 6c?. per gallon, and disembarked it at 
Sydney. From there being but few houses 
that were before permitted to sell this poison, 
ihey abounded in every street; and such was the 
enormous consumption of spirits, that money 
was soon raised to build the hospital, which 
was finished in 1814. Mr. Marsden informs 
us, that in the small town of Paramatta, thir- 
teen houses were licensed to deal in spirits, 
though he should think five at the utmost would 
be amply suificient for the accommodation of 
the public." — Bennet, pp. 77-79. 

The whole coast of Botany Bay and Van 
Diemen's Land abounds with whales; and, ac- 
cordingly, the duty levied upon train oil pro- 
cured by the subjects in New South Wales, or 
imported there, is twenty times greater than 
that paid by the inhabitants of this country; 
the duty on spermaceti oil, imported, is sixty 
times greater. The duty levied on train oil, 
spermaceti and head matter, procured by the 
inhabitants of Newfoundland, is only three 
times the amount of that which is levied on 
the same substance procured by British sub- 
jects residing in the United Kingdom. The 
duty levied on oil procured by British subjects 
residing in the Bahama or Bermuda islancls, or 



128 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



on the plantations of North America, is only 
eight times the amount on train oil, and twelve 
times the amount on spermaceti, of that which 
is levied on the same substances taken by 
British subjects within the United Kingdom. 
The duty, therefore, which is payable on train 
oil in vessels belonging to this colony is nearly 
seven times greater than that which is payable 
on the same description of oil taken in vessels 
belonging to the island of Newfoundland, and 
considerably more than double of that which is 
payable on the same commodity taken in ves- 
sels belonging to the Bahama or Bermuda 
islands, or to the plantations in North Ame- 
rica; while the duty which is levied on. sperm- 
aceti oil, procured in vessels belonging to this 
colony, is five times the amount of that which 
is levied on vessels belonging to the above- 
mentioned places, and twenty times the amount 
of that which is levied on vessels belonging to 
Newfoundland. The injustice of this seems to 
us to be quite enormous. The statements are 
taken from Mr. Wentworth's book. 

The inhabitants of New South Wales have 
no trial by jury; the governor has not even a 
council to restrain him. There is imposed in 
this country a very heavy duty on timber and 
coals exported; but for which, says Mr. Went- 
worth, some hundred tons of these valuable 
productions would have been sent annually to 
the Cape of Good Hope and India, since the 
vessels w^hich have been in the habit of trading 
between those countries and the colony have 
always returned in ballast. The owners and 
consignees would gladly have shipped cargoes 
of timber and coals, if they could have derived 
the most minute profit from the freight of them. 

The Australasians grow corn; and it is neces- 
sarily their staple. The Cape is their rival in 
the corn trade. The food of the inhabitants of 
the East Indies is rice; the voyage to Europe is 
too distant for so bulky an article as corn. The 
supply to the government stores furnished the 
cultivators of New South Wales with a market 
in the first instance, which is now become too 
insignificant for the great excess of the supply 
above the consumption. Population goes on 
with immense rapidity; but while so much new 
and fertile land is before them, the supply con- 
tinues in the same proportion greater than the 
demand. The most obvious method of affording 
a market for this redundant corn is by encourag- 
ing distilleries within the colony ; a measure re- 
peatedly pressed upon the government at home, 
but hitherto as constantly refused. It is a mea- 
sure of still greater importance to the colony, 
because its agriculture is subjected to the effects 
both of severe drought and exiensive inunda- 
tions, and the corn raised for the distillers would 
be a magazine in times of famine. A recom- 
mendation to this effect was long since made by 
a committee of the House of Commons; but, as 
it was merely a measure for the increase of 
human comforts, was stuffed into the improve- 
ment baskets and forgotten. There has been in 
all governments a great deal of absurd canting 
about the consumption of spirits. We believe 
the best plan is to let people drink what they 
like, and wear what they like; to make no 
sumptuary laws either for the belly or the back. 
In the first place laws against rum and rum 



water are made by men who can change a wet 
coat for a dry one whenever they choose, and 
who do not often work up to their knees in mud 
and water; and, in the next place, if this stimu- 
lus did all the mischief it is thought to do by the 
wise men of claret, its cheapness and plenty 
would rather lessen than increase the avidity , 
with which it is at present sought for. , 

The governors of Botany Bay have taken the 
liberty of imposing what taxes they deemed 
proper, without any other authority than their 
own ; and it seemed very frivolous and vexa- 
tious not to allow this small effusion of despot- 
ism in so remote a corner of the globe ; but it 
was noticed by the opposition in the House of 
Commons, and reluctantly confessed and given 
up by the administration. This great portion 
of the earth begins civil life with noble princi- 
ples of freedom : — may God grant to its inha- 
bitants that wisdom and courage which are 
necessary for the preservation of so great a 
good! 

Mr. Wentworth enumerates, among the evils 
to which the colony is subjected, that clause in 
the last settlement of the East India Company's 
charter, which prevents vessels of less than 300 
tons burden from navigating the Indian seas ; a 
restriction from which the Cape of Good Hope 
has been lately liberated, and which ought, in 
the same manner, to be removed from New 
South Wales, where there cannot be for many 
years to come sufiicient capital to build vessels 
of so large a burden. 

"The disability," says Mr. Wentworth, "might 
be remo'-ed by a simple order in council. When- 
ever his majesty's government shall have freed 
the colonists from this useless and cruel pro- 
hibition, the following branches of commerce 
would then be opened to them. First, they 
would be enabled to transport, in their own ves- 
sels, their coals, timbers, spars, flour, meat, &c. 
to the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, 
Calcutta, and many other places in the Indian 
seas ; in all of which, markets more or less 
extensive exist for those various other produc- 
tions which the colony might furnish. Secondly, 
they would be enabled to carry directly to Can- 
ton the sandal wood, beche la mer, dried seal 
skins, and, in fact, all the numerous productions 
which the surrounding seas and islands afford 
for the China market, and return freighted with 
cargoes of tea, silks, nankeens, &c.; all of which 
commodities are in great demand in the colony, 
and are at present altogether furnished by East 
India or American merchants, to the great detri- 
ment and dissatisfaction of the colonial. And, 
lastly, they would be enabled, in a short time, 
from the great increase of capital which these 
important privileges would of themselves occa- 
sion, as well as attract from other countries, to 
open the fur-trade with the northwest coast of 
America, and dispose of the cargoes procured 
in China, — a trade which has hitherto been ex- 
clusively carried on by the Americans and 
Russians, although the colonists possess a local 
superiority for the prosecution of this valuable 
branch of commerce, which would insure them 
at least a successful competition with the sub- 
jects of those two nations."-— Wentworth, pp. 
317, 318. 

The means which Mr. Wentworth proposes 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



129 



for improving the condition of Botany Bay, are 
— trial by jury — colonial assemblies, with whom 
the right of taxation should rest — the establish- 
ment of distilleries, and the exclusion of foreign 
spirits — alteration of duties, so as to place New 
South Wales upon the same footing as other 
colonies — removal of the restriction to navigate 
the Indian seas in vessels of a small burden — 
improvements in the courts of justice — en- 
couragement for the growth of hemp, flax, to- 
bacco and wine; and, if a colonial assembly 
cannot be granted, that there should be no 
taxation without the authority of Parliament. 

In general, we agree with Mr. Wentworth in 
his statement of evils, and in the remedies he 
has proposed for them. Many of the restric- 
tions upon the commerce of New South Wales 
are so absurd that they require only to be stated 
in Parliament to be corrected. The fertility of 
the colony so far exceeds its increase of popu- 
lation, and the difficulty of finding a market for 
corn is so great — or rather the impossibility so 
clear — that the measure of encouraging domes- 
tic distilleries ought to be had recourse to. The 
colony, with a soil fit for every thing, must, as 
Mr. Wentworth proposes, grow other things 
besi(ies corn, and excite that market in the in- 
terior which it does not enjoy from without. 
The want of demand, indeed, for the excess of 
corn, will soon effect this without the interven- 
tion of government. Government, we believe, 
have already given up the right of taxation 
without the sanction of Parliament ; and there 
is an end, probably, by this time, to that griev- 
ance. A council and a colonial secretary they 
have also expressed their willingness to con- 
cede. Of trial by jury and a colonial assembly, 
we confess that we have great doubts. At some 
future time they must come, and ought to come. 
The only question is, is the colony fit for such 
institutions at presentl Are there a sufficient 
number of respectable persons to serve that 
office in the various settlements 1 If the English 
law is to be followed exactly, to compose a jury 
of twelve persons, a panel of forty-eight must 
be summoned. Could forty-eight intelligent 
convicted men, be found in every settlement of 
New South Wales'? or must they not be fetched 
from great distances, at an enormous expense 
and inconvenience ? Is such an institution cal- 
culated for so very young a colony? A good 
government is an excellent thing; but it is not 
the first in the order of human wants. The 
first want is to subsist; the next to subsist in 
freedom and comfort; first to live at all, then to 
live well. A parliament is still a greater de- 
mand upon the wisdom and intelligence and 
opulence of a colony than trial by jury. Among 
the twenty thousand inhabitants of New South 
Wales, are there ten persons out of the employ 
of government whose wisdom and prudence 
could reasonably be expected to advance the 
interests of the colony without embroiling it 
with the mother-country 1 Who has leisure, in 
such a state of affairs, to attend such a parlia- 
ment? Where wisdom and conduct are so rare, 
every man of character, we will venture to say, 
has, like strolling players in a barn, six or seven 
important parts to perform. Mr. M'Arthur, who, 
from his character and understanding, would 
probably be among the first persons elected to 
17 



the colonial legislature, besides being a very 
spirited agriculturist, is, we have no doubt, 
justice of the peace, curator and rector of a 
thousand plans, charities and associations, to 
which his presence is essentially necessary. 
If he could be cut into as many pieces as a tree 
is into planks, all his subdivisions would be 
eminently useful. When a member of Parlia- 
ment, and what is called a really respectable 
country gentleman, sets ofiTto attend his duty ia 
our Parliament, such diminution of intelligence 
as is produced by his absence, is, God knows, 
easily supplied; but in a colony of 20,000 per- 
sons, it is impossible this should be the case. 
Some time hence, the institution of a colonial 
assembly will be a very wise and proper mea- 
sure, and so clearly called for, that the most 
profligate members of administration will nei- 
ther be able to ridicule nor refuse it. At pre- 
sent we are afraid that a Botany Bay parliament 
would give rise to jokes ; and jokes at present 
have a great agency in human affairs. 

Mr. Bennet concerns himself with the settle- 
ment of New Holland, as it is a school for 
criminals; and, upon this subject, has written 
a very humane, enlightened and vigorous pam- 
phlet. The objections made to this settlement 
by Mr. Bennet are, in the first place, its enor- 
mous expense. The colony of New South 
Wales, from 1788 to 1815 inclusive, has cost 
this country the enormous sum of 3,465,983/. 
In the evidence before the transportation com- 
mittee, the annual expense of each convict, 
from 1791 to 1797, is calculated at 33/. 9s. 5|rf. 
per annum, and the profits of his labour are 
stated to be 20/. The price paid for the trans- 
port of convicts has been, on an average, 37/. 
exclusive of food and clothing. It appears, 
however, says Mr. Bennet, by an account laid 
before Parliament, that in the year 1814, 109,- 
746/. were paid for the transport, foud and cloth- 
ing of 1016 convicts, which will make the cost 
amount to about lOS/. per man. In 1812, the 
expenses of the colony were 176,000/.; fn 1813, 
235,000/.; in 1814,231,362/.; but in 1815 they 
had fallen to 150,000/. 

The cruelty and neglect in the transportation 
of convicts have been very great — and in this 
way a punishment inflicted which it never was 
in the contemplation of law to enact. During 
the first eight years, according to Mr. Bennet's 
statements, one-tenth of the convicts died on the 
passage; on the arrival of three of the ships, 
200 sick were landed, 281 persons having died 
on board. These instances, however, of crimi- 
nal inattention to the health of the convicts no 
longer take place; and it is mentioned rather 
as an history of what is past than a censure 
upon any existing evil. 

In addition to the expense of Botany Bay, 
Mr. Bennet contends that it wants the very 
essence of punishment, terror; that the common 
people do not dread it; that instead of prevent- 
ing crimes, it rather excites the people to their 
commission, by the hopes it aflt)rds of bettering 
their condition in a new country. 

"All those who have had an opportunity of 
witnessing the effect of this system of trans- 
portation agree in opinion, that it is no longer 
an object of dread — it has, in fact, generally 
ceased to be a punishment; true it is, to a fa- 



130 



WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. 



thcr of a family, to the mother who leaves her 
children, this perpetual separation from those 
whom they love and whom they support, is a 
cruel blow, and when I consider the merciless 
character of the law which inflicts it, a severe 
penalty : but by far the greater number of per- 
sons who suffer this punishment, regard it in 
quite a different light. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary 
of Newgate, informed the police committee last 
year, ' that the generality of those who are 
transported consider it as a party of pleasure — 
as going out to see the world; they evince no 
penitence, no contrition, but seem to rejoice in 
the thing, — many of them to court it. I have 
heard them, when the sentence of transporta- 
tion has been passed by the recorder, return 
thanks for it, and seem overjoyed at their sen- 
tence : the very last party that went off, when 
they were put into the caravan, shouted and 
huzzaed, and were very joyous : several of them 
called out to the keepers who were there in the 
yard, the first fine Sunday we will have a glo- 
rious kangaroo hunt at the Bay, — seeming to 
anticipate a great deal of pleasure.' He was 
asked if those persons were married or single, 
and his answer was, 'by far the greater number 
of them were unmarried. Some of them are 
anxious that their wives and children should 
follow them; others care nothing about either 
wives or children, and are glad to get rid of 
them.'" — Bennet, pp. 60, 61 

It is a scandalous injustice in this colony, 
that persons transported for seven years, have 
no power of returning when that period is ex- 
pired. A strong active man may sometimes 
work his passage home ; but what is an old man 
or an aged female to do 1 Suppose a convict 
were to be confined in prison for seven years, 
and then told he might get out if he could climb 
over the walls, or break open the locks, what in 
general would be his chance of liberation 1 But 
no lock nor doors can be so secure a means of 
detention as the distance of Botany Bay. This 
is a downright trick and fraud in the adminis- 
tration of criminal justice. A poor wretch who 
is banished from his country for seven years, 
should be furnished with the means of return- 
ing to his country when these seven years are 
expired. — If it is intended he should never re- 
turn, his sentence should have been banishment 
for life. 

The most serious charge against the colony, 
as a p4ace for transportation, and an experiment 
in criminal justice, is the extreme profligacy of 
manners which prevails there, and the total 
want of reformation among the convicts. Upon 
this subject, except in the regular letters offi- 
cially varnished and filled wiih fraudulent beati- 
tudes for the public eye, there is, and there can 
be, but one opinion. New South Wales is a 
sink of wickedness, in which the great majority 
of convicts of both sexes become infinitely 
more depraved than at the period of their arri- 
val. How, as Mr. Bennet very justly observes, 
can it be otherwise 1 The I'elon, transported to 
the American plantations, became an insulated 
rogue among honest men. He lived for years 
in the family of some industrious planter, 
■without seeing a picklock, or indulging in plea- 
sant dialogues on the delicious burglaries of 
his youth. He imperceptibly glided into honest 



habits, and lost not only the tact for pockets, but 
the wish to investigate their contents. But ia 
Botany Bay, the felon, as soon as he gets out of 
the ship, meets with his ancient trull, with the 
footpad of his heart, the convict of his affec- 
tions, — the man whose hand he has often met 
in the same gentleman's pocket — the being 
whom he would choose from the whole world 
to take to the road, or to disentangle the locks 
of Bramah. It is impossible that vice should 
not become more intense in such society, 

Upon the horrid state of morals now preva- 
lent in Botany Bay, we would counsel our read- 
ers to cast their eyes upon the account given by 
Mr. Marsden, in a letter, dated July, 1815, to 
Governor Macquarrie. It is given at length in 
the appendix to Mr. Bennet's book. A more 
horrid picture of the state of any settlement 
was never penned. It carries with it an air of 
truth and sincerity, and is free from all enthu- 
siastic cant. 

" I now appeal to your excellency," (he says, 
at the conclusion of his letter,) " whether, under 
such circumstances any man of common feel- 
ing, possessed of the least spark of humanity 
or religion, who stood in the same otficial rela- 
lation that I do to these people, as their spiritual 
pastor and magistrate, could enjoy one happy 
moment from the beginning to the end of the 
week! 

"I humbly conceive that it is incompatible 
with the character and wish of the British na- 
tion, that her own exiles should be exposed to 
such privations and dangerous temptations, 
when she is daily feeding the hungry and cloth- 
ing the naked, and receiving into her friendly, 
and I may add pious bosom, the stranger, whe- 
ther savage or civilized, of every nation under 
heaven. There are, in the whole, under the two 
principal superintendents, Messrs. Rouse and 
Cakes, one hundred and eight men, and one hun- 
dred and fifty women, and several children; 
and nearly the whole of them have to find lodg- 
ings for themselves when they have performed 
their government tasks. 

" I trust that your excellency will be fully 
persuaded, that it is totally impossible for the 
magistrate to support his necessary authority, 
and to establish a regular police, under such a 
weight of accumulated and accumulating evils. 
I am as sensible as any one can be, that the dif- 
ficulty of removing these evils will be very great; 
at the same time, their number and influence 
may be greatly lessened, if the abandoned male 
and female convicts are lodged in barracks, and 
placed under the eye of the police, and the num- , 
ber of licensed houses is reduced. Till some- I 
thing of this kind is done, all attempts of the * 
magistrate, and the public administration of re- 
ligion, will be attended with litde benefit to the 
general good. I have the honour to be, your 
excellency's most obedient, humble servant, 
Samuel Mabsden." — 5e«??e/, p. 134. 

Thus much fur Botany Bay. As a mere colo- 
ny, it is too distant and too expensive; and, in 
future, will of course involve us in many of 
those just and necessary wars, which deprive 
Englishmen so rapidly of their comforts, and 
make England scarcely worth living in. If con- 
sidered as a place of reform for criminals, its 
distance, expense, and the society to which it 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



131 



dooms the objects of the experiment, are insu- 
perable objections to it. It is in vain to say, 
that the honest people in New South Wales will 
soon bear a greater proportion to the rogues, 
and the contamination of bad society will be 
less fatal. This only proves that it may be a 
good place for reform hereafter, not that it is a 
good one now. One of the principal reasons 
for peopling Botany Bay at all, was, that it 
would be an admirable receptacle, and a school 
of reform, for our convicts. It turns out, that 
for the first half century, it will make them 
worse than they were before, and that, after that 
period, they may probably begin to improve. 
A marsh, to be sure, may be drained and culti- 
vated; but no man who has his choice, would 
select it in the mean time for his dwelling-place. 
The three books are all books of merit. Mr. 
O'Hara's is a bookseller's compilation, done in 
a useful and pleasing manner. Mr. Wentworth 
is full of information on the present state of 
Botany Bay. The humanity, the exertions and 



the genuine benevolence of Mr. Bennet, are too 
well known to need our commendation 

All persons who have a few guineas in their 
pocket, are now running away from Mr. Nicho- 
las Vansittart to settle in every quarter of the 
globe. Upon the subject of emigration to Bota- 
ny Bay, Mr. Wentworih observes, 1st, that any 
respectable person emigrating to that colony, 
receives as much land gratis as would cost him 
400/. in the United Stales; 2dly, he is allowed 
as many servants as he may require, at one- 
third of the wages paid for labour in America; 
3dly, himself and family are victualled at the 
expense of government for six months. He cal- 
culates that a man, wife and two children, with 
an allowance of five tons for themselves and 
baggage, could emigrate to Botany Bay for 100/. 
including every expense, provided a whole ship 
could be freighted ; and that a single man could 
be taken out thither for 30/. These points are 
worthy of serious attention to those who are 
shedding their country. 



CHIMNEY SWEEPERS.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1819.] 



Aw excellent and well-arranged dinner is a 
most pleasing occurrence, and a great triumph 
of civilized life. It is not only the descending 
morsel and the enveloping sauce — but the rank, 
wealth, wit and beauty which surround the 
meats— the learned management of light and 
heat — the silent and rapid services of the attend- 
ants — the smiling and sedulous host, proffering 
gusts and relishes —ihe exotic bottles — the em- 
bossed plate — the pleasant remarks — the hand- 
some dresses — the cunning artifices in fruit and 
farina! The hour of dinner, in short, includes 
every thing of sensual and intellectual gratifica- 
tion which a great nation glories in producing. 

In the midst of all this, who knows that the 
kitchen chimney caught fire half an hour before 
dinner! — and that a poor little wretch, of six or 
seven years old, was sent up in the midst of the 
flames to put it out 7 We could not, previous 
to reading this evidence, have formed a concep- 
tion of the miseries of these poor wretches, or 
that there should exist, in a civilized country, a 
class of human beings destined to such extreme 
and varied distress. We will give a short epi- 
tome of what is developed in the evidence before 
the two Houses of Parliament 

Boys are made chimney sweepers at the early 
age of five or six. 

Little boys far small flues, is a common phrase 
in the cards left at the door by itinerant chimney 
sweepers. Flues made to ovens and coppers 
are often less than nine inches square; and it 



*Accounl if Ihe Proceedings of the SociUyfor superseding 
ike Necessity of Climbing Bous. Baldwin, &c. London, 
1S16. 



may be easily conceived how slender the frame 
of that human body must be, which can force 
itself through such an aperture. 

" What is the age of the youngest boys who 
have been employed in this trade, to your know- 
ledge! About five years of age: I know one 
now between five or six years old; it is the 
man's own son in the Strand : now there is an- 
other at Somer's Town, 1 think, said he was 
between four and five, or about five; Jack Hall, 
a little lad, takes him about. — Did you ever 
know any female children employed? Yes, I 
know one now. About two years ago there was 
a woman told me she had climbed scores of 
times, and ihere is one at Paddington now 
whose father taught her to climb: but I have 
often heard talk of them when I was an appren- 
tice, in different places. — What is the smallest 
sized flue you have ever met with in the course 
of your experience? About eight inches by nine; 
these they are always obliged to climb in this 
posture (describing it), keeping the arms up 
straight; if they slip their arms down, they get 
jammed in; unless they get their arms close 
over their head they cannot climb." — Lord's 
Minutes, No. 1. p. 8. 

The following is a specimen of the manner in 
which they are taught this art of climbing 
chimneys. 

" Do you remember being taught to climb 
chimneys'? Yes. — What did you feel upon the 
first auempt to climb a chimney 1 The first 
chimney! went up, they told me lliere was some 
plum-pudding and money up at the top of it, and 
that is the way they enticed me up; and when I 



13S 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



got up, I would not let the other boy get from 
under me to get at it; I thought he would get it; 
I could not get up, and shoved the pot and half 
the chimney down into the yard. — Did you expe- 
rience any inconvenience to your knees, or your 
elbows 1 Yes, the skin was off my knees and 
elbows too, in climbing up the new chimneys 
they forced me up. — How did they force you up 1 
When I got up, I cried out about my sore knees. 
— Were you beat or compelled to go up by any 
violent means 1 Yes, when I went to a narrow 
chimney, if I could not do it, I durst not go 
home ; when I used to come down, my master 
would well beat me with the brush; and not 
only my master, but when he used to go with 
the journeymen, if we could not do it, they used 
to hit us three or four times with the brush." — 
Lords' Minutes, No. 1. p. 5. 

In practising the art of climbing they are often 
crippled. 

"You talked of the pargetting to chimneys; 
are many chimneys pargetted? There used to 
be more than are now; we used to have to go 
and sit all a-twist to parge them, according to the 
floors, to keep the smoke from coming out ; then 
I could not straighten my legs; and that is the 
reason that many are cripples, — from parging 
and stopping the holes." — Lords' Minutes, No. 1. 
p. 17. 

They are often stuck fast in a chimney, and, 
after remaining there many hours, are cut out. 

"Have you known, in the course of your 
practice, boys stick in chimneys at all? Yes, 
frequently. — Did you ever know an instance of. 
a boy being suffocated to death? No; I do not 
recollect anyone at present, but I have assisted 
in taking boys out when they have been nearly 
exhausted. — Did you ever know an instance of its 
being necessary to break open a chimney to take 
the boy out? O yes. — Fre(juentli/? Monthly I 
might sufi; it is done with a cloak, if possible, that 
it should not be discovered ; a master in general 
wishes it not to be known, and therefore speaks to 
the people belonging to the house not to mention 
it, for it was merely the boy's neglect; they often 
say it was the boy's neglect. — Why do they say 
that ? The boy's climbing shirt is often very 
bad; the boy coming down, if the chimney be 
very narrow, and numbers of them are only nine 
inches, gets his shirt rumpled underneath him, 
and he has no power after he is fixed in that 
way {with his hand up.) Does a boy frequently 
stick in the chimney ? Yes, I have known more 
instances of that the last twelvemonth than be- 
fore.— Do you ever have to break open in the 
inside of a room? Yes, I have helped to break 
through into a kitchen chimney in a dining 
room." — Lords' Minutes, p. 34. 

To the same effect is the evidence of John 
Daniels, (Minutes, p. 100.) and of James Lud- 
ford, {Lords' Minutes, p. 147.) 

"You have swept the Penitentiary? I have. 
— Did you ever know a boy stick in any of the 
chimneys there? Yes, I have. — Was it one of 
your boys ? It was. — Was there one or two that 
stuck! Two of them.— How long did they stick 
there? Two hours. — How were they got out? 
They were cut out. — Was there any danger 
while they were in that situation? It was the 
core from the pargetting of the chimney, and 
the rubbish that the labourers had thrown down. 



that stopped them, and when they got it aside 
them, they could not pass. — They both stuck 
together? Yes." — Lords' Minutes, p. 147. 

One more instance we shall give from the 
evidence before the Commons. 

"Have you. heard of any accidents that have 
recently happened to climbing boys in the small 
flues? Yes; I have often met with accidents 
myself when I was a boy; there was lately one 
in Mary-le-bone, where the boy bst his life in a 
flue, a boy of the name of Tinsey (his father 
was of the same trade); that boy I think was 
about eleven or twelve years old. — Was there 
a coroner's inquest sat on the body of that boy 
you mentioned? Yes, there was ; he was aa 
apprentice of a man of the name of Gay. — 
How many accidents do you recollect which 
were attended with loss of life to the climbing 
boys ? I have heard talk of many more than I 
know of; I never knew of more than three 
since I have been at the trade, but I have heard 
talk of many more. — Of twenty or thirty? I 
cannot say; I have been near losing my own 
life several times." — Copimons' Report, p. 53. 

We come now to burning little chimney 
sweepers. A large party are invited to dinner 
— a great display is to be made ; — and about an 
hour before dinner, there is an alarm that the 
kitchen chimney is on fire ! It is impossible to 
put off the distinguished personages who are 
expected. It gets very late for the soup and fish 
— the cook is frantic — all eyes are turned upon 
the sable consolation of the master chimney 
sweeper — and up into the midst of the burning 
chimney is sent one of the miserable little in- 
fants of the brush ! There is a positive pro- 
hibition of this practice, and an enactment of 
penalties in one of the acts of Parliament which 
respects chimney sweepers. But what matter 
acts of Parliament, when the pleasures of gen- 
teel people are concerned ? Or what is a toasted 
child, compared to the agonies of the mistress 
of the house with a deranged dinner? 

"Did you ever know a boy get burnt up a 
chimney? Yes. — Is that usual '' Yes, I have 
been burnt myself, and have got the scars on 
my legs; a year ago I was up a chimney in 
Liquor Pond Street; I have been up more than 
forty chimneys ivhere I have been burnt. — Did 
your master or the journeymen ever direct you 
to go up a chimney that was on fire ? Yes, it is 
a general case. — Do they compel you to go up 
a chimney that is on fire? Oh yes, it was the 
general practice for two of us to slop at home 
on Sunday to be ready in case of a chimney 
being a-fire. — You say it is general to compel 
the boys to go up chimneys on fire? Yes, boys 
get very ill-treated if they do not go up." — Lords' 
Minutes, p. 34. 

" Were you ever forced up a chimney on 
fire ? Yes, I was forced up one once, and, be- 
cause I could not do it, I was taken home and 
well hided with a brush by the journeyman. — 
Have you frequently been burnt in ascending 
chimneys on fire? Three times. — Are such 
hardships as you have described common in 
the trade with other boys ? Yes, they are." — 
Ibid., p. 100. 

" What is the price for sending a boy up a 
chimney badly on fire? The price allowed is 
five shillings, but most of them charge half a 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



133 



guinea. — Is any part of that given to the boy 1 
No, but very often the boy gets half a crown, 
and then the journeyman has half, and his mis- 
tress takes the other part to take care of against 
Sunday. — Have 3'ou never seen water thrown 
down from the top of a chimney when it is on 
fire 1 Yes.— Is not that generally done 1 Yes ; 
I have seen that done twenty times, and the boy 
in the chimney; at the time when the boy has 
hallooed out, 'It is so hot I cannot go any fur- 
ther;' and then the expression is, with an oath, 
'Stop, and I will heave a pail of water down.' " 
—Ibid., p. 39. 

Chimney sweepers are subject to a peculiar 
sort of cancer, which often brings them to a 
premature death. 

"He appeared perfectly willing to try the 
machines everywhere? I must say the man 
appeared perfectly willing; he had a fear (hat 
he and his family would be ruined by them; but 
I must say of him that he is very different from 
other sweeps I have seen ; he attends very much 
to his own business; he was as black as any 
boy he had got, and unfortunately in the course 
of conversation he told me he had got a cancer; 
he was a fine healthy strong looking man; he told 
me he dreaded having an operation performed, 
but his father died of the same complaint, and 
his father was sweeper to King George the 
Second." — Lords' Minutes, p. 84. 

"What is the nature of the particular dis- 
eases ? The diseases that we particularly no- 
ticed, to which they were subject, were of a 
cancerous description. In what part? The 
scrotum in particular, &c.— Did you ever hear 
of cases of that description that were fatal 1 No, 
J do not think them as being altogether fatal, 
unless they will not submit to the operation ; 
they have such a dread of the operation that 
they will not submit to it, and if they do not let 
it be perfectly removed they willbe liable to the 
return of it. To what cause do you attribute 
that disease] I think it begins from a want of 
care: the scrotum being in so many folds or 
crevices, the soot lodges in them and creates an 
itching, and I conceive, that by scratching it and 
tearing it, the soot gets in and creates the irrita- 
bility ; which disease we know by the name of 
the chimney sweeper's cancer, and is always 
lectured upon separately as a distinct disease. 
—Then the committee understands that the phy- 
sicians who are entrusted with the care and 
management of those hospitals think that dis- 
ease of such common occurrence, that it is 
necessary to make it a part of surgical educa- 
tion 1 Most assuredly ; I remember Mr. Cline 
and Mr. Cooper were particular on that subject. 
— Without an operation there is no curel I 
<5onceive not; I conceive without the operation 
it is death; for cancers are of that nature that 
unless you extirpate them entirely they will 
never be cwxtA."— Commons' Rep. pp. 60, 61. 

In addition to the life they lead as chimney 
sweepers, is superadded the occupation of night- 
men. 

" {By a Lord.) Is it generally the custom 
that many masters are likewise nightmen ? Yes: 
I forgot that circumstance, which is very griev- 
ous ; I have been tied round the middle and let 
down several privies, for the purpose of fetching 
watches and such things ; it is generally made 



the practice to take the smallest boy, to let him 
through the hole without taking up the seat, and 
to paddle about there until he finds it; they do 
not take a big boy, because it disturbs the seat." 
— Lords' Minutes, p. 38. 

The bed of these poor little wretches is often 
the soot they have swept in the day. 

"How are the boys generally lodged ; where 
do they sleep at night? Some masters maybe 
better than others, but I know I have slept on 
the soot that was gathered in the day myself. — 
Where do boys generally sleep? Never on a 
bed; I never slept on a bed myself while I was 
apprentice —Do they sleep in cellars? Yes, 
very often : I have slept in the cellar myself on 
the sacks I took out. — What had you to cover 
you? The same.— Had you any pillow? No 
further than my breeches and jacket under my 
head. How were you clothed ? When I was 
apprentice we had a pair of leather breeches 
and a small flannel jacket. Any shoes and 
stockings ? Oh dear, no ; no stockings.— Had you 
any other clothes for Sunday ? Sometimes we 
had an old bit of a jacket, that we might wash 
out ourselves, and a shirt." — Lords' Minutes, 
p. 40. 

Girls are occasionally employed as chimney 
sweepers. 

"Another circumstance, which has not been 
mentioned to the committee, is, that there are 
several little girls employed; there are two of 
the name of Morgan at Windsor, daughters of 
the chimney sweeper, who is employed to sweep 
the chimneys of the castle; another instance at 
Uxbridge, and at Brighton, and at Whitechapel 
(which was some years ago), and at Hadley 
near Barnet, and Witham in Essex, and else- 
where." — Commons' Report, p. 71. 

Another peculiar danger to which chimney 
sweepers are exposed, is the rottenness of the 
pots at the top of chimneys; — for they must as- 
cend to the very summit, and show their brushes 
above them, or there is no proof that the work is 
properly completed. These chimney-pots from 
their exposed situation, are very subject to de- 
cay; and when the poor little wretch has worked 
his way up to the top, pot and boy give way 
together, and are both shivered to atoms. There 
are many instances of this in the evidence be- 
fore both Houses. When they outgrow the ^q-^- 
er of going up a chimney, they are fit for nothing 
else. The miseries they have suflTered lead to 
nothing. They are not only enormous, but un- 
profitable: having suffered, in what is called the 
happiest part of life, every misery which an 
human being can suffer, they are then cast out 
to rob and steal, and given up to the law. 

Not the least of their miseries, while their 
trial endures, is their exposure to cold. It will 
easily be believed that much money is not ex- 
pended on the clothes of a poor boy stolen from 
his parents, or sold by them for a few shillings, 
and constantly occupied in dirty work. Yet the 
nature of their occupations renders chimney 
sweepers peculiarly susceptible of cold. And 
as chimneys must be swept very early, at four 
or five o'clock of a winter morning, the poor 
boys are shivering at the door, and attempting 
by repeated ringings to rouse the profligate foot- 
man ; but the more they ring the more Jhe fdot- 
man does not come. 

M 



134 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"Do they go out in the winter time without 
stockings? Oh yes.— Always"? I never saw one 
go out tyj^A stockings ; I have known masters 
make their boys pul! off their leggins, and cut 
off the feet, to keep their feet warm when they 
have chilblains. — Are chimney sweepers' boys 
peculiarly subject to chilblains] Yes; I believe 
it is owing to the weather: they often go out at 
two or three in the morning, and their shoes are 
generally very bad. Do they go out at that hour 
at Christmas 1 Yes; a man will have twenty 
jobs at four, and twenty more at five or six. — 
Are chimneys generally swept much about 
Christmas time? Yes; they are in general; it 
is left to the Christmas week. — Do you suppose 
it is frequent that, in the Christmas week, boys 
are out from three o'clock in the morning to 
nine or ten? Yes, further than that; I have 
known that a boy has been only in and out 
again directly all day till five o'clock in the 
evening. — Do you consider the journeymen and 
masters treat those boys generally with greater 
cruelty than other apprentices in other trades 
are treated? They do, most horrid and shock- 
ing." — Lords^ Minutes, p. 33. 

The following is the reluctant evidence of a 
master. 

"At what hour in the morning did your boys 
go out upon their employment? According to 
orders. — At any time? To be sure; suppose a 
nobleman wished to have his chimney done 
before four or five o'clock in the morning, it 
was done, or how were the servants to get their 
things done ? — Supposing you had an order to 
attend at four o'clock in the morning in the 
month of December, you sent your boy ? I was 
generally with him, or had a careful follower 
with him. Do you think those early hours 
beneficial for him? I do; and I have heard 
that ' early to bed and early to rise, is the way 
to be healthy, wealthy and wise.' — Did they 
always get in as soon as they knocked? No; 
it would be pleasant to the profession if they 
could. — How long did they wait ? Till the ser- 
vants please to rise. — How long might that be? 
According how heavy they were to sleep. — 
How long was that? It is impossible to say; 
ten minutes at one house, and twenty at ano- 
ther. — Perhaps half an hour? We cannot see 
in the dark how the minutes go. — Do you think it 
healthy to let them stand there twenty minutes 
at four o'clock in the morning in the winter 
time? He has a cloth to wrap himself in like 
a mantle, and keep himself warm." — Lords' 
Minutes, pp. 138, 139. 

We must not forget sore eyes. Soot lodges 
on their eyelids, produces irritability, which 
requires friction ; and the friction of dirty hands 
of course increases the disease. The greater 
proportion of chimney sweepers are in conse- 
quence blear-eyed. The boys are very small, but 
they are compelled to carry heavy loads of soot. 

"Are you at all lame yourself? No: but lam 
'knapped-kneed' with carrying heavy loads 
when I was an apprentice. That was the oc- 
casion of it? It was. In general, are persons 
employed in your trade either stunted or knock- 
kneed by carrying heavy loads during their 
childhood? It is owing to their masters a great 
deal ; and when they climb a great deal it makes 
them weak." — Commons' Report, p. 58, 



In climbing a chimney, the great hoJd is by 
the knees and elbows. A young child of 6 or 
7 years old, working with knees and elbows 
against hard bricks soon rubs off the skin from 
these bony projections, and is forced to climb 
high chimneys with raw and bloody knees and 
elbows. 

"Are the boys' knees and elbows rendered 
sore when they first begin to learn to climb? 
Yes, they are, and pieces out of them. — Is that 
almost generally the case? It is; there is not 
one out of twenty who is not; and they are sure 
to take the scars to their grave : I have some 
now. — Are they usually compelled to continue 
climbing while those sores are open? Yes,- the 
way they use to make them hard is that way. — 
Might not this severity be obviated by the use of 
pads in learning to climb ? Yes ; but they con- 
sider in the business, learning a boy, that he is 
never thoroughly learned until the boy's knees 
are hard after being sore ; then they consider it 
necessary to put a pad on, from seeing the boys 
have bad knees ; the children generally walk 
stiff-kneed. — Is it usual among the chimney 
sweepers to teach their boys to learn by means 
of pads? No; they learn them with nearly 
naked knees.— Is it done in one instance in 
twenty? No, nor one in fifty." — Lords' Minutes, 
p. 32. 

According to the humanity of the master, the 
soot remains upon the bodies of the children, 
unwashed off, for any time from a week to a 
year. 

"Are the boys generally washed regularly? 
No, unless they wash themselves. — Did not 
your master take care you were washed ? No. 
— Not once in three months ? No, not once a 
year. — Did not he find you soap? No; lean 
take my oath on the Bible that he never found 
me one piece of soap during the time I was 
apprentice." — Lords' Minutes, p. 41. 

The life of these poor little wretches is so 
miserable, that they often lie sulking in the 
flues unwilling to come out. 

" Did you ever see severity used to boys that 
were not obstinate and perverse ? Yes. — Very 
often? Yes, very often. The boys are rather 
obstinate; some of them are; some of them will 
get half-way up the chimney, and will not go 
any further, and then the journeyman will swear 
at them to come down, or go on ; but the boys 
are too frightened to come down ; they halloo 
out, we cannot get up, and they are afraid to 
come down; sometimes they will send for ano- 
ther boy, and drag them down; sometimes get 
up to the top of the chimney, and throw down 
water, and drive them down; then, when they 
get them down, they will begin to drag, or beat, 
or kick them about the house; then, when they 
get home, the master will beat them all round 
the kitchen afterwards, and give them no break- 
fast, perhaps." — Lords' Minutes, pp. 9, 10. 

When a chimney bo)"^ has done sufl[icient 
work for the master he must work for the man; 
and he thus becomes for several hours after his 
morning's work a perquisite to the journeyman. 
" It is frequently the perquisite of the journey- 
man, when the first labour of the day on account 
of the master is finished, to 'call the streets,' ia 
search of employment on their own account, 
with the apprentices, whose labour is thus un- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



135 



reasonably extended, and whose limbs are weak- 
ened and distorted by the weights which they 
have to carry, and by the distance which they 
have to walk. John Lawless says, ' I have 
known a boy to Ciimb from twenty to thirty 
chimneys for his master in the morning; he 
has then been sent out instantly with the jour- 
neyman, who has kept him out till three or four 
o'clock, till he has accumulated from six to eight 
bushels of soot.'" — Lords' Report, p. 24. 

The sight of a little chimney sweeper often 
excites pity: and they have small presents made 
to them at the houses where they sweep. These 
benevolent alms are disposed of in the following 
manner: — 

" Do the boys receive little presents of money 
from people often in your trade ? Yes, it is in 
general the custom. — Are they allowed to keep 
that for their own use 1 Not the whole of it, — 
the journeymen take what they think proper. 
The journeymen are entitled to half by the 
master's orders; and whatever a boy may get, 
if two boys and one journeyman are sent to a 
large house to sweep a number of chimneys, 
and after they have done, there should be a 
shilling or eighteen pence given to the boys, the 
journeyman has his full half, and the two boys in 
general have the other. Is it usual or customary 
for the journeymen to play at chuck farthing or 
other games with the boys 1 Frequently. — Do 
they win the money from the boys ? Frequently: 
the children give their money to the journeymen 
to screen for them. — What do you mean by 
screening? Such a thing as sifting the soot. — 
The child is tired, and he says, ' Jem, I will give 
you two-pence if you will sift my share of the 
soot ;' there is sometimes twenty or thirty bushels 
to sift. Do you think the boys retain one quar- 
ter of that given them for their own use 1 No." 
7— Lords' Minutes, p. 35. 

To this most horrible list of calamities is to 
be added the dreadful deaths by which chimney 
sweepers are often destroyed. Of these we 
once thought of giving two examples; one from 
London, the other from our own town of Edin- 
burgh: but we confine ourselves to the latter. 

"James Thomson, chimney-sweeper. — One 
day, in the beginning of June, witness and panel 
(that is, the master, the party accused) had been 
sweeping vents together. About futcr o'clock 
in the afternoon, the panel proposed to go to 
Albany street, where the panel's brother was 
cleaning a vent, with the assistance of Frazer, 
whom he had borrowed from the panel for the 
occasion. When witness and panel got to the 
house in Albany street, they found Frazer, who 
had gone up the vent between eleven and twelve 
o'clock, not yet come down. On entering the 
house they found a mason making a hole in the 
wall. Panel said, what was he doing 1 I sup- 
pose he has taken a lazy fit. The panel called 
to the boy, 'What are you doing? what's keep- 
ing you V The boy answered that he could not 
come. The panel worked a long while, some- 
times persuading him, sometimes threatening 
and swearing at the boy to get him down. Panel 
then said, ' I will go to a hardware shop and get 
a barrel of gunpowder, and blow you and the 
vent to the devil, if you do not come down.' — 
Panel then began to slap at the wall — witness 
then went up a ladder, and spoke, to the boy 



through a small hole in the wall previously 
made by the mason — but the boy did not answer 
Panel's brother told witness to come down, as 
the boy's master knew best how to manage him. 
Witness then threw off" his jacket, and put a 
handkerchief about his head, and said to the 
panel, let me go up the chimney to see what's 
keeping him. The panel made no answer, but 
pushed witness away from the chimney, and 
continued bullying the boy. At this time the 
panel was standing on the grate, so that witness 
could not go up the chimney; witness then said 
to panel's brother, there is no use for me here, 
meaning that panel would not permit him to use 
his services. He prevented the mason making 
the hole larger, saying. Stop, and I'll bring him 
down in five minutes' time. Witness then put 
on his jacket, and continued an hour in the 
room, duritis; all which time the panel continued 
bullying the boy. Panel then desired witness to- 
go to Reid's house to get the loan of his boy 
Alison. Witness went to Reid's house, and 
asked Reid to come and speak to panel's bro- 
ther. Reid asked if panel was there? Witness 
answered he was; Reid said he would send his 
boy to the panel, but not to the panel's brother. 
Witness and Reid went to Albany street; and 
when they got into the room, panel took his head 
out of the chimney and asked Reid if he would 
lend him his boy; Reid agreed; witness then 
returned to Reid's house for his boy, and Reid 
called after him, 'Fetch down a set of ropes 
with you.' By this time witness had been ten 
minutes in the room, during which time panel 
was swearing, and asking what's keeping you, 
you scoundrel? When witness returned with 
the boy and ropes, Reid took hold of the rope, 
and having loosed it, gave Alison one end, and 
directed him to go up the chimney, saying, do 
not go farther than his feet, and when you get 
there fasten it to his foot. Panel said nothing 
all this time. Alison went up, and having fast- 
ened the rope, Reid desired him to come down; 
Reid took the rope and pulled, but did not bring 
down the boy; the rope broke! Alison was 
sent up again with the other end of the rope, 
which was fastened to the boy's foot. When 
Reid was pulling the rope, panel said, ' You 
have not the strength of a cat ;' he took the 
rope into his own hands, pulling as strong as he 
could. Having pulled about a quarter of an hour, 
panel and Reid fastened the rope round a crow 
bar, which they applied to the wall as a lever, 
and both pulled with all their strength for about 
a quarter of an hour longer, when it broke. — 
Duiing this time witness heard the boy cry, and 
say, ' My God Almighty !' Panel said, ' If I had 
you here, I would God Almighty you.' Witness 
thought the cries were in agony. The master 
of the house brought a new piece of rope, and 
the panel's brother spliced an eye on it. Reid 
expressed a wish to have it fastened on both 
thighs, to have greater purchase. Alison was 
sent up for this purpose, but came down, and 
said he could not get it fastened. Panel then 
began to slap at the wall. After striking a long 
while at the wall, he got out a large stone; he 
then put in his head and called to Frazer, ' Do 
you hear, you sir?' but got no answer: he then 
put in his hands, and threw down deceased's 
breeches. He then came down from the ladder. 



136 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



At this time the panel was in a state of perspi- 
ration : he sat down on a stool, and the master 
of the house gave him a dram. Witness did 
not hear panel make any remarks as to the 
situation of the boy Frazer. Witness thinks 
that, from panel's appearance, he knew that the 
boy was dead." — Commons' Report, T^'p. 136 — 
138. 

We have been thus particular in stating the 
case of the chimney sweepers, and in founding 
it upon the basis of facts, that we may make an 
answer to those profligate persons who are al- 
ways ready to fling an air of ridicule upon the 
labours of humanity, because they are desirous 
that what they have not virtue to do themselves, 
should appear to be foolish and romantic when 
done by others. A still higher degree of depra- 
vity than this, is to want every sort of compas- 
sion for human misery, when it is accompanied 
by filth, poverty and ignorance, — to regulate 
humanity by the income tax, and to deem the 
bodily wretchedness and the dirty tears of the 
poor, a fit subject for pleasantry and contempt. 
We should have been loath to believe that such 
deep-seated and disgusting immorality existed 
in these days ; but the notice of it is forced upon 
us. Nor must we pass over a set of marvel- 
lously weak gentlemen who discover democracy 
and revolution in every effort to improve the 
condition of the lower orders, and to take oflT a 
little of the load of misery from those points 
where it presses the hardest. Such are the 
men into whose heart Mrs. Fry has struck the 
deepest terror, — who abhor Mr. Bentham and 
his penitentiary; Mr. Bennet and his hulks; 
Sir James Mackintosh and his bloodless assizes ; 
Mr. Tuke and his sweeping machines, — and 
every human being who is great and good 
enough to sacrifice his quiet to his love for his 
fellow-creatures. Certainly we admit that hu- 
manity is sometimes the veil of ambition or of 
faction; but we have no doubt that there are a 
great many excellent persons to whom it is 
misery to see misery, and pleasure to lessen it; 
and who, by calling the public attention to the 
worst cases, and by giving birth to judicious 



legislative enactments for their improvement, 
have made, and are making, the world some- 
what happier than they found it. Upon these 
principles we join hands with the friends of the 
chimney sweepers, and most heartily wish for 
the diminution of their numbers, and the limi- 
tation of their trade. 

We are thoroughly convinced, there are many 
respectable master chimney sweepers; though 
we suspect their numbers have been increased 
by the alarm which their former tyranny excited, 
and by the severe laws made for their coercion : 
but even with good masters the trade is mise- 
rable, — with bad ones it is not to be endured; 
and the evidence already quoted shows us how 
many of that character are to be met with in the 
occupation of sweeping chimneys. 

After all, we must own that it was quite right 
to throw out the bill for prohibiting the sweep- 
ing of chimneys by boys — because humanity is 
a modern invention ; and there are many chim- 
neys in old houses which cannot possibly be 
swept in any other manner. But the construc- 
tion of chimneys should be attended to in some 
new building act; and the treatment of boys be 
watched over with the most severe jealousy of 
the law. Above all, those who have chimneys 
accessible to machinery, should encourage the 
use of machines,* and not think it beneath their 
dignity to take a little trouble, in order to do a 
great deal of good. We should have been very 
glad to have seconded the views of the Climbing 
Society, and to have pleaded for the complete 
abolition of climbing boys, if we could consci- 
entiously have done so. But such a measure, 
we are convinced from the evidence, could not 
be carried into execution without great injury to 
property, and great increased risk of fire. The 
lords have investigated the matter with the 
greatest patience, humanity and good sense; 
and they do not venture, in their report, to re- 
commend to the House the abolition of climbing 
boys. 



* The price of a machine is fiAeen shillingi. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



137 



AMERICA.* 

[Ediitbitbgh Revikw, 1820.] 



This is a book of character and authority ; 
but it is a very large book ; and therefore we 
think we shall do an acceptable service to our 
readers, by presenting them with a short epi- 
tome of its contents, observing the same order 
which has been chosen by the author. The 
whole, we conceive, will form a pretty complete 
picture of America, and teach us how to appre- 
ciate that country, either as a powerful enemy 
or a profitable friend. The first subject with 
which Mr. Seybert begins, is the population of 
the United States. 

Population. — As representatives and direct 
taxes are apportioned among the different states 
in proportion to their numbers, it is provided 
for in the American constitution, that there 
shall be an actual enumeration of the people 
every ten years. It is the duty of the marshals 
in each state to number the inhabitants of their 
respective districts : and a correct copy of the 
lists, containing the names of the persons re- 
turned, must be set up in a public place within 
each district, before they are transmitted to the 
secretary of state : — they are then laid before 
Congress by the president. Under this act three 
census, or enumerations of the people, have 
been already laid before Congress — for the 
years 1790, 1800 and 1810. In the year 1790, 
the population of America was 3,921,326 per- 
sons, of whom 697,697 were slaves. In 1800, 
the numbers were 5,319,762, of which 896,849 
were slaves. In 1810, the numbers were 7,239,- 
903, of whom 1,191,364 were slaves; so that at 
a rate at which free population has proceeded 
between 1790 and 1810, it doubles itself, in the 
United States, in a very little more than 22 
years. The slave population, according to its 
rate of proceeding in the same time, would be 
doubled in about 26 years. The increase of the 
slave population in this statement is owing to 
the importation of negroes between 1800 and 
1808, especially in 1806 and 1807, from the ex- 
pected prohibition against importation. The 
number of slaves was also increased by the ac- 
quisitions of territory in Louisiana, where they 
constituted nearly half the population. From 
1801 to 1811, the inhabitants of Great Britain 
acquired an augmentation of 14 per cent.; the 
Americans, within the same period, were aug- 
mented 36 per cent. 

Emigration seems to be of very little import- 
ance to the United States. In the year 1817, by 
far the most considerable year of emigration, 
there arrived in ten of the principal ports of 
America, from the old world, 22,000 persons as 
passengers. The number of emigrants, from 1790 
to 18)0, is not supposed to have exceeded 6000 



* Statistical Annals qftlie United States of America. By 
Adam Seybert, 4to- Philadelphia, 1818. 
18 



per annum. None of the separate states have 
been retrograde during these three enumerations, 
though some have been nearly stationary. The 
most remarkable increase is that of New York, 
which has risen from 340,120 in the year 1790, 
to 959,049 in the year 1810. The emigration 
from the eastern to the western states is calcu- 
lated at 60,000 persons per annum. In all the 
American enumerations, the males uniformly 
predominate in the proportion of about 100 to 
92. We are better off" in Great Britain and Ire- 
land, — where the women were to the men, by 
the census of 1811, as 110 to 100. The density 
of population in the United States is less than 
4 persons to a square mile; that of Holland, 
in 1803, was 275 to the square mile; that of 
England and Wales, 169. So that the fifteen 
provinces which formed the union in 1810, 
would contain, if they were as thickly peopled 
as Holland, 135 million souls. 

The next head is that of Trade and Commerce. 
— In 1790, the exports of the United States were 
above 19 millions of dollars; in 1791, above 20 
millions; in 1792, 26 millions; in 1793, 33 mil- 
lions of dollars. Prior to 1795, there was no 
discrimination, in the American treasury ac- 
counts, between the exportation of domestic, 
and the re-exportation of foreign articles. In 
1795, the aggregate value of the merchandize 
exported was 67 millions of dollars, of which the 
foreign produce re-exported was 26 millions. 
In 1800, the total value of exports was 94 mil- 
lions; in 1805, 101 millions; and in 1808, when 
they arrived at their maximum, 108 million 
dollars. In the year 1809, from the effects of 
the French and English orders in council, the 
exports fell to 52 millions of dollars ; in 1810 
to 66 millions ; in 1811, to 61 millions; In the 
first year of the war with England, to 38 mil- 
lions ; in the second to 27; in the year 1814, 
when peace was made, to 6 millions. So that 
the exports of the republic, in six years, had 
tumbled down from 108 to 6 millions of dollars: 
after the peace, in the years 1815-16-17, the 
exports rose to 52, 81,87 million dollars. 

In 1817, the exportation of cotton was 85 
million pounds. In 1815, the sugar made on 
the banks of the Mississippi was 10 million 
pounds. In 1792, when the wheat trade was at 
the maximum, a million and a half of bushels 
were exported. The proportions of the exports 
to Great Britain, Spain, France, Holland and 
Portugal, on an average of ten years ending 
1812, are as 27, 16, 13, 12 and 7; the actual 
value of exports to the dominions of Great 
Britain, in the three years ending 1804, were 
consecutively, in millions of dollars, 16, 17, 13. 

Imports.— In 1791, the imports of the United 
States were 19 millions; on an average of three 
consecutive years, ending 1804 inclusive, they 
H 2 



138 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



were 68 millions; in 1806-7, they were 138 
millions; and in 1815, 133 millions of dollars. 
The annual value of ihe imports, on an average 
of three years ending 1804, was 75,000,000, of 
which the dominions of Great Britain furnished 
nearly one half. On an average of three years 
ending in 1804, America imported from Great 
Britain to the amount of about 36 millions, and 
returned goods to the amount of about 23 mil- 
lions. Certainly these are countries that have 
some better employment for their time and 
energy than cutting each other's throats, and 
may meet for more profitable purposes. — The 
American imports from the dominions of Great 
Britain, before the great American war, amount- 
ed to about 3 millions sterling; soon after the 
war, to the same. From 1805 to 1811, both in- 
clusive, the average annual exportation of Great 
Britain to all parts of the world, in real value, 
was about 43 millions sterling, of which one- 
fifth, or nearly 9 millions, was sent to America. 

Tonnage and Navigation. — Before the revolu- 
tionary war, the American tonnage, whether 
owned by British or American subjects, was 
about 127,000 tons; immediately after that war, 
108,000. In 1789, it had amounted to 437,733 
tons, of which 279,000 was American property. 
In 1790, the total was 605,825, of which 354,000 
was American. In 1816, the tonnage, all Ame- 
rican, was 1,300,000. On an average of three 
years, from 1810 to 1812, both inclusive, the 
registered tonnage of the British empire was 
2,459,000 ; or little more than double the Ame- 
rican. 

Lands. — All public lands are surveyed before 
they are offered for sale, and divided into town- 
ships of six miles square, which are subdivided 
into thirty-six sections of one mile square, con- 
taining each 640 acres. The following lands 
are excepted from the sales. One thirty-sixth 
part of the lands, or a section of 640 acres in 
each township, is uniformly reserved for the 
support of schools ; seven entire townships, con- 
taining each 23,000 acres, have been reserved 
in perpetuity for the support of learning: all salt 
springs and lead mines are also reserved. The 
Mississippi, the Ohio, and all the navigable 
rivers and waters leading into either, or into the 
river St. Lawrence, remain common highways, 
and forever free to all the citizens of the United 
States, without payment of any tax. All the 
other public lands, not thus excepted, are offered 
for public sale in quarter sections of 160 acres, 
at a price not less than two dollars per acre, 
and as much more as they will fetch by public 
auction. It was formerly the duty of the secre 
tary of the treasury to superintend the sales of 
lands. In 1812, an office, denominated the 
General Land-Office, was instituted. The public 
lands sold prior to the opening of the land-offices, 
amounted to one million and a half of acres. 
The aggregate of the sales since the opening of 
the land-offices, N. W. of the river Ohio, to the 
end of September, 1817, amounted to 8,469,644 
acres; and the purchase-money to 18,000,000 
dollars. The lands sold since the opening of 
the land-offices in the Mississippi territory, 
amount to 1,600,000 acres. The stock of un- 
sold land on hand is calculated at 400,000,000 
acres. In the year 1817 there were sold above 
two millions of acres. 



Post-Office. — In 1789, the number of post- 
offices in the United Stales was 75; the amount 
of postage 38,000 dollars ; the miles of post-road 
1800. In 1817, the number of post-offices was 
3,459; the amount of postage 961,000 dollars; 
and the extent of post-roads 51,600 miles. 

Revenue. — The revenues of the United States 
are derived from the customs; from duties on 
distilled spirits, carriages, snuff, refined sugar, 
auctions, stamped paper, goods, wares and mer- 
chandise manufactured within the United States, 
household furniture, gold and silver watches 
and postage of letters; from money arising from 
the sale of public lands and from fees on letters- 
patent. The following are the duties paid at 
the custom-house for some of the principal arti- 
cles of importation: — 7| per cent, on dyeing 
drugs, jewellery and watch-work; 15 per cent, 
on hempen cloth and on all articles manu- 
factured from iron, tin, brass and lead — on but- 
tons, buckles, china, earthenware and glass, 
except window glass; 25 per cent, on cotton 
and woollen goods and cotton twist; 30 per 
cent, on carriages, leather and leather manu- 
factures, &c. 

The average annual produce of the customs, 
between 1801 and 1810, both inclusive, was 
about twelve millions of dollars. In the year 

1814, the customs amounted only to four mil- 
lions; and, in the year 1815, the first year after 
the war, rose to thirty-seven millions. From 
1789 to 1814, the customs have constituted 65 
per cent, of the American revenues; loans 26 
per cent.; and all other branches 8 to 9 per cent. 
They collect their customs at about 4 per cent.; 
— the English expense of collection is 6/. 2s. 6<f. 
per cent. 

The duty upon spirits is extremely trifling to 
the consumer— not a penny per gallon. The 
number of distilleries is about 15,000. The 
licenses produce a very inconsiderable sum. 
The tax laid upon carriages in 1814, varied 
from fifty dollars to one dollar, according to the 
value of the machine. In the year 1801, there 
were more than fifteen thousand carriages of dif- 
ferent descriptions paying duty. The furniture- 
tax seems to have been a very singular species 
of tax, laid on during the last war. It was an ad 
valorem duty upon all the furniture in any man's 
possession, the value of which exceeded 600 
dollars. Furniture cannot be estimated without 
domiciliary visits, nor domiciliary visits allowed 
without tyranny and vexation. An information 
laid against a new arm-chair, or a clandestine 
sideboard — a search-warrant, and a conviction 
consequent upon it — have much more the ap- 
pearance of English than American liberty. 
The license for a watch, too, is purely English. 
A truly free Englishman walks out covered with 
licenses. It is impossible to convict him. He 
has paid a guinea for his powdered head — a 
guinea for the coat of arms upon his seals — a 
three guinea license for the gun he carries upon 
his shoulder to shoot game: and is so fortified 
with permits and official sanctions, that the most 
eagle-eyed informer cannot obtain the most tri- 
fling advantage over him. 

America has borrowed, between 1791 and" 

1815, one hundred and seven millions of do! 
lars, of which forty-nine millions were bor- 
rowed in 1813 and 1814. The internal revenue 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SAIITH. 



139 



in the year 1815 amounted to eight million 
dollars; the gross revenue of the same year, 
including the loan, to fifty-one million dollars. 

Army. — During the late war with Great Brit- 
tain, Congress authorized the raising of 62,000 
men for the armies of the United States, — 
though the actual number raised never amount- 
ed to half that force. In February, 1815, the 
army of the United States did not amount to 
more than 32,000 men; in January, 1814, to 
23,000.* The recruiting service, as may be 
easily conceived, where the wages of labour 
are so high, goes on very slowly in America. 
The military peace establishment was fixed in 
1815 at 10,000 men. The Americans are fortu- 
nately exempt from the insanity of garrisoning 
little rocks and islands all over the world ; nor 
would they lavish millions upon the ignoble end 
of the Spanish Peninsula — the most useless and 
extravagant possession with which any Eu- 
ropean power was ever afflicted. In 1812, any 
recruit honourably discharged from the service, 
was allowed three months' pay, and 160 acres 
of land. In 1814, every non-commissioned 
officer, musician and private, who enlisted and 
was afterwards honourably discharged, was al- 
lowed, upon such discharge, 320 acres. The 
enhstment was for five years, or during the war. 
The widow, child or parent of any person en- 
listed, who was killed, or died in the service of 
the United States, was entitled to receive the 
same bounty in land. 

Every free while male between eighteen and 
forty-five, is liable to be called out in the militia, 
which is stated, in official papers, to amount to 
748,000 persons. 

Navy. — On the 8th of June, 1781, the Ameri- 
cans had only one vessel of war, the Alliance; 
and that was thought to be too expensive ; it was 
sold ! The attacks of the Barbary powers first 
roused them to form a navy; which, in 1797, 
amounted to three frigates. In 1814, besides a 
great increase of frigates, four seventy-fours 
were ordered to be built. In 1816, in conse- 
quence of some brilliant actions of their fri- 
gates, the naval service had become very popu- 
lar throughout the United States. One million 
of dollars was appropriated annually, for eight 
years to the gradual increase of the navy ; nine 
seventy-fours,! and twelve forty-four gun-ships 
were ordered to be built. Vacant and unappro- 
priated lands belonging to the United States, fit 
to produce oak and cedar, were to be selected 
for the use of the navy. The peace establish- 
ment of the marine corps was increased, and 
six navy yards were established. We were 
surprised to find Dr. Seybert complaining of a 
want of ship timber in America. " Many per- 
sons (he says) believe that our stock of live oak 
is very considerable; but upon good authority 
we have been told, in 1801, that supplies of live 
oak from Georgia will be obtained with great 
difficulty, and that the larger pieces are very 
scarce." In treating of naval affairs. Dr. Sey- 
bert, with a very different purpose in view, pays 
the following involuntary tribute to the activity 



* Peace with Great Britain was signed in December, 
1814, at Ghent. 

t The American seventy-four gun ships are as big as 
our fir.st-rates, and their frigates nearly as big as ships of 
the line. 



and effect of our late naval warfare against the 
Americans. 

"For a long time the majority of the people 
of the United States was opposed to an exten- 
sive and permanent naval establishment; and 
the force authorized by the legislature, until very 
lately, was intended for temporary purposes. A 
navy was considered to be beyond the financial 
means of our country; and it was supposed the 
people would not submit to be taxed for its sup- 
port. Our brilliant success in the late war has 
changed the public sentiment on this subject: 
many persons who formerly opposed the navy, 
now consider it as an essential means for our 
defence. The late transactions on the borders 
of the Chesapeake Bay, cannot be forgotten; 
the extent of that immense estuary enabled the 
enemy to sail triumphant into the interior of 
the United States. For hundreds of miles along 
the shores of that great bay, our people were in- 
sulted; our towns were ravaged and destroyed; 
a considerable population was teased and irri- 
tated ; depredations were hourly committed by 
an enemy who could penetrate into the bosom 
of the country, without our being able to molest 
him whilst he kept on the water. By the time 
a sufficient force was collected to check his 
operations in one situation, his ships had al- 
ready transported him to another, which was 
feeble, and offered a booty to him. An army 
could make no resistance to this mode of war- 
fare ; the people were annoyed ; and they suf- 
fered in the field only to be satisfied of their 
inability to check those who had the dominion 
upon our waters. The inhabitants who were in 
the immediate vicinity, were not alone affected 
by the enemy; his operations extended their 
influence to our great towns on the Atlantic 
coast; domestic intercourse and internal com- 
merce were interrupted, whilst that with foreign 
nations was, in some instances, entirely sus- 
pended. The treasury documents for 1814, ex- 
hibit the phenomenon of the State of Pennsyl- 
vania not being returned in the list of the 
exporting states. We were not only deprived 
of revenue, but our expenditures were very 
much augmented. It is probable the amount 
of the expenditures incurred on the borders of 
the Chesapeake would have been adequate to 
provide naval means for the defence of those 
waters: the people might then have remained 
at home, secure from depredation in the pur- 
suit of their tranquil occupations. The ex- 
penses of the government, as well as of indi- 
viduals, were very much augmented for every 
species of transportation. Every thing had to 
be conveyed by land carriage. Our communi- 
cation with the ocean was cut off. One thou- 
sand dollars were paid for the transportation of 
each of the thirty-two pounder cannon from 
Washington city to Lake Ontario for the public 
service. Our roads became almost impassable 
from the heavy loads which were carried oyer 
them. These facts should induce us, in times 
of tranquillity, to provide for the national de- 
fence, and execute such internal improvements 
as cannot be effected during the agitations of 
war." — (p. 679.) 

Expenditure. — The President of the United 
States receives about 6000/. a year; the Vice- 
President about 600/.; the deputies to Congress 



140 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



have 8 dollars per day, and 8 dollars for every 
20 miles of journey. The first clerk of the 
House of Representatives receives about 750/. 
per annum; the Secretary of State, 1200/.; the 
Postmaster-General, 750/.; the Chief Justice of 
the United States, 1000/.; a Minister Plenipo- 
tentiary, 2200/. per annum. There are, doubt- 
less, reasons why there should be two noblemen 
appointed in this country as postmasters-gene- 
ral, with enormous salaries, neither of whom 
know a twopenny post letter from a general 
one, and where further retrenchments are stated 
to be impossible. This is clearly a case to 
■which that impossibility extends. But these are 
matters where a prostration of understanding 
is called for ; and good subjects are not to rea- 
son, but to pay. If, however, we were ever to 
indulge in the Saxon practice of looking into 
our own affairs, some important documents 
might be derived from these American salaries. 
Jonathan, for instance, sees no reason why the 
first clerk of his House of Commons should 
derive emoluments from his situation to the 
amount of 6000/. or 7000/. per annum ; but 
Jonathan is vulgar and arithmetical. The total 
expenditure of the United States varied, between 
1799 and 1811, both inclusive, from 11 to 17 
millions of dollars. From 1812 to 1814, both 
inclusive, and all these years of war with this 
country, the expenditure was consecutively, 22, 
29, and 38 millions of dollars. The total ex- 
penditure of the United States, for 14 years 
from 1791 to 1814, was 333 millions of dollars ; 
of which, in the three last years of war with 
this country, from 1812 to 1814, there were ex- 
pended 100 millions of dollars, of which only 
35 were supplied by revenue, the rest by loans 
and government paper. The sum total received 
by the American treasury from the 3d of March, 
1789, to the 31st of March, 1816, is 354 millions 
of dollars; of which 107 millions have been 
raised by loan, and 222 millions by the customs 
and tonnage: so that, exclusive of the revenue 
derived from loans, 222 parts out of 247 of the 
American revenue have been derived from fo- 
reign commerce. In the mind of any sensible 
American, this consideration ought to prevail 
over the few splendid actions of their half dozen 
frigates, which must, in a continued war, have 
been, with all their bravery and activity, swept 
from the face of the ocean by the superior force 
and equal bravery of the English. It would be 
the height of madness in America to run into 
another naval war with this country, if it could 
be averted by any other means than a sacrifice 
of proper dignity and character. They have, 
comparatively, no land revenue ; and, in spite 
of the Franklin and Guerriere, though lined 
with cedar and mounted with brass cannon, 
they must soon be reduced to the same state 
■which has been described by Dr. Seybert, and 
from which they were so opportunely extricated 
by the treaty of Ghent. David Porter and Ste- 
phen Decatur are very brave men ; but they 
will prove an unspeakable misfortune to their 
country, if they inflame Jonathan into a love of 
naval glory, and inspire him with any other 
love of war than that which is founded upon a 
determination not to submit to serious insult 
and injury. 

We can inform Jonathan what are the inevi- 



table consequences of being too fond of glory; — 
Taxes upon every article which enters into the 
mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the 
foot — taxes upon every thing which it is pleasant 
to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste — taxes upon 
warmth, light and locomotion — taxes on every thing 
on earth, and the waters under the earth — on every 
thing that comes from abroad, or is grown at 
home — taxes on the raw material — taxes on every 
fresh value that is added to it by the industry cf" 
man — taxes on the sauce which pampers man's 
appetite, and the drug that restores him to health 
— on the ermine which decorates the judge, and 
the rope which hangs the criminal — on the poor 
man's salt, and the rich man's spice — on the brass 
nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride — 
at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. 
— The school-boy whips his taxed top — the beard- 
less youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed 
bridle, on a taxed road: — awe? the dying English- 
man, pouring his medicine, which has paid 7 per 
cent., into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent., — 
flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which 
has paid 22 per cent., — and expires in the arms 
of an apothecary, who has paid a license of a 
hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him 
to death. His whole property is then immediately 
taxed from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the probate, 
large fees are demanded for burying him in the 
chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity 
on taxed marble ; and he is then gathered to his 
fathers, — to be taxed no more. In addition to all 
this, the habit of dealing with large sums will 
make '.he government avaricious and profuse; 
and the system itself will infallibly generate 
the base vermin of spies and informers, and a 
still more pestilent race of political tools and 
retainers of the meanest and most odious 
description; — while the prodigious patronage 
which the collecting of this splendid revenue 
will throw into the hands of government, will 
invest it with so vast an influence, and hold out 
such means and temptations to corruption, as 
all the virtue and public spirit, even of repub- 
licans, will be unable to resist. 

Every wise Jonathan should remember this, 
when he sees the rabble huzzaing at the heels 
of the truly respectable Decatur, or inflaminig 
the vanity of that still more popular leader, 
whose justification has lowered the character of 
his government with all the civilized nations of 
the world. 

Debt. — America owed 42 million dollars after 
the Revolutionary war; in 1790, 79 millions; in 
1803,70 millions; and in the beginning of Janu- 
ary, 1812, the public debt was diminished to 46 
million dollars. After the last war with Eng- 
land, it had risen to 123 millions ; and so it stood 
on the 1st of January, 1816. The total amount 
carried to the credit of the commissioners of the 
sinking fund, on the 31st of December, 1816, was 
about 34 millions of dollars. 

Such is the land of Jonathan — and thus has 
it been governed. In his honest endeavours to 
better his situation, and in his manly purpose 
of resisting injury and insult we most cordially 
sympathize. We hope he will always continue 
to watch and suspect his government as he now 
does — remembering that it is the constant ten- 
dency of those entrusted with power, to con- 
ceive that they enjoy it by their own merits, 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



141 



and for their own use, and not by delegation, 
and for the benefit of others. Thus far we are 
the friends and admirers of Jonathan. But he 
must not grow vain and ambitious ; or allow 
himself to be dazzled by that galaxy of epithets 
by which his orators and newspaper scribblers 
endeavour to persuade their supporters that they 
are the greatest, the most refined, the most en- 
lightened and most moral people upon earth. 
The effect of this is unspeakably ludicrous on 
this side of the Atlantic — and, even on the other, 
•we shall imagine, must be rather humiliating 
to the reasonable part of the population. The 
Americans are a brave, industrious and acute 
people; but they have, hitherto, given no indi- 
cations of genius, and made no approaches 
to the heroic, either in their morality or cha- 
racter. They are but a recent offset, indeed, 
from England; and should make it their chief 
boast, for many generations to come, that they 
.are sprung from the same race with Bacon and 
Shakspeare and Newton. Considering their 
numbers, indeed, and the favourable circum- 
stances in which they have been placed, they 
have yet done marvellously little to assert the 
honour of such a descent, or to show that their 
English blood has been exalted or refined by 
their republican training and institutions. — 
Their Franklins and Washingtons, and all the 
other sages and heroes of their Revolution, 
were born and bred subjects of the King of 
England, — and not among the freest or most 
valued of his subjects. And since the period 
of their separation, a far greater proportion of 
their statesmen and artists and political writers 
have been foreigners than ever occurred before 
in the history of any civilized and educated 
people. During the thirty or forty years of 
their independence, they have done absolutely 
nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Lite- 
rature, or even for the statesman-like studies of 



Politics or Political Economy. Confining our- 
selves to our own country, and to the period 
that has elapsed since they had an independent 
existence, we would ask, where are their Foxes, 
their Burkes, their Sheridans, their Windhams, 
their Homers, their Wilberforces? — where their 
Arkwrights, riieir Watts, their Davys'? — their 
Robertsons, Blairs, Smiths, Stewarts, Paleys, 
and Malthusesl — their Porsons, Parrs, Bur- 
neys, or Bloomfields? — their Scotts, Rogers's, 
Campbells, Byrons, Moores, or Crabbes 1 — 
their Siddons's, Kembles, Keans, or O'Neilsl- — 
their Wilkies, Lawrences, Chantrys? — or their 
parallels to the hundred other names that have 
spread themselves over the world from our 
little island in the course of the last thirty 
years, and blest or delighted mankind by their 
works, inventions or examples ? In so far as 
we know, there is no such parallel to be pro- 
duced from the whole annals of this self- 
adulating race. In the four quarters of the 
globe, who reads an American book 1 or goes 
to an American play? or looks at an American 
picture or statue? What does the world yet 
owe to American physicians or surgeons 1 
What new substances have their chemists dis- 
covered? or what old ones have they analyzed? 
What new constellations have been discovered 
by the telescopes of Americans? What have 
they done in the mathematics? Who drinks 
out of American glasses ? or eats from Ameri- 
can plates? or wears American coats or gowns? 
or sleeps in American blankets ? Finally, under 
which of the old tyrannical governments of Eu- 
rope is every sixth man a slave, whom his fel- 
low-creatures may buy and sell and torture ? 

When these questions are fairly and favour- 
ably answered, their laudatory epithets may be 
allowed : but till that can be done, we would 
seriously advise them to keep clear of super- 
latives. 



142 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



lEELAND.* 

[Ediitbuboh Rbtikw, 1820.] 



These are all the late publications that treat 
of Irish interests in general, — and none of them 
are of first-rate importance. Mr. Gamble's Tra- 
vels in Ireland are of a very ordinary description 
— low scenes and low humour making up the 
principal part of the narrative. There are 
readers, however, whom it will amuse; and the 
reading market becomes more and more exten- 
sive, and embraces a greater variety of persons 
every day. Mr. Whitelaw's History of Dublin 
is a book of great accuracy and research, highly 
creditable to the industry, good sense and be- 
nevolence of its author. Of the Travels of Mr. 
Christian Curwen, we hardly know what to say. 
He is bold and honest in his politics — a great 
enemy to abuses — vapid in his levity and plea- 
santry, and intinitely too much inclined to de- 
claim upon common-place topics of morality and 
benevolence. But, with these drawbacks, the 
book is not ill written; and may be advantage- 
ously read by those who are desirous of informa- 
tion upon the present state of Ireland. 

So great and so long has been the misgo- 
vernment of that country, that we verily believe 
the empire would be much stronger if every 
thing was open sea between England and the 
Atlantic, and if skates and codfish swam over 
the fair land of Ulster. Such jobbing, such 
profligacy — so much direct tyranny and oppres- 
sion—such an abuse of God's gifts — such a 
profanation of God's name for the purposes of 
bigotry and party spirit, cannot be exceeded in 
the history of civilized Europe, and will long 
remain a monument of infamy and shame to 
England. But it will be more useful to suppress 
the indignation which the very name of Ireland 
inspires, and to consider impartially those causes 
which have marred this fair portion of the crea- 
tion, and kept it wild and savage in the midst of 
improving Europe. 

The great misfortune of Ireland is, that the 
mass of the people have been given up for a 
century to a handful of Protestants, by whom 
they have been treated a? Helots, and subjected 
to every species of persecution and disgrace. 
The sufferings of the Catholics have been so 
loudly chaunted in the very streets, that it is al- 
most needless to remind our readers that, during 
the reigns of George I. and George II., the Irish 
Roman Catholics were disabled from holding 
any civil or military office, from voting at elec- 
tions, from admission into corporations, from 
practising law or physic. A younger brother, 
by turning Protestant, might deprive his elder 



*1. Wliitelaiv^s History of the City of Dublin. 4to Ca- 
dell and Davies. 

2. Obserrations on the State of Ireland, principally di- 
rected to its Agriculture and Rvral Pnpt^liori; in a series of 
Letters written on a Tour through that Country. In 2 vols. 
By J. C. Curwen, Esq., M. P. London, 1818. 

3. Gamble's Views of Society hi Ireland. 



brother of his birthright; by the same process, 
he might force his father, under the name of a 
liberal provision, to yield up to him a part of 
his landed property: and, if an eldest son, he 
might, in the same way, reduce his father's fee- 
simple to a life estate. A papist was disabled 
from purchasing freehold lands — and even from 
holding long leases — and any person might take 
his Catholic neighbour's house by paying .5/. for 
it. If the child of a Catholic father turned Pro- 
testant, he was taken away from his father and 
put into the hands of a Protestant relation. No 
papist could purchase a freehold, or lease for 
more than thirty years — or inherit from an in- 
testate Protestant — nor from an intestate Catho- 
lic — nor dwell in Limerick or Gal way — nor hold 
an advovvson, nor buy an annuity for life. 50/. 
was given for discovering a popish archbishop 
— 30/. for a popish clergyman — and \Qs. for a 
schoolmaster. No one was allowed to be trustee 
for Catholics; no Catholic was allowed to take 
more than two apprentices; no papist to be so- 
licitor, oheriff, or to serve on grand juries. 
Horses of papists might be seized for the militia; 
for which militia papists were to pay double, 
and to find Protestant substitutes. Papists were 
prohibited from being present at vestries, or 
from being high or petty constables; and, when 
resident in towns, they were compelled to find 
Protestant watchmen. Barristers and solicitors 
marrying Catholics, were exposed to the penal- 
ties of Catholics. Persons plundered by pri- 
vateers during a war with any popish prince, 
were reimbursed by a levy on the Catholic in- 
habitants where they lived. All popish priests 
celebrating marriages contrary to 12 Geo. I. cap. 
3, were to be hanged. 

The greater part of these incapacities are re- 
moved, though many of a very serious and op- 
pressive nature still remain. But the grand 
misfortune is, that the spirit which these op- 
pressive laws engendered remains. The Pro- 
testant still looks upon the Catholic as a 
degraded bein?. The Catholic does not yet 
consider himself upon an equality with his for- 
mer tyrant and taskmaster. That religious 
hatred which required all the prohibiting vigi- 
lance of the law for its restraint, has found in 
the law its strongest support; and the spirit 
which the law first exasperated and embittered, 
continues to act long after the original stimulus 
is withdrawn. The law which prevented Ca- 
tholics from serving on grand juries is repealed; 
but Catholics are not called upon grand juries 
in the proportion in which they are entitled, by 
their rank and fortune. The Duke of Bedford 
did all he could to give them the benefit of those 
laws which are already passed in their favour. 
But power is seldom entrusted in this country 
to one of the Duke of Bedford's liberality ; and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



143 



every thing has fallen back in the hands of his 
successors into the ancient division of the pri- 
vileged and degraded castes. We do not mean 
to cast any reflection upon the present secretary 
for Ireland, whom we believe to be upon this 
subject a very liberal politician, and on all sub- 
jects an honourable and excellent man. The 
government under which he serves allows him 
to indulge in a little harmless liberality; but it 
is perfectly understood that nothing is intended 
to be done for the Catholics ; that no loaves and 
fishes will be lost by indulgence in Protestant 
insolence and tyranny; and, therefore, among 
the generality of Irish Protestants, insolence, 
tyranny and exclusion continue to operate. 
However eligible the Catholic maybe, he is not 
elected; whatever barriers may be thrown down, 
he does not advance a step. He was first kept 
out by law; he is now kept out by opinion and 
habit. They have been so long in chains, that 
nobody believes they are capable of using their 
hands and feet. 

Il is not, however, the only or the worst misfor- 
tune of the Catholics, that the relaxations of the 
law are hitherto of little benefit to them ; the law 
is not yet sutficiently relaxed. A Catholic, as 
every body knows, cannot be made sheriff; can- 
not be in Parliament; cannot be a director of 
the Irish Bank ; cannot fill the great departments 
of the law, the army and the navy; is cut off" 
from all the high objects of human ambition, 
and treated as a marked and degraded person. 

The common admission now is, that the Ca- 
tholics are to the Protestants in Ireland as about 
4 to I— of which Protestants, not more than one 
kalfhe]ong to the Church of Ireland. This, then, 
is one of the most striking features in the state 
of Ireland. That the great mass of the popula- 
tion is completely subjugated and overawed by 
a handful of comparatively recent settlers, — in 
whom all the power and patronage of the coun- 
try are vested, — who have been reluctantly com- 
pelled to desist from still greater abuses of 
authority, — and who look with trembling appre- 
hension to the increasing liberality of the Par- 
liament and the country towards these unfortu- 
nate persons whom they have always looked 
upon as their property and their prey. 

Whatever evils may result from these pro- 
portions between the oppressor and the op- 
pressed — to whatever dangers a country so 
situated may be considered to be exposed — these 
evils and dangers are rapidly increasing in Ire- 
land. The proportion of Catholics to Protestants 
is infinitely greater now than it was thirty years 
ago, and is becoming more and more favourable 
to the former. By a return made to the Irish 
House of Lords in 1732, the proportion of Ca- 
tholics to Protestants was not 2 to 1. It is now 
(as we have already observed) 4 to 1 ; and the 
causes which have thus altered the proportion 
in favour of the Catholics are sufincienlly ob- 
vious to any one acquainted with the state of 
Ireland. The Roman Catholic priest resides: 
Ijis income entirely depends upon the number 
of his flock; and he must exert himself, or he 
starves. There is some chance of success, 
therefore, in his eflxirts (o convert; but the Pro- 
testant clergyman, if he were equally eager, has 
little or no probability of persuading so much 
larger a proportion of the population to come 



over to his church. The Catholic clergyman 
belongs to a religion that has always been more 
desirous of gaining proselytes than the Pro- 
testant church; and he is animated by a sense 
of injury and a desire of revenge. Another rea- 
son for the disproportionate increase of Catho- 
lics is, that the Catholics will marry upon means 
which the Protestant considers as insufficient 
for marriage. A few potatoes and a shed of 
turf are all that Luther has left for the Roman- 
ist; and, when the latter gets these, he instantly 
begins upon the great Irish manufacture of chil- 
dren. But a Protestant belongs to the sect that 
eats the fine flour, and leaves the bran to others; 
he must have comforts, and he does not marry 
till he gets them. He would be ashamed, if he 
were seen living as a Catholic lives. This is 
the principal reason why the Protestants who 
remain attached to their church do not increase 
so fast as the Catholics. But in common minds, 
daily scenes, the example of the majority, the 
power of imitation, decide their habits, religious 
as well as civil. A Protestant labourer who 
works among Catholics, soon learns to think 
and act and talk as they do — he is not proof 
against the eternal panegyric which he hears of 
Father O'Leary. His Protestantism is rubbed 
away; and he goes at last, after some little re- 
sistance, to the chapel, where he sees every 
body else going. 

These eight Catholics not only hate the ninth 
man, the Protestant of the Establishment, for 
the unjust privileges he enjoys — not only remem- 
ber that the lands of their fathers were given to 
his father — but they find themselves forced to 
pay for the support of his religion. In the 
wretched state of poverty in which the lower 
orders of Irish are plunged, it is not without 
considerable effort that they can pay the few 
shillings necessary for the support of their Ca- 
th(>lic priest; and when this is effected, a tenth 
of the potatoes in the garden is to be set out 
for the support of a persuasion, the introduction 
of which into Ireland they consider as the great 
cause of their political inferiority, and all their 
manifold wretchedness. In England, a labourer 
can procure constant employment — or he can, 
at the worst, obtain relief from his parish. 
Whether tithe operates as a tax upon him, is 
known only to the political economist: if he 
does pay it. he does not know that he pays it; 
and the burthen of supporting the clergy is at 
least kept out of his view. But, in Ireland, the 
onlj' method in which a poor man lives, is by 
taking a small portion of land, in which he can 
grow potatoes: seven or eight months out of 
twelve, in many parts of Ireland, there is no 
constant employment of the poor: and the po- 
tato farm is all that shelters them from absolute 
famine. If the pope were to come in person, and 
seize upon every tenth potato, the poor peasant 
would scarcely endure it. With what patience 
then, can he see it tossed into the cart of the 
heretic rector who has a church without a con- 
gregation, and a revenue without duties? 

We do not say whether these things are right 
or wrong — whether they want a remedy at all 
— or what remedy they want; but we paint them 
in those colours in which they appear to the eye 
of poverty and ignorance, without saying whe- 
ther those colours are false or true. Nor is thn 



144 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



case at all comparable to that of Dissenters pay- 
ing tithe in England ; which case is precisely 
the reverse of what happens in Ireland, for it is 
the contribution of a very small minority to the 
religion of a very large majority ; and the num- 
bers on either side make all the difference in 
the argument. To exasperate the poor Catholic 
still more, the rich grazier of the parish — or the 
squire in his parish — pay no tithe at all for their 
grass land. Agistment tithe is abolished in 
Ireland; and the burthen of supporting two 
churches seems to devolve upon the poorer 
Catholics, struggling with plough and spade in 
small scraps of dearly-rented land. Tithes seem 
to be collected in a more harsh manner than 
they are collected in England. The minute sub- 
divisions of land in Ireland — the little connection 
which the Protestant clergyman commonly has 
with the Catholic population of his parish, have 
made the introduction of tithe proctors very 
general — sometimes as the agent of the clergy- 
man — sometimes as the lessee or middleman 
between the clergyman and the cultivator of 
the land ; but, in either case, practised, dexter- 
ous estimators of tithe. The English clergymen 
in general, are far from exacting the whole of 
what is due to them, but sacrifice a little to the 
love of popularity or to the dread of odium. 
A system of tithe-proctors established all over 
England (as it is in Ireland,) would produce 
general disgust and alienation from the Esta- 
blished Church. 

" During the administration of Lord Halifax," 
says Mr. Hardy, in quoting the opinion of Lord 
Charlemont upon tithes paid by Catholics, " Ire- 
land was dangerously disturbed in its south- 
ern and northern regions. In the south princi- 
pally, in the counties of Kilkenny, Limerick, 
Cork and Tipperary, the White Boys now made 
their first appearance ; those White Boys, who 
have ever since occasionally disturbed the pub- 
lic tranquillity, without any rational method 
having been as yet pursued to eradicate this 
disgraceful evil. When we consider that the 
very sarrie district has been for the long space 
of seven-and-twenty years liable to frequent 
returns of the same disorder into which it has 
continually relapsed, in spite of all the violent 
remedies from time to time administered by our 
political quacks, we cannot doubt but that some 
real, peculiar and topical cause must exist; and 
yet, neither the removal nor even the investiga- 
tion of this cause has ever once been seriously 
attempted. Laws of the most sanguinary and 
unconstitutional nature have been enacted; the 
country has been disgraced and exasperated 
by frequent and bloody executions ; and the 
gibbet, that perpetual resource of weak and 
cruel legislators, has groaned under the multi- 
tude of starving criminals: yet, while the cause 
is suffered to exist, the effects will ever follow. 
The amputation of limbs will never eradicate 
a prurient humour, which must be sought in its 
source, and there remedied." 

"I wish," continues Mr. Wakefield, "for the 
sake of humanity, and for the honour of the 
Irish character, that the gentlemen of that coun- 
try would take this matter into their serious 
consideration. Let them only for a moment 
place themselves in the situation of the half- 
famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched fami- 



ly, clamorous for food ; and judge what his feel- 
ings must be, when he sees the tenth part of the 
produce of his potato garden exposed at harvest 
time to public cant; or, if he have given a pro- 
missory note for the payment of a certain sum 
of money, to compensate for such tithe when it 
becomes due, to hear the heart-rending cries of 
his offspring clinging round him, and lamenting 
for the milk of which they are deprived, by the 
cows being driven to the pound, to be sold to dis- 
charge the debt. Such accounts are not the 
creation of fancy ; the facts do exist, and are 
but too common in Ireland. Were one of them 
transferred to canvas by the hand of genius, 
and exhibited to English humanity, that heart 
must be callous, indeed, that could refuse its 
sympathy. I have seen the cow, the favourite 
cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, 
the tears and the imprecations of a whole fami- 
ly, who were paddling after, through wet and 
dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of 
this their only friend and benefactor, at the 
pound gate. I have heard with emotions which 
I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated 
from village to village as the cavalcade pro- 
ceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the 
domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose 
numerous herds were cropping the most luxu- 
riant pastures, while he was secure from any 
demand for the tithe of- their food, looking on 
with the most unfeeling indifference." — Wake- 
field, p. 486. 

In Munster, where tithe of potatoes is exact- 
ed, risings against the system have constantly 
occurred during the last forty years. In Ulster, 
where no such tithe is required, these insurrec- 
tions are unknown. The double church which 
Ireland supports, and that painful visible con- 
tribution towards it which the poor Irishman is 
compelled to make from his miserable pittance, 
is one great cause of those never-ending in- 
surrections, burnings, murders and robberies, 
which have laid waste that ill-fated country for 
so many years. The unfortunate consequence 
of the civil disabilities, and the church payments 
under which the Catholics labour, is a rooted 
antipathy to this country. They hate the Eng- 
lish government from historical recollection, 
actual sufferings and disappointed hope ; and 
till they are better treated, they will continue to 
hate it. At this moment, in a period of the 
most profound peace, there are twenty-five 
thousand of the best disciplined and best ap- 
pointed troops in the world in Ireland, with 
bayonets fixed, presented arms, and in the atti- 
tude of present war; nor is there a man too 
much — nor would Ireland be tenable without 
them. When it was necessary last year (or 
thought necessary) to put down the children of 
reform, we were forced to make a new levy 
of troops in this country — not a man could 
be spared from Ireland. The moment they 
had embarked, Peep-of-day Boys, Heart-of-Oak 
Boys, Twelve-o'clock Boys,Heart-of-Flint Boys, 
and all the bloody boyhood of the Bog of Allen, 
would have proceeded to the ancient work of 
riot, rapine and disaffection. Ireland, in short, 
till her wrongs are redressed, and a more liberal 
policy is adopted towards her, will always be a 
cause of anxiety and suspicion to this country; 
and, in some moment of our weakness and de- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, 



14. 



pTes$ion, will forcibly extort what she would 
now receive with gratitude and exultation. 

Ireland is situated close to another island of 
greater size, speaking the same language, very 
superior in civilization, and the seat of govern- 
ment. The consequence of this is the emigra- 
tion of the richest and most powerful part of the 
community — a vast drain of wealth — and the 
absence of all that wholesome influence which 
the representatives of ancient families residing 
upon their«states, produce upon their tenantry 
and dependents. Can any man imagine that 
the scenes which have been acted in Ireland 
within these last twenty years, would have 
taken place, if such vast proprietors as the 
Duke of Devonshire, the Marquis of Hertford, 
the Marquis of Lansdowne, Earl Fitzwilliam, 
and many other men of equal wealth, had been 
in the constant habit of residing upon their Irish, 
as they are upon their English estates 1 Is it of 
no consequence to the order and the civilization 
of a large district, whether the great mansion is 
inhabited by an insignificant, perhaps a mis- 
chievous, attorney, in the shape of agent, or 
whether the first and greatest men of the United 
Kingdoms, after the business of Parliament is 
over, come with their friends and families, to 
exercise hospitality, to spend large revenues, to 
diffuse information and to improve manners ] 
This evil is a very serious one to Ireland ; and, 
as far as we see, incurable. For if the present 
large estates were, by the dilapidation of fami- 
lies, to be broken to pieces and sold, others 
equally great would, in the free circulation of 
property, speedily accumulate; and the moment 
any possessor arrived at a certain pitch of for- 
tune, he would probably choose to reside in the 
better country, — near the Parliament or the 
court. 

This absence of great proprietors in Ireland 
necessarily brings with it, or if not necessarily, 
has actually brought with it, the employment 
of middlemen, which forms one other standing 
and regular Irish grievance. We are well aware 
of all that can be said in defence of middle- 
men; that they stand between the little farmer 
and the great proprietor, as the shop-keeper 
does between the manufacturer and consumer; 
and, in fact, by their intervention, save time, and 
therefore expense. This may be true enough 
in the abstract; but the particularnatureof land 
must be attended to. The object of the man who 
makes cloth is to sell his cloth at the present 
market, for as high a price as he can obtain. If 
that price is too high, it soon falls; but no injury 
is done to his machinery by the superior price 
he has enjoyed for a season — he is just as able 
to produce cloth with it, as if the profits he en- 
joyed had always been equally moderate ; he 
has no fear, therefore, of the middlemen, or of 
any species of moral machinery which may help 
to obtain for him the greatest present prices. 
The same would be the feeling of any one who 
let out a steam-engine, or any other machine, 
for the purposes of manufacture ; he would natu- 
rally take the highest price he could get : for he 
might either let his machine for a price propor- 
tionate to the work it did, or the repairs, estima- 
ble with the greatest precision, might be thrown 
upon the tenant; in short, he could hardly ask 
any rent too high for his machine which a re- 
19 



sponsible person would give ; dilapidation would 
be so visible, and so calculable in such in- 
stances, that any secondary lease, or subletting, 
would be rather an increase of security than a 
source of alarm. Any evil from such a practice 
would be improbable, measurable and reme- 
diable. In land, on the contrary, the object is 
not to get the highest prices absolutely, but to 
get the highest prices which will not injure the 
machine. One tenant may offer and pay double 
the rent of another, and in a few years leave the 
land in a state which will effectually bar all fu- 
ture offers of tenancy. It is of no use to fill a 
lease full of clauses and covenants ; a tenant 
who pays more than he ought to pay, or who pays 
even to the last farthing which he ought to pay, 
will rob the land, and injure the machine, in 
spite of all the attorneys in England. He will 
rob it even if he means to remain upon it — 
driven on by present distress, and anxious to 
put off the day of defalcation and arrear. The 
damage is often difficult of detection — not easily 
calculated, not easily to be proved; such for 
which juries (themselves, perhaps, farmers) 
would not willingly give sufficient compensa-> 
tion. And if this is true in England, it is much 
more strikingly true in Ireland, where it is ex- 
tremely difficult to obtain verdicts for breaches 
of covenant in leases. 

The only method then of guarding the machine 
from real injury is, by giving to the actual oc- 
cupier such advantage in his contract, that he 
is unwilling to give it up — that he has a real 
interest in retaining it, and is not driven by the 
distresses of the present moment to destroy the 
future productiveness of the soil. Any rent 
which the landlord accepts more than this, or 
any system by which more rent than this is ob- 
tained, is to borrow money upon the most usu- 
rious and profligate interest — to increase the 
revenue of the present day by the absolute ruin 
of the property. Such is the effect produced by 
a middleman : he gives high prices that he may 
obtain higher from the occupier; more is paid 
by the actual occupier than is consistent with 
the safety and preservation of the machine; the 
land is run out, and in the end, that maximum of 
rent we have described is not obtained: and not 
only is the property injured by such a system, 
but in Ireland the most shocking consequences 
ensue from it. There is little manufacture in 
Ireland; the price of labour is low, the demand 
for labour irregular. If a poor man is driven, 
by distress of rent, from his potato garden, he 
has no other resource — all is lost: he will do the 
impossible (as the French say) to retain it: and 
subscribe any bond, and promise any rent. The 
middleman has no character to lose ; and he 
knew, when he took up the occupation, that it 
was one with which pity had nothing lo do. On 
he drives ; and backward the poor peasant re- 
cedes, losing something at every step, till he 
comes to the very brink of despair; and then 
he recoils and murders his oppressor, and is a 
White boy or a Right boy : — the soldier shoots 
him, and the judge hangs him. 

In the debate which took place in the Irish 
House of Commons, upon the bill for preventing^ 
tumultuous risings and assemblies, on the 31st 
of January, 1787, the attorney-general submitted 
to the House the following narrative of facts. 
N 



146 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"The commencement," said he, "was in one 
or two parishes in the »ounty of Kerry; and 
they proceeded thus. The people assembled in 
a Catholic chapel, and there took an oath to 
obey the laws of Captain Right, and to starve the 
clergy. They then proceeded to the next pa- 
rishes, on the following Sunday, and there swore 
the people in the same manner; with this addi- 
tion, that they (the people last sworn) should, 
on the ensuing Sunday, proceed to the chapels 
of their next neighbouring parishes, and swear 
the inhabitants of those parishes in like manner. 
Proceeding in this manner they very soon went 
through the province of Munster. The first 
object was the reformation of tithes. They swore 
not to give more than a certain price per acre; 
not to assist, or allow them to be assisted, in 
drawing the tithe, and to permit 7io prodor. 
They next took upon them to prevent the collec- 
tion of parish cesses; next to nominate parish 
clerks, and in some cases curates: to say what 
church shoulder should not be repaired; and 
in one case to threaten that they would burn a 
new church, if the old one were not given for a 
mass-house. At last, they proceeded to regulate 
the price of lands; to raise the price of labour; 
and to oppose the collection of the hearth money, 
and other taxes. Bodies of 5000 of them have 
been seen to march through the country un- 
armed, and if met by any magistrate, Ihey never 
offered the sinallesi rudeness or offence,- on the 
contrary, they had allowed persons charged with 
crimes to be taken from amongst them by the 
magistrate alone, unaided by any force." 

"The attorney-general said he was well ac- 
quainted wiih the province of Munsier, and that 
it was impossible for human wretchedness to 
exceed that of the peasantry of that province. 
The unhappy tenantry were ground to powder 
by relentless landlords; that, far from being 
able to give the clergy their just dues, they had 
net food nor raiment lor themselves — the land- 
lord grasped the whole; and sorry was he to 
add, that, not satisfied with the present extortion, 
some landlords had been so base as to instigate 
the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes, 
not in order to alleviate the distresses of the 
tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's 
share to the cruel rack-rents they already paid. 
The poor people of Munster lived in a more ab- 
ject state of poverty than human nature could be 
supposed equal to bear." — Grattan's Speeches, vol. 
i. 292. 

We are not, of course, in such a discussion, 
to be governed by names. A middleman might 
be tied up by the strongest legal restriction, as 
to the price he was to exact from the under- 
tenants, and then he would be no more perni- 
cious to the estate than a steward. A steward 
might be protected in exactions as severe as the 
most rapacious middleman ; and then, of course, 
it would be the same thing under another name. 
The practice to which we object is, (he too 
• common method in Ireland of extorting the last 
farthing which the tenant is willing to give for 
land, rather than quit it: and the machinery 
by which such practice is carried into efl^ect, is 
that of the middleman. It is not only that it 
ruins the land; it ruins ihe people also. They 
are made so poor — brought so near the ground 
— that they can sink no lower; and burst out at 



last into all the acts of desperation and revenge 
for which Ireland is so notorious. Men who 
have money in their pockets, and find that they 
are improving in their circumstances, don't do 
these things. Opulence, or the hope of opulence 
or comfort, is the parent of decency, order and 
submission to the laws. A landlord in Ireland 
understands the luxury of carriages and horses; 
but has no relish for the greater luxury of sur- 
rounding himself with a moral and grateful 
tenantry. The absent proprietor looks only to 
revenue, and cares nothing for the disorder and 
degradation of a country which he never means 
to visit. There are very honourable exceptions 
to this charge : but there are too many living in- 
stances that it is just. The rapacity of the Irish 
landlord induces him to allow of the extreme 
division of his lands. When the daughter mar- 
ries, a little portion of the little farm is broken 
off— another corner for Patrick, and another for 
Dermot — till the land is broken into sections, 
upon one of which an English cow could not 
stand. Twenty mansions of misery are thus 
reared instead of one. A louder cry of oppres- 
sion is lifted up to Heaven; and fresh enemies 
to the English name and power are multiplied 
on the earth. The Irish gentlemen, too, ex- 
tremely desirous of political influence, multiply 
freeholds and split votes; and this propensity 
tends of course to increase the miserable re- 
dundance of living beings, under which Ireland 
is groaning. Among the manifold wretchedness 
to which the poor Irish tenant is liable, we 
must not pass over the practice of driving for 
rent. A lets land to B, who lets it to C, who 
lets it again to D. D pays C his rent, and C 
pays B. But if B fails to pay A, the cattle of 
B, C, D are all driven to the pound, and after 
the interval of a few days, sold by auction. A 
general driving of this kind very frequently 
leads to a bloody insurrection. It may be 
ranked among the classical grievances of Ire- 
land. 

Potatoes enter for a great deal into the pre- 
sent condition of Ireland. They are much 
cheaper than wheat; and it is so easy to rear a 
family upon them, that there is no check to 
population from the difficulty of procuring food. 
The population, therefore, goes on with a ra- 
pidity approaching almost to that of new coun- 
tries, and in a much greater ratio than the 
improving agriculture and manufactures of the 
country can find employment for it. All degrees 
of all nations begin with living in pig-styes. 
The king or the priest first gets out of them; 
then the noble, then the pauper, in proportion , 
as each class becomes more and more opulent. ■ 
Better tastes arise from belter circumstances; * 
and the luxury of one period is the wretched- 
ness and poverty of another. English peasants, 
in the time of Henry the Seventh, were lodged 
as badly as Irish peasants now are; but the 
population was limited by the difficulty of pro- 
curing a corn subsistence. The improvements 
of this kingdom were more rapid; the price of 
labour rose; and, with it, the luxury and com- i 
fort of the peasant, who is now decently lodged | 
and clothed, and who would thmk himself in the 
last stage of wretchedness, if he had nothing 
but an iron pot in a turf house, and plenty of 
potatoes in it. The use of the potato was intro- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



14T 



duced into Ireland when the wretched accommo- 
dation of her own peasantry bore some propor- 
tion to the state of those accommodations ail 
over Europe. But they have increased their 
population so fast, and, in conjunction with the 
oppressive government of Ireland retarding im- 
provement, have kept the price of labour so low, 
that the Irish poor have never been able to 
emerge from their mud cabins, or to acquire 
any taste for cleanliness and decency of appear- 
ance. Mr. Curwen has the following descrip- 
tion of Irish cottages. 

"These mansions of miserable existence, for 
so they may truly be described, conformably to 
our general estimation of those indispensable 
comforts requisite to constitute the happiness of 
rational beings, are most commonly composed 
of two rooms on the ground floor, a most ap- 
propriate term, for they are literary on the 
earth ; the surface of which is not unfrequently 
reduced a foot or more, to save the expense of 
so much outward walling. The one is a refec- 
tory, the other the dormitory. The furniture of 
the former, if the owner ranks in the upper part 
of the scale of scantiness, will consist of a 
kitchen dresser, well provided and highly deco- 
rated with crockery — not less apparently the 
pride of the husband than the result of female 
vanity in the wife : which, with a table, a chest, 
a few stools and an iron pot, complete the cato- 
logue of conveniences generally found as be- 
longing to the cabin; while a spinning-wheel, 
furnished by the Linen Board, and a loom, or- 
nament vacant spaces, that otherwise would 
remain unfurnished. In fitting up the latter, 
which cannot, on any occasion, or by any dis- 
play, add a feather to the weight or importance 
expected to be excited by the appearance of the 
former, the inventory is limited to one, and 
sometimes two beds, serving for the repose of 
the whole family ! However downy these may 
be to limbs impatient for rest, their coverings 
appeared to be very slight; and the whole of 
the apartment created reflections of a very pain- 
ful nature. Under such privations, with a wet 
mud floor, and a roof in tatters, how idle the 
search for comforts!" — Curwen, I. 112, 113. 

To this extract we shall add one more on the 
same subject. 

"The gigantic figure, bare-headed before me, 
had a beard that would not have disgraced an 
ancient Israelite — he was without shoes or 
stockings — and almost a sans-culotte — with a 
coat or rather a jacket, that appeared as if the 
first blast of wind would tear it to tatters. 
Though his garb was thus tattered he had a 
manly commanding countenance. I asked per- 
mission to see the inside of his cabin, to which 
I received his most courteous assent. On 
stooping to enter at the door I was stopped and 
found that permission from another was neces- 
sary before I could be admitted. A pig, which 
was fastened to a stake driven into the floor, 
with length of rope sufficient to permit him the 
enjoyment of sun and air, demanded some cour- 
tesy, which I showed him. and was suffered to 
enter. The wife was engaged in boiling thread; 
and by her side, near the fire, a lovely infant 
was sleeping, without any covering, on a bare 
board. Whether the fire gave additional glow 
to the countenance of the babe, or that Nature 



impressed on its unconscious cheek ablush that 
the lot of man should be exposed to such pri- 
vations, I will not decide; but if the cause be 
referable to the latter, it was in perfect unison 
with my own feelings. Two or three other 
children crowded round the mother: on their 
rosy countenances health seemed established 
in spite of filth and ragged garments. The dress 
of the poor woman was barely sufficient to sa- 
tisfy decency. Her countenance bore the im- 
pression of a set melancholy, tinctured with an 
appearance of ill health. The hovel, which 
did not exceed twelve or fifteen feet in length 
and ten in breadth, was half obscured by smoke 
— chimney or window I saw none; the door 
served the various purposes of an inlet to light, 
and the outlet to smoke. The furniture consist- 
ed of two stools, an iron pot and a spinning- 
wheel — while a sack stuffed with straw, and a 
single blanket laid on planks, served as a bed 
for the repose of the whole family. Need I 
attempt to describe my sensations'! The state- 
ment alone cannot fail of conveying, to a mind 
like yours, an adequate idea of them — I could 
not long remain a witness to this acme of hu- 
man misery. As I left the deplorable habita- 
tion, the mistress followed me to repeat her 
thanks for the trifle I had bestowed. This gave 
me an opportunity of observing her person 
more particularly. She was a tall figure, her 
countenance composed of interesting features, 
and with every appearance of having once been 
handsome. 

"Unwilling to quit the village without first 
satisfying myself whether what I had seen was 
a solitary instance, or a sample of its general 
state; or whether the extremity of poverty I had 
just beheld had arisen from peculiar improvi- 
dence and want of management in one wretch- 
ed family; I went into an adjoining habitation, 
where I found a poor old woman of eighty, 
whose miserable existence was painfully con- 
tinued by the maintenance of her granddaugh- 
ter. Their condition, if possible, was more de- 
plorable." — Curwen, I. 181. 183. 

This wretchedness, of which all strangers who 
visit Ireland are so sensible, proceeds certainly, 
in great measure, from their accidental use of a 
food so cheap, that it encourages population to an 
extraordinary degree, lowers the price of labour, 
and leaves the multitudes which it calls into 
existence almost destitute of every thing but 
food. Many more live in consequence of the 
introduction of potatoes ; but all live in greater 
wretchedness. In the progress of population, 
the potato must, of course, become at last as dif- 
ficult to be procured as any other food ; and then 
let the political economist calculate what the 
immensity and wretchedness of a people must 
be where the farther progress of population is 
checked by the difficulty of procuring potatoes. 

The consequence of the long mismanagement 
and oppression of Ireland, and of the singular 
circumstances in which it is placed, is, that it is 
a semi-barbarous country: — more shame to those 
who have thus ill treated a fine country, and a 
fine people ; but it is part of the present case of 
Ireland. The barbarism of Ireland is evinced 
by the frequency and ferocity of duels, — the he- 
reditary clannish feuds of the common people, 
— and the fights to which they give birth, — the 



148 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



atrocious cruelties practised in the insurrections 
of the common people — and their proneness to 
insurrection. The lower Irish live in a state of 
greater wretchedness than any other people in 
Europe, inhabiting so fine a soil and climate. 
It is difficult, often impossible, to execute the 
processes of law. In cases where gentlemen 
are concerned, it is often not even attempted. 
The conduct of under-sheriffs is often very cor- 
rupt.* We are afraid the magistracy of Ireland 
is very inferior to that of this country; the spirit 
of jobbing and bribery is very widely diffused, 
and upon occasions when the utmost purity pre- 
vails in the sister kingdom. Military force is 
necessary all over the countiy, and often for the 
most common and just operations of govern- 
ment. The behaviour of the higher to the lower 
orders is much less gentle and decent than in 
England. Blows from superiors to inferiors 
are more frequent, and the punishment for such 
aggression more doubtful. The -wovA. gentleman 
seems, in Ireland, to put an end to most pro- 
cesses of law. Arrest a gentleman! !!!— take 
out a warrant against a gentleman — are modes 
of operation not very common in the adminis- 
tration of Irish justice. If a man strikes the 
meanest peasant in England, he is either knock- 
ed down in his turn, or immediately taken before 
a magistrate. It is impossible to live in Ireland 
without perceiving the various points in which 
it is inferior in civilization. Want of unity in 
feeling and interest among the people, — irrita- 
bility, violence and revenge, — want of comfort 
and cleanliness in the lower orders, — habitual 
disobedience to the law, — want of confidence 
in magistrates, — corruption, venality, the per- 
petual necessity of recurring to military force, 
— all carry back the observer to that remote and 
early condition of mankind, which an English- 
man can learn only in the pages of the antiquary 
or the historian. We do not draw this picture 
for censure but for truth. We admire the Irish, 
— feel the most sincere pity for the state of Ire- 
land, and think the conduct of the English to 
that country to have been a system of atrocious 
cruelty and contemptible meanness. With such 
a climate, such a soil and such a people, the in- 
feriority of Ireland to the rest of Europe is di- 
rectly chargeable to the long wickedness of the 
English government. 

A direct consequence of the present uncivi- 
lized state of Ireland, is that very little English 
capital travels there. The man who deals in 
steam-engines and warps and woofs, is naturally 
alarmed by Peep-of-Day Boys, and nocturnal 
Carders ; his object is to buy and sell as quicklly 
and quietly as he can; and he will naturally 
bear high taxes and rivalry in England, or emi- 
grate to any part of the Continent, or to America, 
rather than plunge into the tumult of Irish poli- 
tics and passions. There is nothing which Ire- 
land wants more than large manufacturing towns 
to take off its superfluous population. But in- 
ternal peace must come first, and then the arts 
of peace will follow. The foreign manufac- 
turer will hardly think of embarking his capital 
where he cannot be sure that his existence is 
safe. Anothercheck to the manufacturing great- 
ness of Ireland, is the scarcity — not of coal — 



* The difficulty often is to catch the sheriff. 



but of good coal, cheaply raised ; an article ia 
which (in spite of papers in the Iri§h Transac- 
tions) they are lamentably inferior to the Eng- 
lish. 

Another consequence from some of the 
causes we have stated, is the extreme idleness 
of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the 
value of which the Irish seem to have so little 
notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dau- 
dle, stare, gape, and do any thing but strive and 
wrestle with the task before them. The most 
ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman 
ploughing. — A gigantic figure — a seven foot 
machine for turning potatoes into human na- 
ture, wrapt up in an immense great coat, and 
urging on two starved ponies, with dreadful im- 
precations, and uplifted shillala. The Irish crow 
discerns a coming perquisite, and is not inatten- 
tive to the proceedings of the steeds. The fur- 
row which is to be the depository of the future 
crop, is not unlike, either in depth or regularity, 
to those domestic furrows which the nails of the 
meek and much-injured wife plough, in some 
family quarrel, upon the cheeks of the deserv- 
edly punished husband. The weeds seem to 
fall contentedly, knowing that they have ful- 
filled their destiny, and left behind them, for the 
resurrection of the ensuing spring, an abundant 
and healthy progeny. The whole is a scene of 
idleness, laziness and poverty, of which it is 
impossible, in this active and enterprising coun- 
try, to form the most distant conception; but 
strongly indicative of habits, whether second- 
ary or original, which will long present a pow- 
erful impediment to the improvement of Ireland. 

The Irish character contributes something to 
retard the improvements of that country. The 
Irishman has many good qualities : he is brave, 
witty, generous, eloquent, hospitable and open? 
hearted ; but he is vain, ostentatious, extrava- 
gant, and fond of display — light in counsel' — 
deficient in perseverance — without skill in pri- 
vate or public economy — an enjoyer, not an 
acquirer — one who despises the slow and patient 
virtues — who wants the superstructure without 
the foundation — the result without the previous 
operation — the oak without the acorn and the 
three hundred years of expectation. The Irish 
are irascible, prone to debt and to fight, and 
very impatient of the restraints of law. Such 
a people are not likely to keep their eyes 
steadily upon the main chance, like the Scotch 
or the Dutch. England strove very hard, at 
one period, to compel the Scotch to pay a 
double church; — but Sawney took his pen and 
ink; and finding what a sum it amounted to, 
became furious, and drew his sword. God for- 
bid the Irishman should do the same ! the re- 
medy, now, would be worse than the disease; 
but if the oppressions of England had been 
more steadily resisted a century ago, Ireland 
would not have been the scene of poverty, 
misery and distress which it now is. 

The Catholic religion, among other causes, 
contributes to the backwardness and barbarism 
of Ireland. Its debasing superstition, childish 
ceremonies, and the profound submission to the 
priesthood which it teaches, all tend to darken 
men's minds, to impede the progress of know- 
ledge and inquiry, and to prevent Ireland from 
becoming as free, as powerful, and as rich as 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



149 



the sister kingdom. Though sincere friends to 
Catholic emancipation, we are no advocates for 
the Catholic religion. We should be very glad 
to see a general conversion to Protestantism 
among the Irish; but we do not think that vio- 
lence, privations and incapacities ar» the pro- 
per methods of making proselytes. 

Such, then, is Ireland, at this period, — a land 
more barbarous than the rest of Europe, because 
it has been worse treated and more cruelly op- 
pressed. Many of the incapacities and priva- 
tions to which the Catholics were exposed, have 
been removed bylaw; but, in such instances, 
they are still incapacitated and deprived by cus- 
tom. Many cruel and oppressive laws are still 
enforced against them. A ninth part of the 
population engrosses all the honours of the 
country; the other nine pay a tenth of the pro- 
duct of the earth for the support of a religion in 
which they do not believe. There is little capi- 
tal in the country. The great and rich men 
are called by business, or allured by pleasure, 
into England ; their estates are given up to fac- 
tors, and the utmost farthing of rent extorted 
from the poor, who, if they give up the land, 
cannot get employment in manufactures, or 
regular employment in husbandry. The com- 
mon people use a sort of food so very cheap, 
that they can rear families, who cannot procure 
employment, and who have little more of the 
comforts of life than food. The Irish are light- 
minded — want of employment has made them 
idle — they are irritable and brave — have a keen 
remembrance of the past wrongs they have 
suffered, and the present wrongs they are suf- 
fering from England. The consequence of all 
this is, eternal riot and insurrection, a whole 
army of soldiers in time of profound peace, and 
general rebellion whenever England is busy 
with other enemies, or off her guard! And 
thus it will be while the same causes continue 
to operate, for ages to come, — and worse and 
worse as the rapidly increasing population of 
the Catholics becomes more and more nume- 
rous. 

The remedies are, time and justice ; and that 
justice consists in repealing all laws which 
make any distinction between the two religions; 
in placing over the government of Ireland, not 
the stupid, amiable, and insignificant noblemen 
who have too often been sent there, but men 
who feel deeply the wrongs of Ireland, and who 
have an ardent wish to heal them; who will 
take care that Catholics, when eligible, shall be 
elected ;* who will share the patronage of Ire- 
land proportionally among the two parties, and 
give to just and liberal laws the same vigour of 
execution which has hitherto been reserved only 
for decrees of tyranny, and the enactments of 
oppression. The injustice and hardship of sup- 
porting two churches must be put out of sight, 
if it cannot or ought not to be cured. The po- 
litical economist, the moralist and the satirist, 
must combine to teach moderation and superin- 
tendence to the great Irish proprietors. Public 
talk and clamour may do something for the poor 
Irish, as it did for the slaves in the West Indies. 
Ireland will become more quiet under such 



• Great merit is due to the Whigs for the patronage be- 
stowed on Catholics. 



treatment, and then more rich, more comfortable, 
and more civilized; and the horrid spectacle of 
folly and tyranny which it at present exhibits, 
may in time be removed from the eyes of Europe. 
There are two eminent Irishmen now in the 
House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh and Mr. 
Canning, who will subscribe to the justness of 
every syllable we have said upon this subject; 
and who have it in their power, by making it 
the condition of their remaining in office, to 
liberate their native country and raise it to its 
just rank among the nations of the earth. Yet 
the court buys them over, year after year, by 
the pomp and perquisites of office, and year 
after year they come into the House of Com- 
mons, feeling deeply and describing powerfully, 
the injuries of five millions of their countrymen, 
— and continue members of a government that 
inflicts those evils, under the pitiful delusion 
that it is not a cabinet question, — as if the 
scratchings and quarrellings of kings and 
queens could alone cement politicians together 
in indissoluble unity, while the fate and fortune 
of one-third of the empire might be compliment- 
ed away from one minister to another, without 
the smallest breach in their cabinet alliance. 
Politicians, at least honest politicians, should be 
very flexible and accommodating in little things, 
very rigid and inflexible in great things. And 
is this not a great thing? Who has painted it 
in finer and more commanding eloquence than 
Mr. Canning? Who has taken a more sensible 
and statesmanlike view of our miserable and 
cruel policy than Lord Castlereagh? You 
would think, to hear them, that the same planet 
could not contain them and the oppressors of 
their country, — perhaps not the same solar 
system. Yet for money, claret and patronage, 
they lend their countenance, assistance and 
friendship, to the ministers who are the stern 
and inflexible enemies to the emancipation of 
Ireland ! 

Thank God that all is not profligacy and cor- 
ruption in the history of that devoted people — 
and that the name of Irishman does not always 
carry with it the idea of the oppressor or the 
oppressed — the plunderer or the plundered — the 
tyrant or the slave. Great men hallow a whole 
people and lift up all who live in their time. 
What Irishman does not feel proud that he has 
lived in the days of Gkattan? who has not 
turned to him for comfort, from the false friends 
and open enemies of Ireland? who did not re- , 
member him in the days of its burnings and 
v/astings and murders ? No government ever 
dismayed him — the world could not bribe him 
— he thought only of Ireland — lived for no other 
object — dedicated to her his beautiful fancy, his 
elegant wit, his manly courage and all the 
splendour of his astonishing eloquence. He 
was so born and so gifted, that poetry, forensic 
skill, elegant literature and all the highest at- 
tainments of human genius, were within his 
reach ; but he thought the noblest occupation of 
a man was to make other men happy and free ; 
and in that straight line he went on i for fifty 
years, without one side-look, without one yield- 
ing thought, without one motive in his heart 
which he might not have laid open to the view 
of God and man. He .is gone ! — but there is not 
a single day of his honest life of which every gc *d 
k2 



160 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



IrishmaD would not be more proud, than of the I the annual deserters and betrayers of their na> 
whole political existence of his countrymen — | tive land. 



SPRING-GUNS.* 



[Edikbuhgh Review, 1821.] 



Whbn Lord Dacre (then Mr. Brand) brought 
into the House of Commons his bill for the 
amendment of the game laws, a system of 
greater mercy and humanity was in vain re- 
commended to that popular branch of the legis- 
lature. The interests of humanity, and the inte- 
rests of the lord of the manor, were not, however, 
opposed to each other ; nor any attempt made 
to deny the superior importance of the last. No 
such bold or alarming topics were agitated ; but it 
was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, 
there would be more partridges — if the lower 
orders of mankind M'cre not torn from their 
families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and 
pheasants would be increased in number, or, at 
least, not diminished. It is not, however, till 
after long experience that mankind ever think 
of recurring to humane expedients for effecting 
their objects. The rulers who ride the people 
never think of coaxing and petting till they have 
worn out the lashes of their whips, and broken 
the rowels of their spurs. The legislators of 
the trigger replied, that two laws had lately 
passed which would answer their purpose of 
preserving game: the one, an act for transport- 
ing men found with arms in their hands for the 
purposes of killing game in the night; the other, 
an act for rendering the buyers of the game 
equally guilty with the seller, and for involving 
both in the same penalty. Three seasons have 
elapsed since the last of these laws was passed ; 
and we appeal to the experience of all the great 
towns in England, whether the difficulty of pro- 
curing game is in the slightest degree increased 1 
— whether hares, partridges and pheasants are 
not purchased with as much facility as before 
the passing this acti — whether the price of such 
unlawful commodities is even in the slightest 
degree increased] Let the Assize and Sessions' 
calendars bear witness, whether the law for 
transporting poachers has not had the most 
direct tendency to encourage brutal assaults and 
ferocious murders. There is hardly now a jail- 
delivery in which some gamekeeper has not 
murdered».a poacher — or some poacher a game- 
keeper. If the question concerned the payment 
of five pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his 
life rather than be taken ; but when he is to go 
to Botany Bay for seven years, he summons 
together his brother poachers — they get brave 
from rum, numbers and despair — and a bloody 
battle ensues. 

Another method by which it is attempted to 



* 77ie Shooter''$ Guide. By J. B. Johnson. ISiao. Ed- 
vaids and Knibb, 1819. 



defeat the depredations of the poacher, is by set- 
ting spring-guns to murder any person who 
comes within their reach ; and it is to this last 
new feature in the supposed game laws, to which, 
on the present occasion, we intend principally 
to confine our notice. 

We utterly disclaim all hostility to the game 
laws in general. Game ought to belong to those 
who feed it. All the landowners in England 
are fairly entitled to all the game in England. 
These laws are constructed upon a basis of 
substantial justice; but there is a great deal of 
absurdity and tyranny mingled with them, and 
a perpetual and vehement desire on the part of 
the country gentlemen to push the provisions of 
these laws up to the highest point of tyrannical 
severity. 

" Is it lawful to put to death by a spring-gun, 
or any other machine, an unqualified person 
trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit 
of game, and who has received due notice of 
your intention, and of the risk to which he is 
exposed?" This, we think, is stating the ques- 
tion as fairly as can be stated. We purposely 
exclude gardens, orchards and all contiguity to 
the dwelling-house. We exclude, also, all fe- 
lonious intention on the part of the deceased. 
The object of his expedition shall be proved to 
be game ; and the notice he received of his dan- 
ger shall be allowed to be as complete as pos- 
sible. It must also be part of the case, that the 
spring-gun was placed there for the express 
purpose of defending the game, by killing or 
wounding the poacher, or spreading terror, or 
doing any thing that a reasonable man ought to 
know would happen from such a proceeding. 

Suppose any gentleman were to give notice 
that all other persons must abstain from his 
manors; that he himself and his servants pa- 
raded the woods and fields with loaded pistols 
and blunderbusses, and would shoot anybody 
who fired at a partridge ; and suppose he were 
to keep his word, and shoot through the head 
some rash trespasser who defied this bravado, 
and was determined to have his sport: — Is there 
any doubt that he would be guilty of murder 1 
We suppose no resistance on the part of the 
trespasser; but that, the moment he passes the 
line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, he 
is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from 
behind a tree. If this is not murder, what is 
murder T We will make the case a little belter 
for the homicide squire. It shall be night; the 
poacher, an unqualified person, steps over the 
line of demarcation with his nets and snares, 
and is instantly shot through the head by the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



151 



pistol of the proprietor. We have no doubt 
that this would be murder — that it ought to be 
considered as murder, and punished as murder. 
We think this so clear that it would be a waste 
of ticoe to argue it. There is no kind of resist- 
ance on the part of the deceased ; no attempt to 
run away; he is not even challenged: but in- 
stantly shot dead by the proprietor of the wood, 
for no other crime than the intention of killing 
game unlawfully. We do not suppose that any 
man, possessed of the elements of law and com- 
mon sense, would deny this to be a case of 
murder, let the previous notice to the deceased 
have been as perfect as it could be. It is true, 
a trespas.-!er in a park may be killed ; but then 
it is when he will not render himself to the 
keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand to the 
king's peace. But deer are property, game is 
not; and this power of slaying deer-stealers is 
by the 21st Edward I., de Malefadoribus in Parcis, 
and by 3d and 4th William & Mary, c. 10. So 
rioters may be killed, house-burners, ravishers, 
felons refusing to be arrested, felons escaping, 
felons breaking jail, men resisting a civil pro- 
cess — may all be put to death. All these cases 
of justifiable homicide are laid down and ad- 
mitted in our books. But who ever heard that 
to pistol a poacher was justifiable homicide 1 It 
has long been decided that it is unlawful to kill 
a dog who is pursuing game in a manor. " To 
decide the contrary," says Lord Ellenborough, 
"would outrage reason and sense." (Vere u. 
Lord Cawdor and King, 11 East, 368.) Pointers 
have always been treated by the legislature 
with great delicacy and consideration. To 
" wish to be a dog and to bay the moon" is not 
quite so mad a wish as the poet thought it. 

If these things are so, what is the difference 
between the act of firing yourself, and placing 
an engine which does the same thingl In the 
one case your hand pulls the trigger; in the 
other, it places the wire which communicates 
with the trigger, and causes the death of the 
trespasser. There is the same intention of slay- 
ing in both cases — there is precisely the same 
human agency in both cases ; only the steps are 
rather more numerous in the latter case. As to 
the bad eifects of allowing proprietors of game 
to put trespassers to death at once, or to set 
guns that will do it, we can have no hesitation 
in saying, that the first method, of giving the 
power of life and death to esquires, would be 
by far the most humane. For, as we have ob- 
served in a previous Essay on the Game Laws, 
a !ive armigeral spring-gun would distinguish 
an accidental trespasser from a real poacher — 
a woman or a boy from a man — perhaps might 
spare a friend or an acquaintance — or a father 
of a family with ten children — or a small free- 
holder who voted for administration. But this 
new rural artillery must destroy, without mercy 
and selection, every one who approaches it. 

In the case of Hot versus Wilks, Esq., the four 
judges. Abbot, Bailey, Holroyd and Best, gave 
their opinions serj'a/jVw on points connected with 
this question. In this case, as reported in Chet- 
wynd's edition of Burn's Justice, 1820, vol. ii. 
p. 500, Abbot, C. J. observes as follows : — 

"I cannot say that repeated and increasing 
acts of aggression may not reasonably call for 
increased means of defence and protection. I 



believe that many of the persons who cause en- 
gines of this description to be placed in their 
grounds, do not do so with an intention to injure 
any person, but really believe that the publica- 
tion of notices will prevent any person from 
sustaining an injury: and that no person having 
the notice given him, will be weak and foolish 
enough to expose himself to the perilous conse- 
quences of his trespass. Many persons who 
place such engines in their grounds, do so for 
the purpose of preventing, by means of terror, 
injury to their property, rather than from any 
motive of doing malicious injury." 

" Increased means of defence and protection," 
but increased (his lordship should remember) 
from the payment of five pounds to instant death 
— and instant death inflicted, not by the arm of 
law, but by the arm of the proprietor; — could 
the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in- 
tend to say, that the impossibility of putting an 
end to poaching by other means would justify 
the infliction of death upon the offender? Is he 
so ignorant of the philosophy of punishing, as 
to imagine he has nothing to do but to give ten 
stripes instead of two, an hundred instead of 
ten, and a thousand, if an hundred will not doT 
to substitute the prison for pecuniary fines, and 
the gallows instead of the jail 1 It is impossible 
so enlightened a judge can forget, that the sym- 
pathies of mankind must be consulted; that it 
would be wrong to break a person upon the 
wheel for stealing a penny loaf, and that grada- 
tions in punishments must be carefully accom- 
modated to gradations in crime; that if poaching 
is punished more than mankind in general think 
it ought to be punished, the fault will either es- 
cape with impunity, or the delinquent be driven 
to desperation ; that if poaching and murder are 
punished equally, every poacher will be an as- 
sassin. Besides, too, if the principle is right in 
the unlimited and unqualified manner in which 
the chief justice puts it — if defence goes on in- 
creasing with aggression, the legislature at least 
must determine upon their equal pace. If an 
act of Parliament made it a capital offence to 
poach upon a manor, as it is to commit a bur- 
glary in a dwelling-house, it might then be as 
lawful to shoot a person for trespassing upon 
your manor as it is to kill a thief for breaking 
into your house. But the real question is — and 
so in sound reasoning his lordship should have 
put it — "If the law at this moment determines 
the aggression to be in such a state that it merits 
only a pecuniary fine after summons and proof, 
has any sporadic squire the right to say, that it 
shall be punished with death, before any sum- 
mons and without any proof]" 

It appears to us, too, very singular to say 
that many persons who cause engines of this 
description to be placed in their ground, do not 
do so with an intention of injuring any person, 
but really believe that the publication of notices 
will prevent any person from sustaining an 
injury, and that no person, having the notice 
given him, will be weak and foolish enough to 
expose himself to the perilous consequences of 
his trespass. But if this is the real belief of 
the engineer — if he thinks the mere notice will 
keep people away — then he must think it a 
mere inutility that the guns should be placed 
at all ; if he thinks that many will be deterred* 



152 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



and a few come, then he must mean to shoot 
those few. He who believes his gun will never 
be called upon to do its duty, need set no gun, 
and trust to rumour of their being set, or being 
loaded for his protection. Against the gun 
and the powder we have no complaint ; they 
are perfectly fair and admissible : our quarrel 
is with the bullets. He who sets a loaded gun, 
means that it should go off if it is touched. 
But what signifies the mere empty wish that 
there may be no mischief, when I perform an 
action which my common sense tells me may 
produce the worst mischief? If I hear a great 
noise in the street, and fire a bullet to keep 
people quiet, I may not, perhaps, have intended 
to kill; I may have wished to have produced 
quiet by mere terror, and I may have expressed 
a strong hope that my object has been effected 
without the destruction of human life. Still I 
have done that which every man of sound in- 
tellect knows is likely to kill; and if any one 
falls from my act, I am guilty of murder. — 
"Further," (says Lord Coke,) "if there be an 
evil intent, though that intent extendeth not to 
death, it is murder. Thus, if a man, knowing 
that many people are in the street, throw a 
stone over the wall, intending only to frighten 
them, or to give them a little hurt, and there- 
upon one is killed — this is murder — for he had 
an ill intent; though that intent extended not to 
death, and though he knew not the party slain." 
(3 Inst. .57.) If a man is not mad, he must be 
presumed to foresee common consequences if 
he puts a bullet into a spring gun — he may be 
supposed to foresee that it will kill any poacher 
who touches the wire — and to that consequence 
he must stand. We do not suppose all pre- 
servers of game to be so bloodily inclined that 
they would prefer the death of a poacher to 
his staying away. Their object is to preserve 
game; they have no objection to preserve the 
lives of their fellow-creatures, also, if both can 
exist at the same time ; if not, the least worthy 
of God's creatures must fall — the rustic without 
a soul — not the Christian partridge — not the 
immortal pheasant — not the rational woodcock, 
or the accountable hare. 

The chief justice quotes the instance of 
glass and spikes fixed upon walls. He cannot 
mean to infer from this, because the law con- 
nives at the infliction of such small punish- 
ments for the protection of property, that it 
does allow, or ought to allow, proprietors to 
proceed to the punishment of death. Small 
means of annoying trespassers may be con- 
sistently admitted by the law, though more 
severe ones are forbidden, and ought to be for- 
bidden; unless it follows, that what is good in 
any degree, is good in the highest degree. You 
may correct a servant boy with a switch; but 
if you bruise him sorely, you are to be indicted 
— if you kill him, you are hanged. A black- 
smith corrected his servant with a bar of iron ; 
the boy died, and the blacksmith was executed. 
(Grey's Case, Kel. 64, 65.) A woman kicked 
and stamped on the belly of her child — she 
was found guilty of murder. (1 East, P. C. 
261.) Si immoderate suo jure utatur, tunc reus 
homicidii sit. There is, besides, this additional 
<iifl!erence in the two cases put by the chief 
justice, that no publication of notices can be so 



plain, in the case of the gnns, as the sight of 

the glass or the spikes ; for a trespasser may 
not believe in the notice which he receives, or 
he may think he shall see a gun, and so avoid 
it, or that he may have the good luck to avoid 
it, if he does not see it; whereas, of tVie pre- 
sence of the glass or the spikes he can have no' 
doubt; and he has no hope of placing his hand, 
in any spot where they are not. In the onfr| 
case, he cuts his fingers upon full and perfect 
notice, the notice of his own senses ; in the 
other case, he loses his life after a notice whicl 
he may disbelieve, and by an engine which he" 
may hope to escape. 

Mr. Justice Bailey observes, in the same case, 
that it is not an indictable offence to set spring- 
guns : perhaps not. It is not an indictable offence 
to go about with a loaded pistol,intending to shoot 
any body who grins at you ; but if you do it, you 
are hanged ; many inchoate acts are innocent, 
the consummation of which is a capital offence. 

This is not a case where the motto applies 
of Volenti non Jit injuria. The man does not 
will to be hurt, but he wills to get the game; 
and, with that rash confidence natural to many 
characters, believes he shall avoid the evil and 
gain the good. On the contrary, it is a case 
which exactly arranges itself under the maxim, 
Quando aliquid prohibetur ex directo, prohibetur 
et per obliquum. Give what notice he may, the 
proprietor cannot lawfully shoot a trespasser 
(who neither runs nor resists) with a loaded 
pistol ; — he cannot do it ex directo; — how then 
can he do it per obliquum, by arranging on the 
ground the pistol which commits the murder? 

Mr. Justice Best delivers the following opin- 
ion. His lordship concluded as follows : — 

" This case has been discussed at the bar, as 
if these engines were exclusively resorted to 
for the protection of game; but I consider them 
as lawfully applicable to the protection of every 
species of property against unlawful trespass- 
ers. But if even they might not lawfully be 
used for the protection of game, I, for one, 
should be extremely glad to adopt such means, 
if they were found sufficient for that purpose; 
because I think it a great object that gentlemen 
should have a temptation to reside in the coun- 
try, amongst their neighbours and tenantry, 
whose interests must be materially advanced by 
such a circumstance. The links of society are 
thereby better preserved, and the mutual advan- 
tage and dependence of the higher and lower 
classes of society, existing between each other, 
more beneficially maintained. We have seen, 
in a neighbouring country, the baneful conse- 
quences of the non-residence of the landed 
gentry; and in an ingenious work, lately pub- 
lished by a foreigner, we learn the fatal eflfects 
of a like system on the Continent. By preserv- 
ing game, gentlemen are tempted to reside in 
the country; and, considering that the diversion 
of the field is the only one of which they can 
partake on the estates, I am of opinion that, for 
the purpose I have stated, it is of essential im- 
portance that this species of property should 
be inviolably protected." 

If this speech of Mr. Justice Best is correctly 
reported, it follows, that a man may put his fel- 
low-creatures to death for any infringement of 
his property — for picking the sloes' and black- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



153 



berries off his hedges — for breaking a {ew dead 
sticks out of them by night or by day— with re- 
sistance or without resistance — with warning or 
■wiihout warning; — a strange method this of 
keeping up the links of society, and maintain- 
ing the dependence of the lower upon the higher 
classes. It certainly is of importance that gen- 
tlemen should reside on their estates in the 
country ; but not that gentlemen with such opin- 
ions as these should reside. The more they are 
absent from the countrj', the less strain will 
there be upon those links to which the learned 
judge alludes — the more firm that dependence 
upon which he places so just a value. In the 
case of Dean versus Clayton, Bart., the Court of 
Common Pleas were equally divided upon the 
lawfulness of killing a dog coursing an hare by 
means of a concealed dog-spear. We confess 
that we cannot see the least difference between 
transfixing with a spear, or placing a spear so 
that it will transfix ; and, therefore, if Vere ver- 
sus Lord Cawdor and King is good law, the ac- 
tion could have been maintained in Dean versus 
Clayton; but the solemn consideration concern- 
ing the life of the pointer is highly creditable to 
all the judges. They none of them say that it 
is lawful to put a trespassing pointer to death 
under any circumstances, or that they them- 
selves would be glad to do it; they all seem 
duly impressed with the recollection that they 
are deciding the fate of an animal faithfully 
ministerial to the pleasures of the upper classes 
of society ; there is an awful desire to do their 
duty, and a dread of any rash and intemperate 
decision. Seriously speaking, we can hardly 
believe this report of Mr. Justice Best's speech 
to be correct; yet we take it from a book which 
guides the practice of nine-tenths of all the 
magistrates in England. Does a judge, — a cool, 
calm man, in whose hands are the issues of life 
and death — from whom so many miserable, 
trembling human beings await their destiny — 
does he tell us, and tell us in a court of justice, 
that he places such little value on the life of 
man, that he himself would plot the destruction 
of his fellow-creatures for the preservation of 
a few hares and partridges 1 " Nothing which 
falls from me" (says Mr. Justice Bailey) " shall 
have a tendency to encourage the practice." — 
"I consider them" (says Mr. Justice Best) " as 
lawfully applicable to the protection of every 
species of property ; but even if they might not 
lawfully be used for the protection of game, I 
for one should be extremely glad to adopt them, 
if they were found sufficient for that purpose." 
Can any man doubt to which of these two ma- 
gistrates he would rather entrust a decision on 
his life, his liberty and his possessions 1 We 
should be very sorry to misrepresent Mr. Jus- 
tice Best, and will give to his disavowal of 
such sentiments, if he does disavow them, all 
the publicity in our power; but we have cited 
his very words conscientiously and correctly, 
as they are given in the Law Report. We have 
no doubt he meant to do his duty; we blame 
not his motives, but his feelings and his reason- 
ing. 

Let it be observed that, in the whole of this 

■ case, we have put every circumstance in favour 

of the murder. We have supposed it to be in 

the night time; but a man may be shot in the 

20 



day* by a spring-gun. We have supposed the 
deceased to be a poacher; but he may be a very 
innocent man, who has missed his way — an 
unfortunate botanist, or a lover. We have sup- 
posed notice ; but it is a very possible event 
that the dead man may have been utterly igno- 
rant of the notice. This instrument, so highly 
approved of by Mr. Justice Best — this knitter 
together of the different orders of society — is 
levelled promiscuously against the guilty or the 
innocent, the ignorant and the informed. No 
man who sets such an infernal machine, believes 
that it can reason or discriminate ; it is made to 
murder all alike, and it does murder all alike. 

Blackstone says, that the law of England, 
like that of every other well-regulated commu- 
nity, is tender of the public peace, and careful 
of the lives of the subjects; "that it will not 
suffer with impunity any crime to be prevented 
by death, unless the same, if committed, would 
also be punished by death." ( Commentaries, vol. 
iv. 182.) "The law sets so high a value upon 
the life of a man, that it always intends some 
misbehaviour in the person who takes it away, 
unless by the command, or express permission 
of the law." — "And as to the necessity which 
excuses a man who kills another se defendendo. 
Lord Bacon calls even that necessitas culpabilis." 
(Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 187.) So far this 
luminary of the law. — But the very amusements 
of the rich are, in the estimation of Mr. Justice 
Best, of so great importance, that, the poor are 
to be exposed to sudden death who interfere 
with them. There are other persons of the 
same opinion with this magistrate respecting 
the pleasures of the rich. In the last session 
of Parliament a bill was passed, entitled " An 
act for the summary punishment, in certain 
cases, of persons wilfully or maliciously damag- 
ing, or committing trespasses on public or pri- 
vate property." Anno prima — (a bad specimen 
of what is to happen) — Georgii IV. Regis, cap. 
56. In this act it is provided, that " if any per- 
son shall wilfully, or maliciously, commit any 
damage, injury, or spoil, upon any building, 
fence, hedge, gate, stile, guide-post, milestone, 
tree, wood, underwood, orchard, garden, nursery- 
ground, crops, vegetables, plants, land, or other 
matter or thing growing or being therein, or to 
or upon real or personal property of any nature 
or kind soever, he may be immediately seized 
by any body, without a warrant, taken before a 
magistrate, and fined (according to the mischief 
he has done) to the extent of .5/. ; or, in default 
of payment, may be committed to the jail for 
three months." And at the end comes a clause, 
exempting from the operation of this act all 
mischief done in hunting, and by shooters who 
are qualified. This is surely the most impudent 
piece of legislation that ever crept into the sta- 
tute-book; and, coupled with Mr. Justice Best's 
declaration,constitutes the following affectionate 
relation between the different orders of society. 
Says the higher link to the lower, "If you meddle 
with my game, I will immediately murder you; 
— if you commit the slightest injury upon my 
real or personal property, I will take you before 
a magistrate, and fine you five pounds. I am in 



* Ijarge damages have been given for wounds inflicted 
by spring-guns set in a garden in the day-time, where the- 
parly wounded had no notice 



154 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Parliament, and you are not ; and I have just I 
brought in an act of Parliament for that purpose. 
But so important is it to you that my pleasures 
should not be interrupted, that I have exempted 
myself and friends from the operation of this 
act; and we claim the right (without allowing 
yon any such summary remedy) of riding over 
your fences, hedges, gales, stiles, guide-posts, 
milestones, woods, underwoods, orchards, gar- 
dens, nursery-grounds, crops, vegetables, plants, 
lands or other matters or things growing or 
being thereupon — including your children and 
yourselves, if you do not get out of the way-" 
Is there, upon earth, such a mockery of justice 
as an act of Parliament, pretending to protect 
property, sending a poor hedge-breaker to jail, 
and specially exempting from its operation the 
accusing and the judging squire, who, at the 
tail of the hounds, have that morning, perhaps, 
ruined as much wheat and seeds as would pur- 
chase fuel a whole year for a whole village? 

It cannot be urged, in extenuation of such a 
murder as we have described, that the artificer 
of death had no particular malice against the 
deceased; that his object was general, and his 
indignation leveled against offenders in the 
aggregate. Every body knows that there is a 
malice by implication of law. 

" In general, any formal design of doing mis- 
chief may be called malice ; and therefore, not 
such killing only as proceeds from premeditated 
hatred and revenge against the person killed, 
but also, in many other cases, such as is ac- 
companied with those circumstances that show 
the heart to be perversely wicked, is adjudged 
to be of malice prepense." — 2 Haw. c. 31. 

"For where the law makes use of the term, 
malice aforethought, as descriptive of the crime 
of murder, it is not to be understood in that 
narrow restrained sense in which the modern 
use of the word malice is apt to lead one, a prin- 
ciple of malevolence to particulars; for the law, 
by the term malice, malitia, in this instance, 
meaneth, that the fact hath been attended with 
such circumstances as are the ordinary symp- 
toms of a wicked heart, regardless of social 
duty, and fatally bent upon mischief." — Fost. 
256, 257. 

Ferocity is the natural weapon of the com- 
mon people. If gentlemen of education and 
property contend with them at this sort of war- 
fare, they will probably be defeated in the end. 
If spring-guns are generally set — if the common 
people are murdered by them, and the legisla- 
ture does not interfere, the posts of gamekeeper 
and lord of the manor will soon be posts of 
honour and danger. The greatest curse under 
heaven (witness Ireland) is a peasantry demo- 
ralized by the barbarity and injustice of their 
rulers. 

It is expected by some persons, that the se- 
vere operation of these engines will put an end 
to the trade of a poacher. This has always 
been predicated of every fresh operation of se- 
verity, that it was to put an end to poaching. 
But if this argument is good for one thing, it is 
good for another. Let the first pickpocket who 
is taken be hung alive by the ribs, and let him 



be a fortnight in wasting to death. Let us seize 
a little grammar boy, who is robbing orchards, 
tie his arms and legs, throw over him a delicate 
puff paste, and bake him in a bun-pan in an 
oven. If poaching can be extirpated by inten- 
sity of punishment, why not all other crimes? 
If racks and gibbets and tenter-hooks are the 
best method of bringing back the golden age, 
why do we refrain from so easy a receipt for 
abolishing every species of wickedness? The 
best way of answering a bad argument is not 
to stop it, but to let it go on in its course till it 
leaps over the boundaries of common sense. 
There is a little book called Beccaria on Crimes 
and Punishments, which we strongly recom- 
mend to the attention of Mr. Justice Best. He 
who has not read it, is neither fit to make laws, 
nor to administer them when made. 

As to the idea of abolishing poaching altoge- 
ther, we will believe that poaching is abolished 
when it is found impossible to buy game; or 
when they have risen so greatly in price, that 
none but people of fortune can buy them. But 
we are convinced this never can, and never 
will happen. All the traps and guns in the 
world will never prevent the wealth of the mer- 
chant and manufacturer from commanding the 
game of the landed gentleman. You may, in 
the pursuit of this visionary purpose, render 
the common people savage, ferocious and vin- 
dictive; you may disgrace your laws by enor- 
mous punishments, and the national character 
by these new secret assassinations; but you 
will never separate the wealthy glutton from 
his pheasant. The best way is, to take what 
you want, and sell the rest fairly and openly. 
This is the real spring-gun and steel trap which 
will annihilate, not the unlawful trader, but the 
unlawful trade. 

There is a sort of horror in thinking of a 
whole land filled with lurking engines of death 
— machinations against human life under every 
green tree — traps and guns in every dusky dell 
and bosky bourn — the ferx nalura, the lords of 
manors eyeing their peasantry as so many butts 
and marks, and panting to hear the click of the 
trap, and to see the flash of the gun. How any 
human being, educated in liberal knowledge 
and Christian feeling, can doom to certain de- 
struction a poor wretch tempted by the sight 
of animals that naturally appear to him to be- 
long to one person as well as another, we are 
at a loss to conceive. We cannot imagine how- 
he could live in the same village, and see the 
widow and orphans of the man whose blood he 
had shed for such a trifle. We consider a per- 
son who could do this, to be deficient in the veiy 
elements of morals— to want that sacred regard 
to human life which is one of the corner stones 
of civil society. If he sacrifices the life of man 
for his mere pleasures, he would do so, if he 
dared, for the lowest and least of his passions. 
He may be defended, perhaps, by the abomi- 
nable injustice of the game laws— though we 
think and hope he is not. But there rests upon 
his head, and there is marked in his account, 
the deep and indelible sin of blood-guiltiness. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



155 



PRISONS.* 



[EDiirBVBGB Review, 1821.] 



There are, in every county in England, large 
public schools, maintained at the expense of 
the county, for the encouragement of profligacy 
and vice, and for providing a proper succession 
of house-breakers, profligates and thieves. They 
are schools, too, conducted without the smallest 
degree of partiality or favour ; there being no 
man (however mean his birth, or obscure his 
situation,) who may not easily procure admis- 
sion to them. The moment any young person 
evinces the slightest propensity for these pur- 
suits, he is provided with food, clothing and 
lodging, and put to his studies under the most 
accomplished thieves and cut-throats the county 
can supply. There is not, to be sure, a formal 
arrangement of lectures, after the manner of our 
universities; but the petty larcenous stripling, 
being left destitute of every species of employ- 
ment and locked up with accomplished villains 
as idle as himself, listens to their pleasant nar- 
rative of successful crimes, and pants for the 
hour of freedom, that he may begin the same 
bold and interesting career. 

This is a perfectly true picture of the prison 
establishments of many counties in England, 
and was so, till very lately, of almost all ; and 
the effects so completely answered the design, 
that, in the year 1818, there were committed to 
the jails of the United Kingdom more than one 
hundred and seven thousand persons !f a num- 
ber supposed to be greater than that of all the 
commitments in the other kingdoms of Europe 
put together. 

The bodily treatment of prisoners has been 
greatly improved since the time of Howard. 
There is still, however, much to do; and the 
attention of good and humane people has been 
lately called to their state of moral discipline. 

It is inconceivable to what a spirit of party 
this has given birth; — all the fat and sleek peo- 
ple, — the enjoyers, — the mumpsimus, and " well 
as we are" people, are perfectly outrageous at 
being compelled to do their duty, and to sacri- 
fice time and money to the lower orders of man- 
kind. Their first resource was, to deny all the 
facts which were brought forward for the pur- 
poses of amendment; and the alderman's sar- 
casm of the Turkey carpet in jails was bandied 
from one hard-hearted and fat-witted gentleman 



* 1. Thoughts 0)1 the Criminal Prisons of this Country, oc- 
easioned by the Bill now in the House of Cvmmoiis^for Con- 
solidating and amending the Laws relating to Prisons; with 
tome Remarks on the Practice of looking to the Task-Master of 
the Prison rather than to the Chaplain for the Reformation of 
Offenders; and of purchasing the Work of those whom the 
Imv> has condemned to Hard Labour as a Punishment, by 
allowing them to spend a Portion of their Earnings during 
their Imprisonment. By George Holford, Esq. M. P. Riv- 
ington. 1821. 

2. Gurney on Prisons. Constable and Co. 1819. 

3. Report of Society for bettering the Condition of Prisons. 
Bensley. 1820. 

t Report of Prison Society, xiv. 



to another : but the advocates of prison improve- 
ment are men in earnest — not playing at reli- 
gion, but of deep feeling, and of indefatigable 
industry in charitable pursuits. Mr. Buxton 
went in company with men of the most irre- 
proachable veracity; and found, in the heart of 
the metropolis, and in a prison of which the 
very Turkey carpet alderman was an oflScial 
visitor, scenes of horror, filth and cruelty, which 
would have disgraced even the interior of a 
slave-ship. 

This dislike of innovation proceeds sometimes 
from the disgust excited by false humanity, cant- 
ing hypocrisy, and silly enthusiasm. It pro- 
ceeds, also, from a stupid and indiscriminate 
horror of change, whether of evil for good, or 
good for evil. There is also much party spirit 
in these matters. A good deal of these humane 
projects and institulions originates from Dis- 
senters. The plunderers of the public, the job- 
bers, and those who sell themselves to some 
great man, who sells himself to a greater, all 
scent from afar the danger of political change — 
are sensible that the correction of one abuse may 
lead to that of another — feel uneasy at any visi- 
ble operation of public spirit and justice — hate 
and tremble at a man who exposes and rectifies 
abuses from a sense of duty — and think, if such 
things are sufiered to be, that their candle-ends 
and cheese-parings are no longer safe : and these 
sagacious persons, it must be said for them, are 
not very wrong in this feeling. Providence, 
which has denied to them all that is great and 
good, has given them a fine tact for the pre- 
servation of their plunder: their real enemy is 
the spirit of inquiry — the dislike of wrong — the 
love of right — and the courage and diligence 
which are the concomitants of these virtues. 
When once this spirit is up, it may be as well 
directed to one abuse as another. To say you 
must not torture a prisoner with bad air and 
bad food, and to say you must not tax me with 
out my consent or that of my representative, are 
both emanations of the same principle, occur 
ring to the samesortof understanding, congenial 
to the same disposition, published, protected 
and enforced by the same qualities. This it is 
that really excites the horror against Mrs. Fry, 
Mr. Gurney, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Buxton. 
Alarmists such as we have described have no 
particular wish that prisons should be dirty, 
jailers cruel, or prisoners wretched; they care 
little about such matters either way ; but all their 
malice and meanness are called up into action 
when they see secrets brought to light, and 
abuses giving way before the diffusion of intel- 
ligence, and the aroused feelings of justice and 
compassion. As for us, we have neither love 
of change, nor fear of it; but a love of what is 
just and wise, as far as we are able to find it 
out. In this spirit we shall ofller a few observa- 



Ib6 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tions upon prisons, and upon the publications 
before us. 

The new law should keep up the distinction 
between jails and houses of correction. One 
of each should exist in every country, either at 
a distance from each other, or in such a state 
of juxtaposition that they might be under the 
same governor. To the jail should be committed 
all persons accused of capital offences, whose 
trials would come on at the assizes ; to the house 
of correction, all offenders whose cases would 
be cognizable at the Quarter Sessions. Sen- 
tence of imprisonment in the house of cor- 
rection, after trial, should carry with it hard 
labour; sentence of imprisonment in the jail, 
after trial, should imply an exemption from 
compulsory labour. There should be no com- 
pulsory labour in jails — only in houses of cor- 
rection. In using the terms Jail and House of 
Correction, we shall always attend to these dis- 
tinctions. Prisoners for trial should not only 
not be compelled to labour, but they should have 
every indulgence shown to them compatible 
■with safety. No chains — much better diet than 
they commonly have — all possible access to 
their friends and relations — and means of earn- 
ing money if they choose it. The broad and 
obvious distinction between prisoners before 
and after trial should constantly be attended to; 
to violate it is gross tyranny and cruelty. 

The jails for men and women should be so 
far separated, that nothing could be seen or 
heard from one to the other. The men should 
be divided into two classes: \st, those who are 
not yet tried; 2rf, those who are tried and con- 
victed. The first class should be divided into 
those who are accused as misdemeanants and 
as felons; and each of these into first tnisde- 
meanants and second misdemeanants, men of 
better and worse character; and the same with 
felons. The second class should be divided 
into, \st, persons condemned to death; 2c?/y, per- 
sons condemned for transportation ; Zdly, first 
class of confined, or men of the best character 
under sentence of confinement; Uhly, second 
confined, or men of worse character under sen- 
tence of confinement. To these are to be added 
separate places for king's evidence, boys, luna- 
tics, and places for the first reception of prison- 
ers, before they can be examined and classed: 
— a chapel, hospital, yards and workshops for 
such as are willing to work. 

The classifications in jails will then be as 
follows : — 

Men before Trial. Men after Trial, 

\st Misdemeanants. Sentenced to death. 

2c? Ditto. Ditto transportation. 

\st Felons. Ist Confined. 

2rf Ditto. 2d Confined. 

Other Divisions in a Jail. 
King's Evidence. 
Criminal Lunatics. 
Boys. 

Prisoners on their first reception. 
And the same divisions for Women. 

But there is a division still more important 
than any of these ; and that is, a division into 
much smaller numbers than are gathered to- 
gether in prisons : — 40, 50 and even 70 and 80 
felons, are often placed together in one yard and 



live together for months previous to their trial 
Any classification of offences, while there is 
such a multitude living together of one class, is 
perfectly nugatory and ridiculous ; no character 
can escape from corruption and extreme vice 
in such a school. The law ought to be peremp- 
tory against the confinement of more than fifteen 
persons together of the same class. Unless 
some measure of this kind is resorted to, all re- 
formation in prisons is impossible.* 

A very great, and a very neglected object in 
prisons, is diet. There should be, in every jail 
and house of correction, four sorts of diet; — 1st, 
Bread and water ; 2dly, Common prison diet, to 
be settled by the magistrates ; 3dlt/, Best prison 
diet, to be settled by ditto ; 4ihly, Free diet, from 
which spirituous liquors altogether and fer- 
mented liquors in excess, are excluded. All 
prisoners, before trial, should be allowed best 
prison diet and be upon free diet if they could 
afford it. Every sentence for imprisonment 
should expressly mention to which diet the pri- 
soner is confined; and no other diet should be, 
on any account, allowed to such prisoner after 
his sentence. Nothing can be so preposterous 
and criminally careless as the way in which per- 
sons confined upon sentence are suffered to live 
in prison. Misdemeanants, who have money 
in their pockets, may be seen in many of our 
prisons with fish, buttered veal, rump steaks 
and every other kind of luxury; and as the 
practice prevails of allowing them to purchase 
a pint of ale each, the rich prisoner purchases 
many pints of ale in the name of his poorer 
brethren and drinks them himself. A jail should 
be a place of punishment, from which men re- 
coil with horror — a place of real suffering, pain- 
ful to the memory, terrible to the imagination; 
but if men can live idly, and live luxuriously, 
in a clean, well-aired, well-warmed, spacious 
habitation, is it any wonder that they set the 
law at defiance, and brave that magistrate who 
restores them to their former luxury and easel ' 
There are a set of men well known to jailers, 
called Familymen, who are constantly returning 
to jail, and who may be said to spend the greater 
part of their life there,— up to the time when 
they are hanged. 

Minutes of Evidence taken before Select Com- 
mittee on Gaols 

"Mr. WiiLiAM Beebt, Keeper of the New 
Clerkenwell Prison. — Have you many prisoners 
that return to you on re-commitment'? A vast 
number; some of them are frequently dis- 
charged in the morning and I have them back 
again in the evening; or they have been dis- 
charged in the evening, and I have had them 
back in the morning." — Evidence before the Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 278. 

" Francis Const, Esq., Chairman of the Mid- 
dlesex Quarter-sessions. — Has that opinion been 
confirmed by any conduct you have observed 
in prisoners that have come before you for 
trial? I only judge from the opposite thing, that, 
going into a place where they can be idle, and 
well protected from any inconveniences of the 
weather and other things that poverty is open 

* We should much prefer solitary imprisonment; but 
are at present speaking of the regulations in jails where 
that system is excluded. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



157 



to, they are not amended at all ; they laugh at it 
frequently, and desire to go to the house of cor- 
rection. Once or twice, in the early part of the 
winter, upon sending a prisoner for two months, 
he has asked whether he could not stay longer, 
or words to that effect. It is an insulting way 
of saying they like it."— Evidence before the Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons in 1819, p. 285. 

The fact is, that a thief is a very dainty gen- 
tleman. Male porta cito dilabuntur. He does 
not rob to lead a life of mortification and self- 
denial. The difficulty of controlling his appe- 
tites, in all probability, first led him to expenses, 
which made him a thief to support them. Hav- 
ing lost character and become desperate, he 
orders crab and lobster and veal cutlets at a 
public house, while a poor labourer is refresh- 
ing himself with bread and cheese. The most 
vulnerable part of a thief is his belly; and there 
is nothing he feels more bitterly in confinement 
than a long course of water-gruel and flour- 
puddings. It is a mere mockery of punishment 
to say, that such a man shall spend his money in 
luxurious viands, and sit down to dinner with 
fetters on his feet, and fried pork in his stomach. 

Restriction to diet in prisons is still more 
necessary, when it is remembered that it is im- 
possible to avoid making a prison, in some 
respects, more eligible than the home of a cul- 
prit. It is almost always more spacious, cleaner, 
better ventilated, better warmed. All these ad- 
\'antages are inevitable on the side of the prison. 
The means, therefore, that remain of making a 
prison a disagreeable place, are not to be ne- 
glected ; and of these, none are more powerful 
ihan the regulation of diet. If this is neglected, 
the meaning of sentencing a man to prison will 
be this — and it had better be put in these 
words — 

" Prisoner at the bar, you are fairly convicted, 
by a jury of your country, of having feloniously 
stolen two pigs, the property of Stephen Muck, 
farmer. The court having taken into conside- 
ration the frequency and enormity of this of- 
fence, and the necessity of restraining it with 
the utmost severity of punishment, do order and 
adjudge that you be confined for six months in 
a house larger, better aired, and warmer than 
your own, in company with 20 or 30 young per- 
sons in as good health and spirits as yourself. 
You need do no work, and you may have any 
thing for breakfast, dinner and supper, you can 
buy. In passing this sentence, the court hope 
that your example will be a warning to others ; 
and that evil-disposed persons will perceive, 
from your suflering, that the laws of their 
country are not to be broken with impunity." 

As the diet, according to our plan, is always 
to be a part of the sentence, a judge will, of 
course, consider the nature of the offence for 
which the prisoner is committed, as well as the 
quality of the prisoner: and we have before 
stated, that al! prisoners, before trial, should be 
upon the best prison diet, and unrestricted as to 
what they could purchase, always avoiding in- 
temperance. 

These gradations of diet being fixed in all 
prisons, and these definitions of Jail and House 
of Correction being adhered to, the punishment 
of imprisonment may be apportioned with the 
greatest nicety, either by the statute, or at the 



discretion of the judge, if the law chooses to 
give him that discretion. There will be-— 

Imprisonment for different degrees of time. 

Imprisonment solitary, or in company, or in 
darkness. 

In jails without labour. 

In houses of correction with labour. 

Imprisonment with diet on bread and water. 

Imprisonment with common prison diet. 

Imprisonment with best prison diet. 

Imprisonment with free diet. 

Every sentence of the judge should state diet, 
as well as light or darkness, time, place, solitude, 
society, labour or ease ; and we are strongly of 
opinion, that the punishment in prisons should 
be sharp and short. We would, in most cases, 
give as much of solitary confinement as would 
not injure men's minds, and as much of bread 
and water diet as would not injure their bodies. 
A return to prison should be contemplated with 
horror — horror, not excited by the ancient filth, 
disease and extortion of jails; but by calm, 
well-regulated, well-watched austerity—by the 
gloom and sadness wisely and intentionally 
thrown over such an abode. Six weeks of 
such sort of imprisonment would be niuch 
more efficacious than as many months of jolly 
company and veal cutlets. 

It appears, by the Times newspaper of the 
24th of June, 1821, that two persons, a man and 
his wife, were committed at the Surrey Sessions 
for three years. If this county jail is bad, to 
three years of idleness and good living — if it is 
a manufacturing jail, to three years of regular 
labour, moderate living and accumulated gains. 
They are committed principally for a warning 
to others, partly for their own good. Would not 
these ends have been much more effectually 
answered, if they had been committed for nine 
months, to solitary cells upon bread and water; 
the first and last month in dark cells 1 If this 
is too severe, then lessen the duration still 
more, and give them more light days and fewer 
dark ones; but we are convinced the whole 
good sought may be better obtained in much 
shorter periods than are now resorted to. 

For the purpose of making jails disagreeable, 
the prisoners should remain perfectly alone all 
night, if it is not thought proper to render their 
confinement entirely solitary during the whole 
period of their imprisonment. Prisoners dis- 
like this— and therefore it should be done; it 
would make their residence in jails more dis- 
agreeable, and render them unwilling to return 
there. At present, eight or ten women sleep in 
a room with a good fire, pass the night in 
sound sleep or pleasant conversation ; and this 
is called confinement in a prison. A prison is 
a place where men, alter trial and sentence, 
should be made unhappy by public lawful enact- 
ments, not so severe as to injure the soundness 
of mind or body. If this is not done, prisons 
are a mere invitation to the lower classes to 
wade through felony and larceny to better ac- 
commodations than they can procure at home. 
And here, as it appears to us» is the mistake of 
the many excellent men who busy themselves 
(and wisely and humanely busy themselves) 
about prisons. Their first object seems to be 
the reformation of the prisoners, not the refor- 
mation of the public; whereas the first object 




158 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



should be, the discomfort and discontent of their 
prisoners; that they should become a warning, 
feel unhappy, and resolve never to act so again 
as to put themselves in the same predicament; 
and then as much reformation as is compatible 
with this the better. If a man says to himself, 
this prison is a comfortable place, while he says 
to the chaplain or the visitor that he will come 
there no more, we confess we have no great 
confidence in his public declaration; but if he 
says "this is a place of misery and sorrow, you 
shall not catch me here again," there is much 
"reason to believe he will be as good as his 
word; and he then becomes (which is of much 
more consequence than his own reformation) 
a warning to others. Hence it is we object to 
that spectacle of order and decorum — carpen- 
ters in one shop, tailors in another, weavers in 
a third, sitting down to a meal by ring of bell, 
and receiving a regular portion of their earnings. 
We are afraid it is better than real life on the 
other side of the wall, or so very little worse 
that nobody will have any fear to encounter it. 
In Bury jail, which is considered as a pattern 
jail, the prisoners under a sentence of confine- 
ment are allowed to spend their weekly earnings 
(two, three, and four shillings per week) in fish, 
tobacco and vegetables ; so states the jailer in 
his examination before the House of Commons 
— and we have no doubt it is well meant; but 
is it punishment 1 We were most struck, in 
reading the evidence of the jail committee be- 
fore (he House of Commons, with the opinions 
of the jailer of the Devizes jail, and with the prac- 
tice of the magistrates who superintend it.* 

"Mr. T. Bhutton, Governor of the Gaol at 
Devizes. — Does this confinement in solitude 
make prisoners more averse to return to pri- 
son ? I think it does. — Does it make a strong 
impression upon them ? I have no doubt of it. 
— Does it make them more obedient and orderly 
while in gaol? I have no doubt it does. — Do 
you consider it the most effectual punishment 
you can make use of 1 I do.— Do you think it 
has a greater effect upon the minds of prisoners 
than any apprehensions of personal punishment? 
I have no doubt of it.— Ha ve you any dark cells for 
the punishment of refractory prisoners 1 I have. 
— Do you find it necessary occasionally to use 
them? Very seldom. — Have you, in any in- 
stance, been obliged to use the dark cell, in the 
case of the same prisoner twice ? Only on one 
occasion, I think.— What length of time is it 
necessary to confine a refractory prisoner to 
bring him to his senses? Less than one day.— 
Do you think it essential, for the purpose of 
keeping up the discipline of the prison, that you 
should have it in your power to have recourse 
to the punishment of dark cells ? I do ; I con- 
sider punishment in a dark cell for one day, has 
a greater effect upon a prisoner than to keep 
him on bread and water for a month." — Evi- 
dence before the Committee of the House of Com- 
mons in 1819, p. 359. 

The evidence of the governor of Gloucester 
jail is to the same effect. 

" Mr. Tuo.HAs CnNNiifGHAM, Keeper ofGhuces- 
ier Gaol. — Do you attribute the want of those 

* The Winchester' and Devizes jails seem lo us to be 
conducted upon better principles than any other, though 
even these are by no means what jails should be 



certificates entirely to the neglect of enforcing 
the means of solitary confinement? I do most 
certainly. Sometimes, where a certificate has 
not been granted, and a prisoner has brought a 
certificate of good behaviour for one year, Sir 
George and thfe committee ordered one pound 
or a guinea from the charity. — Does that arise 
from your apprehension that the prisoners have 
not been equally reformed, or only from the 
want of the means of ascertaining such refor- 
mation? It is for want of not knowing; and 
we cannot ascertain it, from their working in 
numbers. — They may be reformed? Yes, but 
we have not the means of ascertaining it. There 
is one thing I do which is not provided for by 
the rules, and which is the only thing in which 
I deviate from the rules. When a man is com- 
mitted for a month, I never give him any work; 
he sits in solitude, and walks in the yard by him- 
self for air; he has no other food but his bread 
and water, except twice a week a pint of peas 
soup. I never knew an instance of a man com- 
ing in a second time who had been committed 
for a month. I have done that for these seventeen 
or eighteen years. — What has been the result? 
They dread so much coming in again. If a man 
is committed for six weeks we give him work. 
Do you apprehend that solitary confinement for 
a month, without employment, is the most bene- 
ficial means of working reform? I conceive it 
is. — Can it operate as the means of reform, any 
more than it operates as a system of punish- 
ment ? It is only for small offences they com- 
mit for a month. — Would not the same effect be 
produced by corporeal punishment? Corporeal 
punishment may be absolutely necessary some- 
times; but I do not think corporeal punishment 
would reform them so much as solitary confine- 
ment. — Would not severe corporeal punishment 
have the same effect? No, it would harden 
them more than any thing else. — Do you think 
benefit is derived from the opportunity of reflec- 
tion afforded by solitary confinement? Yes. — 
And very low diet also? Yes." — Evidence he- 
fore the Committee of the House of Commons in 
1819, p. 391. 

We must quote, also, the evidence of the go- 
vernor of Horsley jail. 

"Mr. William Stokes, Governor of the House 
of Correction at Horsley. — Do you observe any 
difference m the conduct of prisoners who are 
employed, and those who have no employment? 
Yes, a good deal; I look uponit,from what judg- 
ment I can form, and I have been a long while 
in it, that to take a prisoner and discipline him 
according to the rules as the law allows, and if 
he have no work, that that man goes through 
more punishment in one month than a man who 
is employed and receives a portion of his labour 
three months ; but still I should like to have em- 
ployment, because a great number of times I 
took men away, who have been in the habit of 
earning sixpence a week to buy a loaf, and put 
them in solitary confinement; and the punish- 
ment is a great deal more without work. — Which 
of the prisoners, those that have been employed, 
or those unemployed, do you think would go out 
of the prison the better men ? I think, that let 
me have a prisoner, and I never treat any one 
with severity, any further than that they should 
be obedient, and to let them see that I will do 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



159 



my duty, I have reason to believe, that, if a pri- 
soner is committed under my,care, or any other 
man's care, to a house of correction, and he has 
to go under the discipline of the law, if he is in 
for the value of a month or six weeks, that man 
is in a great deal better state than though he 
stays for six months ; he gets hardened by being 
in so long, from one month to another. — You are 
speaking now of solitude without labour ; do you 
think he would go out better, if he had been em- 
ployed during the month you speak of? No, 
nor half; because I never task those people, in 
order that they should not say I force them to 
do more than they are able, that they should not 
slight it; for if they perform any thing in the 
bounds of reason, I never find fault with them. 
The prisoner who is employed, his time passes 
smooth and comfortable, and he has a propor- 
tion of his earnings, and he can buy additional 
diet ; but if he has no labour, and kept under the 
discipline of the prison, it is a tight piece of 
punishment to go through. — Which of the two 
should you think most likely to return immedi- 
ately to habits of labour on their own accounts 
The dispositions of all men are not alike; but 
my opinion is this, if they are kept and disci- 
plined according to the rules of the prison, and 
have no labour, that one month will do more 
than six; I am certain, that a man who is kept 
there without labour once, will not be very ready 
10 come there again." — Evidence before the Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons, pp. 398, 399. 

Mr. Gurney and Mr. Buxton both lay a great 
stress upon the quiet and content of prisoners, 
upon their subordination and the absence of all 
plans of escape; but, where the happiness of 
prisoners is so much consulted, we should be 
much more apprehensive of a conspiracy to 
break into, than to break out of, prison. The 
mob outside may, indeed, envy the wicked ones 
■within ; but the felon who has left, perhaps, 
a scolding wife, a battered cottage, and six 
starving children, has no disposition to escape 
from regularity, sufficient food, employment 
which saves him money, warmth, ventilation, 
cleanliness and civil treatment. These symp- 
toms, upon which these respectable and excel- 
lent men lay so much stress, are by no means 
proofs to us that prisons are placed upon the 
best possible footing. 

The governor of Bury jail, as well as Mr. 
Gurney, insist much upon the few prisoners 
who return to the jail a second time, the manu- 
facturing skill which they acquire there, and the 
complete reformation of manners for which the 
prisoner has afterwards thanked him the go- 
vernor. But this is not the real criterion of the 
excellence of a jail, nor the principal reason 
why jails were instituted. The great point is, 
■not the average recurrence of the same prison- 
ers, but the paucity or frequency of commit- 
ments, upon the whole. You may make a jail 
such an admirable place of education, that it 
may cease to be infamous to go there. Mr. 
Holford tells us (and a very curious anecdote it 
is,) that parents actually accuse their children 
falsely of crimes, in order to get them into the 
Philanthropic Charity ! and that it is conse- 
quently a rule with the governors of that cha- 
rity never to receive a child upon the accusa- 
tion of the parents alone. But it is quite obvious 



what the next step will be, if the parents cannot 
get their children in by fibbing. They will take 
good care that the child is really qualified for the 
Philanthropic, by impelling him to those crimes 
which are the passport to so good an education. 

"If, on the contrary, the offender is to be pun- 
ished simply by being placed in a prison, where 
he is to be well lodged, well clothed, and well 
fed, to be instructed in reading and writing, to 
receive a moral and religious education, and to 
be brought up to a trade ; and if this prison is 
to be within the reach of the parents, so that they 
may occasionally visit their child, and have the 
satisfaction of knowing, from time to time, that 
all these advantages are conferred upofi him, 
and that he is exposed to no hardships, although 
the confinement and the discipline of the prison 
may be irksome to the boy ; yet the parents may 
be apt lo congratulate themselves on having 
got him off their hands into such a good berth, 
and maybe considered by other parents as hav- 
ing drawn a prize in the lottery of human life 
by their son's conviction. This reasoning is not 
theoretical, but is founded in some degree upon 
experience. Those who have been in the habit 
of attending the committee of the Philanthropic 
Society know, that parents have often accused 
their children of crimes falsely, or have exag- 
gerated their real offences, for the sake of induc- 
ing thai society to take them; and so frequent 
has been this practice, that it is a rule with 
those who manage that institution, never to 
receive an object upon the representation of its 
parents, unless supported by other strong testi- 
mony." — Holford, pp. 44, 4.5. 

It is quite obvious that, if men were to appear 
again, six months after they were hanged, hand- 
somer, richer, and more plump than before exe- 
cution, the gallows would cease to be an object 
of terror. But here are men who come out of 
jail, and say, ' Look at us, — we can read and 
write, we can make baskets and shoes, and we 
went in ignorant of every thing: and we have 
learnt to do without strong liquors, and have no 
longer any objection to work; and we did work 
in the jail, and have saved money, and here it is." 
What isthere.of terror and detriment in all this? 
and how are crimes to be lessened if they are 
thus rewarded ? Of schools there cannot be 
too many. Penitentiaries, in the hands of wise 
men, may be rendered excellent institutions; 
but a prison must be a prison — a place of sor- 
row and wailing; which should be entered with 
horror, and quitted with earnest resolution never 
to return to such misery; with that deep impres- 
sion, in short, of the evil which breaks out into 
perpetual warning and exhortation to others. 
This great point efiected, all other reformation 
must do the greatest good. 

There are some very sensible observations 
upon this point in Mr. Holford's book, who upon 
the whole has, we think, best treated the sub- 
ject of prisons, and best understands them. 

"In former limes, men were deterred from 
pursuing the road that led to a prison, by the ap- 
prehension of encountering there disease and 
hunger, of being loaded with heavy irons, and 
of remaining without clothes to cover tliem, or 
abed to lie on; we have done no more than 
what justice required in relieving the inmates 
of a prison from these hardships; but there is 



160 



WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. 



no reason ihat they should be freed from the fear 
of all other sufferings and privations. And I 
hope that those whose duty it is to take up the 
consideration of these subjects, will see, that in 
penitentiaries, offenders should be subjected to 
separate confinement, accompanied by such 
work as may be found consistent with that sys- 
tem of imprisonment ; that in jails or houses of 
correction, they should perform that kind of la- 
bour which the law has enjoined; and that in 
prisons of both descriptions, instead of being 
allowed to cater for themselves, they should be 
sustained by such food as the rules and regula- 
tions of the establishment should have provided 
for thetn ; in short, that prisons should be con- 
sidered as places of punishment, and not as 
scenes of cheerful industry, where a compro- 
mise must be made with the prisoner's appetite 
to make him do the common work of a journey- 
man or manufacturer, and the labours of the 
spinning-wheel and the loom must be alleviated 
by indulgence."* 

This is good sound sense; and it is a pity 
that it is preceded by the usual nonsense about 
" the tide of blasphemy and sedition." If Mr. Hol- 
ford is an observer of tides and currents, whence 
comes it that he observes only those which set 
one way] Whence comes it that he says no- 
thing of the tides of canting and hypocrisy 
which are flowing with such rapidity? — of abject 
political baseness and sycophancy — of the dis- 
position so prevalent among Englishmen, to sell 
their conscience and their country to the Mar- 
quis of Londonderry for a living for the second 



* " That I am guilty of no exaggeration in thus describ- 
ing a prison conducted upon the principles now coming 
into fashion, will be evideiU to any person who will turn 
to the latter part of the article, ' Penitentiary. MiUbank,' 
in Mr. Buxton's Book on Prisons. He there states what 
passed in conversation between himself and the gover- 
nor of Bury jail, (whiclijail, by the bye, he praises as one 
of the three be.st prisons he has ever seen, and strongly 
recommends to our imitation at MiUbank.) Having ob- 
served that the governor of Bury jail had mentioned his 
having coumed 34 spinning-wheels in full activity when 
he left that jail at 5 o'clock in the morning on the preced- 
ing da)', Mr. Buxton proceeds as follows : — ' After he had 
seen the MiUbank Penitentiary, I asked him wh.at would 
be the consequence, if the regulations there used were 
adopted by him ?' ' The consequence would be,' ho replied, 
' that every wheel would be stopped.' Mr. Buxton tlien 
adds, ' I would not be considered as supposing that the 
prisoners will altogether refuse to work at MiUbank — 
they will work durmg the stated hours; but the present 
incentive being wanting, the labour will, I apprehend, be 
languid and desultory.' I shall not, on my part, under- 
take to say that they will do as nuich work as will be 
done in those prisons in which work is the primary ob- 
ject; but, besides the encouragement of the portion of 
earnings laid up for them, they know that diligence is 
among the qualities that will recommend them to the mer- 
cy of the crown, and that ihewantof it is, by the rules and 
regfulations of the prison, an offence to be punished. The 
governor of Bury jail, who is a very intelligent man, 
must have spoken hastily, in his eagerness to support his 
own system, and did not, I conceive, give himself credit 
for as much power and authority in his prison as he 
really possesses. It is not to be wondered at, that the 
keepers of prisons should like the new system: there is 
less trouble in the care of a manufactory than in that of a 
jail ; but I am surprised to find that so much reliance is 
placed in argument on the declaration of some of these 
officers, that the prisoners are quieter where their work 
is encouraged, by allowing them to spend a portion of 
tlieir earnings. It may naturally be e.xpected. that 
offenders will be least discontented, and consequently 
least turbulent, where their punishment is lightest, or 
where, to use Mr. Buxton's own words, ' by making 
labour productive of comfort or convenience, you do 
much towards rendering it agreeable ;' bin I must 1)e per- 
mitted to doubt, whether these are the prisons of which 
men will live inmost dread." — Hol/ord, pp. 78 — 80. 



son — or a silk gown for the nephew — or for a 
frigate for my brother the captain 1 How comes- 
our loyal careerist to forget all these sorts of 
tides'? 

There is a great confusion, as the law now 
stands, in the government of jails. The justice!* 
are empowered, by several statutes, to make 
subordinate regulations for the government of 
the jails ; and the sheriff supersedes those regu- k 
lations. Their respective jurisdictions and: I 
powers should be clearly arranged. 

The female prisoners should be under the 
care of a matron, with proper assistants. Where 
this is not the case, the female part of the prison 
is often a mere brothel for the turnkeys. Can 
any thing be so repugnant to all ideas of re- 
formation, as a male turnkey visiting a solitary 
female prisoner 1 Surely, women can take care 
of women as effectually as men can take care 
of men ; or, at least, women can do so properly 
assisted by men. This want of a matron is a 
very scandalous and immoral neglect in any 
prison system. 

The presence of female visitors, and instruc- 
tors for the women, is so obviously advantageous 
and proper, that the offer of forming such an 
institution must be gladly and thankfully re- 
ceived by any body of magistrates. That they 
should feel any jealousy of such interference is 
too absurd a supposition to be made or agreed 
upon. Such interference may not effect all that 
zealous people suppose it will effect; but, if it 
does any good, it had better be. 

Irons should never be put upon prisoners 
before trial; after trial, we cannot object to the 
humiliation and disgrace which irons and a 
parti-coloured prison dress occasion. Let them 
be a part of solitary confinement, and let the 
words "Solitary Confinement," in the sentence, 
imply permission to use them. The judge then 
knows what he inflicts. 

We object to the office of prison inspector, for 
reasons so very obvious, that it is scarcely neces- 
sary to enuinerale them. The prison inspector 
would, of course, have a good salary ; that, in 
England, is never omitted. It is equally matter 
of course that he would be taken from among 
treasury retainers ; and that he never would look 
at a prison. Every sort of attention should be 
paid to the religious instruction of these unhappy 
people; but the poor chaplain should be paid a 
little better; — every possible duty is expected 
from him — and he has one hundred per annum. 

Whatever money is given to prisoners, should 
be lodged with the governor for their benefit, to 
be applied as the visiting magistrates point out 
— no other donations should be allowed or ac- 
cepted. 

If voluntary work before trial, or compulsory 
work after trial, is the system of a prison, there 
should be a task-master; and it should be re- 
membered, that the principal object is not profit. 

Wardsmen, selected in each yard among the 
best of the prisoners, are very serviceable. If 
prisoners work, theyshould work in silence. At 
all times, the restrictions upon seeing friends 
should be very severe; and no food should be 
sent from friends. 

Our general system then is — that a prison 
should be a place of real punishment; but 
of known, enacted, measurable and measure 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



161 



punishment A prisoner (not for assault, or 
refusing to pay parish dues, but a bad felonious 
prisoner), should pass a part of his three months 
in complete darkness ; the rest in complete soli- 
tude, perhaps in complete idleness, (for solitary 
idleness leads to repentance, idleness in com- 
pany to vice.) He should be exempted from 
cold, be kept perfectly clean, have sufficient 
food to prevent hunger or illness, wear the 
prison dress and moderate irons, have no com- 
munication with any body but the officers of 
the prison and the magistrates, and remain 
otherwise in the most perfect solitude. We 
strongly suspect this is the way in which a bad 
man is to be made afraid of prisons ; nor do we 
think that he would be less inclined to receive 
moral and religious instruction than any one 
of seven or eight carpenters in jail, working at 
a common bench, receiving a part of their earn- 
ings, and allowed to purchase with them the 
delicacies of the season. If this system is not 
resorted to, the next best system is severe work, 
ordinary diet, no indulgences, and as much 
seclusion and solitude as are compatible with 
work; — always remarking, that perfect sanity 
of mind and body are to be preserved. 

To this system of severity in jails there is 
but one objection. The present duration of 
punishments was calculated for prisons con- 
ducted upon very different principles ; — and if 
the discipline of prisons was rendered nwre strict, 
we are not sure that the duration of imprison- 
ment would be practically shortened ; and the 
punishments would then be quite atrocious and 
disproportioned. There is a very great disposi- 
tion, both in judges and magistrates, to increase 
the duration of imprisonment; and, if that is 
done, it will be dreadful cruelty to increase the 
bitterness as well as the time. We should think, 
for instance, six months' solitary imprisonment 
to be a punishment of dreadful severity; but 
we find, from the House of Commons' report, 
that prisoners are sometimes committed by 
county magistrates for two years* of solitary 
confinement. And so it may be doubted, whe- 
ther it is not better to wrap up the rod in flannel, 
and make it a plaything, as it really now is, than 
to show how it may be wielded with effectual 
severity. For the pupil, instead of giving one 
or two stripes, will whip his patient to death. — 
But if this abuse were guarded against, the real 
way to improve would be, now we have made 
prisons healthy and airy, to make them odious 
and austere — engines of punishment and ob- 
jects of terror. 

In this age of charity and of prison improve- 
ment, there is one aid to prisoners which appears 



to be wholly overlooked ; and that is, the means 
of regulating their defence, and providing them 
witnesses for their trial. A man is tried for 
murder, or for house-breaking or robbery with- 
out a single shilling in his pocket. The non- 
sensical and capricious institutions of the Eng- 
lish law prevent him from engaging counsel to 
speak in his defence, if he had the wealth of 
Croesus ; but he has no money to employ even 
an attorney, or to procure a single witness, or 
to take out a subpoena. The judge, we are told, 
is his counsel ; — this is sufficiently absurd ; but 
it is not pretended that the judge is his witness. 
He solemnly declares that he has three or four 
witnesses who could give a completely different 
colour to the transaction ; — but they are sixty or 
seventy miles distant, working for their daily 
bread, and have no money for such a journey, 
nor for the expense of a residence of some days 
in an assize town. They do not know even the 
time of the assize, nor the modes of tendering 
their evidence if they could come. When every 
thing is so well marshaled against him on the 
opposite side, it would be singular if an inno- 
cent man, with such an absence of all means 
of defending himself, should not occasionally 
be hanged or transported : and accordingly we 
believe that such things have happened.* Let 
any man, immediately previous to the assizes, 
visit the prisoners for trial, and see the many 
wretches who are to answer to the most serious 
accusations, without one penny to defend them- 
selves. If it appeared probable, upon inquiry, 
that these poor creatures had important evidence 
which they could not bring into court for want 
of money, would it not be a wise application of 
compassionate funds, to give them this fair 
chance of establishing their innocencel — It 
seems to us no bad finale of the pious labours 
of those who guard the poor from ill-treatment 
during their imprisonment, to take care that 
they are not unjustly hanged at the expiration 
of the term. 



* HouBe of Commons' Report, 355. 



* From the Clonmell Advertiser it appears, that John 
Brieii, alias Captain Wheeler, was fouiul guilty of murder 
at the late assizes for the county of AVaterford. Previous 
to his execution he made the following confession : — 

" I now again most solemnly aver, in the presence of 
that God by whom I will soon be judged, and who sees 
the secrets of my heart, that only three, viz , Morgan 
Brien, Patrick Brien and my unlbrtunate self, committed 
the horrible crimes of murder and burning at Bally- 
garron, and that the four unfortunate men who have be- 
fore suffered for them, were not in the smallest- degree 
accessary to them. I have been the cause for which they 
have innocently suffered death. I have contracted a 
death of justice with them — and the only and least re- 
stitution I can make them, is thus publicly, solemnly, and 
with death before my eyes, to acquit their memory of any 
guilt in the crimes for which I shall deservedly svtffei 1 ! '" 
—Philanthropist, No. 6. 208. 

Pereunt et itnputantUT. 



21 



o2 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



PRISONS.* 

[Edikburgh Review, 1822.] 



There never was a society calculated, upon 
the whole, to do more good than the Society for 
the Improvement of Prison Discipline; and, 
hitherto, it has heen conducted with equal en- 
ergy and prudence. If now, or hereafter, there- 
fore, we make any criticisms on their proceed- 
ings, these must not be ascribed to any defi- 
ciency of good will or respect. We may differ 
from the society in the means — our ends, we 
are proud to say, are the same. 

In the improvement of prisons, they consider 
the small number of recommitments as the great 
test of amelioration. Upon this subject we 
have ventured to differ from them in a late 
number; and we see no reason to alter our 
opinion. It is a mistake, and a very serious 
and fundamental mistake, to suppose that the 
principal object in jails is the reformation of the 
offender. The principal object undoubtedly is, 
to prevent the repetition of the offence by the 
punishment of the offender; and, therefore, it 
is quite possible to conceive that the offender 
himself may be so kindly, gently and agreeably 
led to reformation, by the efforts of good and 
amiable persons, that the effect of the punish- 
ment may be destroyed, at the same time that 
the punished may be improved. A prison may 
lose its terror and discredit, though the prisoner 
may return from it a better scholar, a better 
artificer, and a better man. The real and only 
test, in short, of a good prison system is, the 
diminution of offences by the terror of the pun- 
ishment. If it can be shown, that in propor- 
tion as attention and expense have been em- 
ployed upon the improvement of prisons, the 
number of commitments has been diminished, 
this indeed would be a convincing proof that 
such care and attention were well employed. 
But the very reverse is the case; the number 
of commitments within these last ten years 
having nearly doubled all over England. 

The following are stated to be the committals 
in Norfolk county jail. From 1796 to 1815, the 
number averaged about 80. 

In 1816 it was 134 

1817 - 142 

1818 - 159 

1819 - 161 

1820 - 223.— i?epor<, p. 57. 
In Staffordshire, the commitments have gradu- 
ally increased from 195 to 1815, to 443 in 1820 
— though the jail has been built since How- 
ard's time, at an expense of 30,000/. — {Report, 
p. 67.) In Wiltshire, in a prison which has 



* 1. The Third Report of the Committee of the Society for 
the Improvement of Prison Discipline, and for the Reforma- 
tion of Juvenile Offenders. I^ondon, 1621. 

2. Remarks upon Prison Discipline, S^c SfC., in a Letter 
addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant and Magistrates of the 
County of Essex. By C. C. Western, Esq. M. P. London, 
1821. 



cost the county 40,000/., the commitments hare 
increased from 207 in 1817 to 504 in 1821. 
Within this perriod, to the eternal scandal and 
disgrace of our laws, 378 persons have been 
committed for game offences — constituting a 
sixth part of all the persons committed; — so 
much for what our old friend, Mr. Justice Best, 
would term the unspeakable advantages of 
country gentlemen residing upon their own 
property ! 

When the committee was appointed in the 
county of Essex, in the year 1818, to take into 
consideration the state of the jail and houses 
of correction, they found that the number of 
prisoners annually committed had increased, 
within the ten preceding years, from 559 to 
1993; and there is little doubt (adds Mr. West- 
ern) of this proportion being a tolerable speci- 
men of the whole kingdom. We are far from 
attributing this increase solely to the imper- 
fection of prison discipline. Increase of popu- 
lation, new statutes, the extension of the breed 
of pheasants, landed and mercantile distress, 
are very operative causes. But the increase 
of commitments is a stronger proof against the 
present state of prison discipline, than the de- 
crease of recommitments is in its favour. — 
We may, possibly, have made some progress 
in the art of teaching him who has done 
wrong to do so no more ; but there is no proof 
that we have learnt the more important art of de- 
terring those from doing wrong who are doubt- 
ing whether they shall do it or not, and who, of 
course, will be principally guided in their de- 
cision by the sufferings of those who have pre- 
viously yielded to temptation. 

There are some assertions in the report of 
the society, to which we can hardly give 
credit, — not that we have the slightest sus- 
picion of any intentional misrepresentation, but 
that we believe there must be some uninten- 
tional error. 

"The Ladies' Committees visiting Newgate 
and the Borough Compter, have continued to 
devote themselves to the improvement of the 
female prisoners, in a spirit worthy of their 
enlightened zeal and Christian charity. The 
beneficial effects of their exertions have been 
evinced by the progressive decrease in the i 
number of female prisoners recommitted, which I 
has diminished, since the visits of the ladies to ' 
Newgate, no less than 40 per cent." 

That is, that Mrs. Fry and her friends have 
reclaimed forty women out of every hundred, 
who, but for them, would have reappeared in 
jails. Nobody admires and respects Mrs. Fry 
more than we do ; but this fact is scarcely cre- 
dible; and, if accurate, ought, in justice to the 
reputation of the society and its real interests, 
10 have been thoroughly substantiated by names 
and documents. The ladies certainly lay claim 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



163 



to no such extraordinary success in their own 
report quoted in the Appendix : but speak 
■with becoming modesty and moderation of the 
result of their labours. The enemies of all 
these reforms accuse the reformers of enthu- 
siasm and exaggeration. It is of the greatest 
possible consequence, therefore, that their state- 
ments should be correct, and their views prac- 
tical ; and that all strong assertions should be 
supported by strong documents. The English 
are a calm, reflecting people ; they will give 
time and money when they are convinced ; but 
they love dates, names and certificates. In the 
midst of the most heart-rending narratives, 
Bull requires the day of the month, the year 
of our Lord, the name of the parish and the 
countersign of three or four respectable house- 
holders. After these affecting circumstances, 
he can no longer hold out; but gives way to 
the kindness of his nature — puffs, blubbers and 
subscribes I 

A case is stated in the Hertford house of 
correction, which so much more resembles the 
sudden conversions of the Methodist Maga- 
zine, than the slow and uncertain process by 
which repentance is produced in real life, that 
we are a little surprised the society should have 
inserted it. 

"Two notorious poachers, as well as bad men, 
were committed for three months, for not pay- 
ing the penalty after conviction, but who, in 
consequence of extreme contrition and good 
conduct, were, at the intercession of the clergy- 
men of their parish, released before the expira- 
tion of their term of punishment. Upon leaving 
the house of correction, they declared that they 
had been completely brought to their senses — 
spoke with gratitude of the benefit they had 
derived from the advice of the chaplain, and 
promised, upon their return to their parish, that 
they would go to their minister, express their 
thanks for his interceding for them; and more- 
over that they would, for the future, attend their 
duty regularly at church. It is pleasing to add, 
that these promises have been faithfully fulfil- 
led."— ^jd;}. to Third Report, pp. 29, 30. 

Such statements prove nothing, but that the 
clergyman who makes them is an amiable man, 
and probably a college tutor. Their introduction 
however, in the report of a society depending 
upon public opinion for success, is very detri- 
mental. 

It is not fair to state the recommitments of 
one prison, and compare them with those of 
another, perhaps very differently circumstanced, 
—the recommitments, for instance, of a county 
jail, where offences are generally of serious 
magnitude, with those of a borough, where the 
most trifling faults are punished. The import- 
ant thing would be, to give a table of recom- 
mitments, in the same prison, for a series of 
years, — the average of recommitments, for ex- 
ample, every five years in each prison for twen- 
ty years past. If the society can obtain this, it 
will be a document of some importance, (though 
of less, perhaps, than they would consider it to 
be.) At present they tell us, that the average 
of recommitments in certain prisons is 3 per 
cent.: in certain other prisons 5 per cent.: but 
what were they twenty years ago in the same 
prison 1 — what were they five years agol If 



recommitments are to be the test, we must know 
whether these are becoming, in any given pri- 
son, more or less frequent, before we can deter- 
mine whether that prison is better or worse 
governed than formerly. Recommitments will 
of course be more numerous where prisoners 
are received from large towns, and from the 
resorts of soldiers and sailors ; because it is in 
these situations that we may expect the most 
hardened offenders. The different nature of the 
two soils which grow the crimes, must be con- 
sidered before the produce gathered into prisons 
can be justly compared. 

The quadruple column of the state of prisons 
for each year, is a very useful and important 
document; and we hope, in time, the society 
will give us a general and particular table of i 
commitments and recommitments carried back' 
for twenty or thirty years ; so that the table may 
contain (of Gloucester jail, for instance,) 1st,, 
the greatest number it can contain ; 2dly, the 
greatest number it did contain at any one period 
in each year; 3diy, its classification; 4thly, the 
greatest number committed in any given year; 
5thly, four averages of five years each, taken 
from the twenty years preceding, and stating 
the greatest number of commitments; 6thly, the 
greatest number of recommitments in the year 
under view ; and four averages of recommit- 
ments, made in the same manner as the average 
of the commitments ; and then totals at the bot- 
tom of the columns. Tables so constructed 
would throw great light upon the nature and 
efficacy of imprisonment. 

We M'ish the society would pay a little more 
attention to the question of solitary imprison- 
ment, both in darkness and in light; and to the 
extent to which it may be carried. Mr. West- 
ern has upon this subject some ingenious ideas. 

" It appears to me, that if relieved from these 
impediments, and likewise from any idea of the 
necessity of making the labour of prisoners 
profitable, the detail of corrective prison discip- 
line would not be difficult for any body to chalk 
out. I would first premise, that the only pun- 
ishment for refractory conduct, or any misbe- 
haviour in the gaol, should, in my opinion, be 
solitary confinement; and that, instead of being 
in a dark hole, it should be in some part of the 
house where they could fully see the light of the 
day ; and I am not sure that it might not be 
desirable, in some cases, if possible, that they 
should see the surrounding country and mov 
ing objects at a distance, and every thing that 
man delights in, removed, at the same time, 
from any intercourse or word or look with any 
human being, and quite out of the reach of being 
themselves seen. I consider such confinement 
would be a punishment very severe, and calcu- 
lated to produce a far better effect than dark- 
ness. All the feelings that are good in men 
would be much more likely to be kept alive; the 
loss of liberty, and all the blessings of life which 
honesty will insure, more deeply to be felt. 
There would not be so much danger of any de- 
linquent sinking into that state of sullen, insen- 
sible condition, of incorrigible obstinacy, which 
sometimes occurs. If he does, under those 
circumstances, we have a right to keep him out 
of the way of mischief, and let him there remain. 
But I believe such solitary confinement as I 



IM 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



have described, with scanty fare, would very 
rarely fail of its effect." — Western^ s Remarks, pp. 
59, 60. 

There is a good deal in this ; it is well worth 
the trial ; and we hope the society will notice it 
in their next report. 

It is very difficult to hit upon degrees; but we 
cannot help thinking the society lean too much 
to a system of indulgence and education in jails. 
We shall be very glad to see them more stern 
and Spartan in their discipline. They recom- 
mend work, and even hard work; but they do 
not insist upon it, that the only work done in 
jails by felons should be hard, dull and uninte- 
resting; they do not protest against the conver- 
sion of jails into schools and manufactories. 
Look, for example, to " Preston House of Cor- 
rection." 

" Preston House of Correction is justly distin- 
guished by the industry which prevails. Here 
an idle hand is rarely to be found. There were 
lately 150 looms in full employ, from each of 
which the average weekly earnings are 5s. 
About 150 pieces of cotton goods are worked 
off per week. A considerable proportion of the 
looms are of the prisoners' own manufacture. 
In one month, an inexperienced workman will 
be able to earn the cost of his gaol allowance 
of food. Weaving has these advantages over 
other prison labour: the noise of the shuttle 
prevents conversation, and the progress of the 
work constantly requires the eye. The ac- 
counts of this prison contained in the Appen- 
dix, deserve particular attention, as there ap- 
pears to be a balance of clear profit to the 
county, from the labour of the prisoners, in the 
year, of 1398/. 9s. Id. This sum was earned by 
weaving and cleaning cotton only; the prison- 
ers being besides employed in tailoring, white- 
washing, flagging, slating, painting, carpenter- 
ing and labourers' work, the earnings of which 
are not included in the above account." — Third 
Report, pp. 21, 22. 

"At Worcester county gaol, the system of 
employment is admirable. Every article of 
dress worn by the prisoners is made from the 
raw material ; sacking and bags are the only 
articles made for sale." — lb. p. 23. 

" In many prisons, the instruction of the pri- 
soners in reading and writing has been attend- 
ed with excellent effects. Schools have been 
formed at Bedford, Durham, Chelmsford, Win- 
chester, Hereford, Maidstone, Leicester house 
of correciion, Shrewsbury, Warwick, Worces- 
ter, &c. Much valuable assistance has been 
derived in this department from the labours of 
respectable individuals, especially females, act- 
ing under the sanction of the magistrates, and 
direction of the chaplain." — lb. pp. 30, 31. 

We again enter our decided protest against 
these modes of occupation in prisons; they are 
certainly better than mere idleness spent in so- 
ciety; but they are not ihe kind of occupations 
which render prisons terrible. We would ban- 
ish all the looms of Preston jail, and substitute 
nothing but the tread-wheel, or the capstan, or 
some species of labour where the labourer 
could not see the results of his toil, — where it 
was as monotonous, irksome and dull as pos- 
sible, — pulling and pushing, instead of reading 
and writing, — no share of the profits — not a sin- 



gle shilling. There should be no tea and sugar,. 
— no assemblage of female felons round the 
washing-tub, — Nothing but beating hemp, and 
pulling oakum, and pounding bricks, — no work 
but what was tedious, unusual and unfeminine. 
Man, woman, boy and girl, should all leave the 
jail, unimpaired, indeed, in health, but heartily 
wearied of their residence; and taught, by sad 
experience, to consider it as the greatest misfor- 
tune of their lives to return to it. We have th,e 
strongest belief that the present lenity of jails, 
the education carried on there — the cheerful 
assemblage of workmen — the indulgence ia 
diet — the shares of earnings enjoyed by prison- 
ers, are one great cause of the astonishingly 
rapid increase of commitments. 

Mr. Western, who entirely agrees with us 
upon these points, has the following judicious 
observations upon the severe system: — 

" It may be imagined by some persons, that 
the rules here prescribed are too severe; but 
such treatment is, in my opinion, the tenderest 
mercy, compared with that indulgence which is 
so much in practice, and which directly tends 
to ruin, instead of saving, its unfortunate vic- 
tim. This severity it is which in truth forms 
the sole effective means which imprisonment 
gives ; only one mitigation, therefore, if such it 
may be termed, can be admissible, and that is, 
simply to shorten the duration of the imprison- 
ment. The sooner the prisoner comes out the 
better, if fully impressed with dread of what he 
has suffered, and communicates information -to 
his friends what they may expect if they get 
there. It appears to me, indeed, that one great 
and primary object we ought to have in view 
is, generally, to shorten the duration of impri- 
sonment, at the same time that we make it such 
a punishment as is likely to deter, correct and 
reform ; shorten the duration of imprisonment 
before trial, which we are called upon, by every 
principle of moral and political justice, to do; 
shorten also the duration of imprisonment after 
trial, by the means here described; and I am 
satisfied our prisons would soon lose, or rather 
would never see, half the number of their pre- 
sent inhabitants. The long duration of impri- 
sonment, where the discipline is less severe, 
renders it perfectly familiar, and, in conse- 
quence, not only destitute of any useful influ- 
ence, but obviously productive of the worst 
effects; yet this is the present practice; and I 
think, indeed, criminals are now sentenced to a 
longer period of confinement than formerly. 

"The deprivation of liberty certainly is a 
punishment under any circumstances; but the 
system generally pursued in our gaols might 
rather be considered as a palliative of that pun- 
ishment, than to make it effectual to any good 
purpose. An idle life, society unrestrained, 
with associates of similar character and habits, 
better fare and lodgings in many cases, and 
in few, if any, worse than falls to the lot of 
the hard-working and industrious peasant; and 
very often much better than the prisoners were 
in the enjoyment of before they were appre- 
hended. 

" I do not know what could be devised more 
agreeable to all the different classes of offenders 
than this sort of treatment: the old hardened 
sinner, the juvenile offender, or the idle vaga- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



166 



bond, who runs away and leaves a sick wife 
and family to be provided for by his parish, 
alike have little or no apprehension; at present, 
of any imprisonment to which they may be sen- 
tenced; and thus are the most effective means 
we possess to correct and reform rendered 
totally unavailable, and even perverted, to the 
more certain ruin of those who might be restored 
to society good and valuable members of it. 

"There are, it is true, various occupations 
now introduced into many prisons, but which, I 
confess, I think of very little use ; drawing and 
preparing straws, platting, knitting, heading 
pins, &c., weaving and working at a trade even, 
as it is generally carried on — prisoners coaxed 
to the performance of it, the task easy, the re- 
ward immediate — afford rather the means of 
passing away the time agreeably. These occu- 
pations are, indeed, better than absolute idleness, 
notwithstanding that imprisonment may be ren- 
dered less irksome thereby. I am far from 
denying the advantage, still less would I be sup- 
posed to derogate from the merits of those who, 
with every feeling of humanity, and with inde- 
fatigable pains, in many instances, have esta- 
blished such means of employment; and some 
of them for women, with washing, &c., amount 
to hard labour; but I contend that,for men, they 
are applicable only to a house of industry and 
by no means suited to the corrective discipline 
which should be found in a prison. Individuals 
are sent here to be punished and for that sole 
purpose ; in many cases for crimes which have 
induced the forfeiture of life: they are not sent 
to be educated, or apprenticed to a trade. The 
horrors of dungeon imprisonment, to the credit 
of the age, no longer exist. But, if no cause of 
dread is substituted, by what indication of com- 
mon sense is it that we send criminals there at 
all ? If prisons are to be made into places in 
Avhich persons of both sexes and all ages may 
be well fed, clothed, lodged, educated and taught 
a trade, where they may find pleasant society, 
and are required not to take heed for the mor- 
row, the present inhabitants should be turned 
out, and the most deserving and industrious of 
our poorest fellow-subjects should be invited to 
take their place, which I have no doubt they 
would be eager to do." — Western, pp. 13-17. 

In these sentiments we most cordially agree. 
They are well worth the most serious attention 
of the society. 

The following is a sketch from Mr. Western's 
book of what a prison life should be. It is im- 
possible to write with more good sense, and a 
more thorough knowledge of the subject. 

" The operations of the day should begin with 
the greatest punctuality at a given hour; and as 
soon as the prisoners have risen from their 
beds, they should be, according to their several 
classes, marched to the workhouses, where they 
should be kept to hard labour two hours at 
least; from thence they should be taken back to 
wash, shave, comb and clean themselves; thence 
to the chapel to hear a short prayer, or the go- 
vernor or deputy should read to them in their 
respective day-rooms ; and then their breakfast, 
which may, altogether,. occupy an hour and a 
half or more. I have stated, in a former part of 
my letter, that the hours of meals and leisure 
should be in solitude, in the sleeping cells of the 



prison ; but I presume, for the moment, this may 
not always be practicable. I will, therefore, 
consider the case as if the classes assembled at 
meal-times in the different day-rooms. After 
breakfast they should return to hard labour for 
three or four hours, and then take another hour 
for dinner; labour after dinner two or three 
hours, and their supper given them to eat in 
solitude in their sleeping cells. 

"This marching backwards and forwards to 
chapel and mill-house, &c., may appear objec- 
tionable, but it has not been so represented to 
me in the prisons where it. actually now takes 
place; and it is, to my apprehension, materially 
useful in many respects. The object is to keep 
the prisoners in a state of constant motion, so 
that there shall be no lounging time or loitering, 
which is always favourable to mischief or cabal. 
For the same reason it is I propose two hours' 
labour the moment they are up, and before 
washing, &c., that there may be no time lost, 
and that they may begin the day by a portion 
of labour, which will tend to keep them quiet 
and obedient the remainder of it. Each interval 
for meal, thus occurring between labour hours, 
has also a tendency to render the mischief of in- 
tercourse less probable, and at the same time the 
evening association, which is most to be appre- 
hended in this respect, is entirely cut off. The 
frequent moving of the prisoners from place to 
place keeps the governor and sub-officers of the 
prison in a similar state of activity and atten- 
tion, which is likewise of advantage, though 
their numbers should be such as to prevent 
their duty becoming too arduous or irksome. 
Their situation is not pleasant and their respon- 
sibility is great. An able and attentive governor, 
who executes all his arduous duties with unre- 
mitting zeal and fidelity, is a most valuable 
public servant and entitled to the greatest re- 
spect. He must be a man of no ordinary capa- 
city, with a liberal and comprehensive mind, 
possessing a control over his own passions, 
firm and undaunted, a character that commands 
from those under him, instinctively, as it were, 
respect and regard. In vain are our buildings, 
and rules, and regulations, if the choice of a 
governor is not made an object of primary and 
most solicitous attention and consideration. 

"It does not appear to me necessary for the 
prisoners to have more than three hours' leisure, 
inclusive of meal-times ; and I am convinced 
the close of the day must be in soUtude. Eight 
or ten hours will have passed in company with 
their fellow-prisoners of the same class (for I 
am presuming that a separate compartment of 
the workhouse will be allotted to each) where, 
though they cannot associate to enjoy society 
as they would wish, no gloom of solitude can 
oppress them : there is more danger even then 
of too close an intercourse and conversation, 
though a ready cure is in that case to be found 
by a wheel put in motion, the noise of which 
speedily overcomes the voice. Some time after 
Saturday night should be allowed to them, more 
particularly to cleanse themselves and their 
clothes, and they should have a bath, cold or 
warm, if necessary; and on the Sunday they 
should be dressed in their best clothes, and the 
day should be spent wholly in the chapel, the 
cell, and the airing-ground ; the latter in presence 



166 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



of a day-watchman, as I have described to be in 
practice at Warwick. I say nothing about 
teaching to read, write, work, &c. &c.; any pro- 
portion of time necessary for any useful pur- 
pose may be spared from the hours of labour or 
of rest, according to circumstances; but I do not 
place any reliance upon improvement in any 
branch of education : they would not, indeed, be 
there long enough. All I want them to learn is, 
that there exists the means of punishment for 
crime, and be fully impressed with dread of re- 
petition of what they have undergone; and a 
short time will suffice for that purpose. Now, 
if each successive day was spent in this manner, 
can it be doubted that the frequent commission 
of crime would be checked, and more done to 
deter, correct and reform than could be accom- 
plished by any other punishment 1 A period of 
such discipline, longer or shorter, according to 
the nature of the offence, would surely be suffi- 
cient for any violation of the law short of mur- 
der, or that description of outrage which is likely 
to lead on to the perpetration of it. This sort of 
treatment is not to be overcome: it cannot be 
braved, or laughed at, or disiegarded, by any 
force of animal spirits, however strong or vigo- 
rous of mind or body the individual may be. 
The dull, unvarying course of hard labour, with 
hard fare and seclusion, must in time become 
so painfully irksome, and so wear and distress 
him, that he will inevitably, in the end, be sub- 
dued." — Western, pp. 64-69. 

There is nothing in the Report of the Prison 
Society, so good as this. 

The society very properly observe upon the 
badness of town jails, and the necessity for 
their suppression. Most towns cannot spare the 
funds necessary for building a good jail. Shop- 
keepers cannot spare the time for its superin- 
tendence ; and hence it happens that town jails 
are almost always in a disgraceful state. The 
society frequently allude to the diffusion of 
tracts. If education is to be continued in jails, 
and tracts are to be dispersed, we cannot help 
lamenting that the tracts, though full of good 
principles, are so intolerably stupid — and all 
apparently constructed upon the supposition, 
that a thief or a peccant ploughman is inferior 
in common sense to a boy of five years old. The 
story generally is, that a labourer with six chil- 
dren has nothing to live upon but mouldy bread 
and dirty water; yet nothing can exceed his 
cheerfulness and content — no murmurs — no 
discontent: of mutton he has scarcely heard — 
of bacon he never dreams : furfurous bread 
and the water of the pool constitute his food, 
establish his felicity, and excite his warmest 
gratitude. The squire or parson of the parish 
always happens to be walking by and overhears 
him praying for the king and the members for 
the county, and for all in authority ; and it gene- 
rally ends with their offering him a shilling, 
which this excellent man declares he does not 
want, and will not accept! These are the 
pamphlets which Goodies and Noodles are dis- 
persing with unwearied diligence. It would be 
a great blessing if some genius would arise who 
had a talent of writing for the poor. He would 
be of more value than many poets living upon 
the banks of lakes — or even (though we think 
highly of ourselves) of greater value than many 



reviewing men living in the garrets of the 
north. 

The society offer some comments upon the 
prison bill now pending, and which unfortu- 
nately* for the cause of prison improvement, 
has bein so long pending in the legislature. In 
the copy of this bill, as it stands at present, 
nothing is said of the limitation of numbers in 
any particular class. We have seen forty felons 
of one class in one yard before trial. If this 
is to continue, all prison improvement is a mere 
mockery. Separate sleeping cells should be 
enacted positively, and not in words, which 
leave this improvement optional. If any visit- 
ing justice dissents from the majority ,"1" it should 
be lawful for him to give a separate report upon 
the state of the prison and prisoners to the judge 
or the quarter sessions. All such reports of 
any visiting magistrate or magistrates, not ex- 
ceeding a certain length, should be puSblished 
in the county papers. The chairman's report 
to the secretary of state should be published in 
the same manner. The great panacea is pub- 
licity ; it is this which secures compliance with 
wise and just laws, more than all the penalties 
they contain for their own preservation. 

We object to the reading and writing clause. 
A poor man, who is lucky enough to have his 
son committed for a felony, educates him, under 
such a system, for nothing ; while the virtuous 
simpleton on the other side of the wall is pay- 
ing by the quarter for these attainments. He 
sees clergymen and ladies busy with the larce- 
nous pupil ; while the poor lad, who respects 
the jighth commandment, is consigned, in some 
dark alley, to the frowns and blows of a ragged 
pedagogue. It would be the safest way, where 
a prisoner is kept upon bread and water alone, 
to enact that the allowance of bread should not 
be less than a pound and a half for men, and a 
pound for women and boys. We strongly re- 
commend, as mentioned in a previous number, 
that four sorts of diet should be enacted for 
every prison; 1st, Bread and water ; 2d, Better 
prison diet; 3d, Best prison diet; 4th, Free diet 
— the second and third to be defined by the 
visiting magistrates. All sentences of impri- 
sonment should state to which of these diets the 
prisoner is to be confined ; and all deviation 
from it on the part of the prison officers should 
be punished with very severe penalties. The 
regulation of prison diet in a prison is a point 
of the very highest importance ; and to ask of 
visiting magistrates that they should doom to 
bread and water a prisoner whom the law has 
left at liberty to purchase whatever he has the 
money to procure, is a degree of severity which 
it is hardly fair to expect from country gentle- 
men, and, if expected, those expectations will 
not be fulfilled. The whole system of diet, one 
of the main-springs of all prison discipline, will 
get out of order, if its arrangement is left to the 
interference of magistrates and not to the sen- 
tence of the judge. Free diet and bread diet 
need no interpretation : and the jailer will take 
care to furnish the judge with the definitions of 



*The county of York, with a prison under presentment, 
has been waiting nearly three years for this bill, in order 
to proceed upon the improvement of their county jail. 

t It would be an entertaining change in human affairs 
to determine every thing by mximrities. They are almost 
always 'n the right. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



167 



tetter prison diet and best prison diet. A know- 
ledge of the diet prescribed in a jail is absolntely 
necessary for the justice of the case. Diet dif- 
fers so much in different prisons, that six weeks 
in one prison is as severe a punishment as three 
months in another. If any country gentleman, 
engaged in legislation for prisons, is inclined to 
undervalue the importance of these regulations, 
let him appeal to his own experience, and re- 
member, in the vacuity of the country, how 
often he thinks of his dinner, and of what there 
will be for dinner ; and how much his amenity 
and courtesy for the evening depend upon the 
successful execution of this meal. But there is 
nobody so gluttonous and sensual as a thief; 
and he will feel much more bitterly fetters on 
his mouth than his heels. It sometimes hap- 
pens that a gentleman is sentenced to imprison- 
ment for manslaughter in a duel, or for a libel. 
Are visiting justices to doom such a prisoner to 
bread and water, or are they to make an invidi- 
ous distinction between him and the other pri- 
soners? The diet should be ordered by the judge, 
or it never will be well ordered — or ordered at 
all: 

The most extraordinary clause in the bill is 
the following — 

" And be it further enacted, that in case any 
criminal prisoner shall be guilty of any repeated 
offence against the rules of the prison, or shall 
be guilty of any greater offence which the jailer 
or keeper is not by this act empowered to pun- 
ish, the said jailer or keeper shall report the 
same to the visiting justices, or one of them, for 
the time being; and such justices, or one of 
them, shall have power to inquire upon oath, 
and determine concerning any such offence so 
reported to him or them, and shall order the 
offender to be punished, either by moderate 
whipping, repeated whippings, or by close con- 
finement, for any term not exceeding .' — 
Act, p. 21, 

Upon this clause, any one justice may order 
repeated whippings for any offence greater than 
that which the jailer may punish. Our respect 
for the committee will only allow us to say, that 
we hope this clause will be reconsidered. We 
beg leave to add, that there should be a return 
to the principal secretary of state of recommit- 
ments as well as commitments. 

It is no mean pleasure to see this attention to 
jail-discipline travelling from' England to the 
detestable and despotic governments of the con- 
tinent, — to see the health and life of captives 
admitted to be of any importance, — to perceive 
that human creatures in dungeons are of more 
consequence than rats and black beetles. All 
this is new — is some little gained upon ty- 
ranny; and for it we are indebted to the labours 
of the Prison Society. Still the state of prisons, 
on many parts of the continent, is shocking be- 
yond all description. 

It is a most inconceivable piece of cruelty and 
absurdity in the English law, that the prisoner's 
counsel, when he is tried for any capital felony, 
is not allowed to speak for him ; and this we 
hope the new prison bill will correct. Nothing 
can be more ridiculous in point of reasoning, or 
more atrociously cruel and unjust in point of 
fact. Any number of counsel may be employed 
to take away the poor man's life. They are at 



full liberty to talk as long as they like; but not 
a syllable is to be uttered in his defence. — not a 
sentence to show why the prisoner is not to be 
hung. This practice is so utterly ridiculous to 
any body but lawyers (to whom nothing that is 
customary is ridiculous), that men not versant 
with courts of justice will not believe it. It is, 
indeed, so utterly inconsistent with the common 
cant of the humanity of the English law, that it 
is often considered to be the mistake of the nar- 
rator, rather than the imperfection of the sys- 
tem. We must take this opportunity, therefore, 
of making a few observations on this very 
strange and anomalous practice. 

The common argument used in its defence is 
that the judge is counsel for the prisoner. But 
the defenders of this piece of cruel and barbar- 
ous nonsense must first make their election, 
whether they consider the prisoner to be, by 
this arrangement, in a better, a worse or an 
equally good situation as if his counsel were 
allowed to plead for him. If he is in a worse 
situation, why is he so placed? Why is a man, 
in a solemn issue of life or death, deprived of 
any fair advantage which any suitor in any 
court of justice possesses'' This is a plea of 
guilty to the charge we make against the prac- 
tice; and its advocates, by such concession, are 
put out of court. But, if it is an advantage, or 
no disadvantage, whence comes it that the 
choice of this advantage, in the greatest of all 
human concerns, is not left to the party or to 
his friends? If the question concerns a foot- 
path — or a fat ox — every man may tell his own 
story, or employ a barrister to tell it for him. 
The law leaves the litigant to decide on the 
method most conducive to his own interest. 
But, when the question is whether he is to Hv» 
or die, it is at once decided for him that his 
counsel are to be dumb ! And yet, so ignorant 
are men of their own interests, that there is not 
a single man tried who would not think it a 
great privilege if counsel were allowed to speak 
in his favour, and who would not be supremely 
happy to lay aside the fancied advantage of 
their silence. And this is true not merely ot 
ignorant men; but there is not an Old Bailey 
barrister who would not rather employ another 
Old Bailey barrister to speak for him, than en- 
joy the advantage (as the phrase is) of having 
the judge for his counsel. But in what sense, 
after all, is the judge counsel for the prisoner? 
He states, in his summing up, facts as they 
have been delivered in evidence; and he tells 
the jury upon what points they are to decide: 
he mentions what facts are in favour of the 
prisoner, and what bear against him; and he 
leaves the decision to the jury. Does he do 
more than this in favour of the prisoner? Does 
he misstate? does he mislead? does he bring 
forward arguments on one side of the question, 
and omit equally important arguments on the 
other? If so, he is indeed counsel for the pri- 
soner; but then who is judge? who takes care 
of the interests of the public ? But the truth is, 
he does no such thing; he does merely what we 
have stated him to do ; and would he do less, 
could he do less, if the prisoner's counsel spoke 
for him? If an argument was just, or an in- 
ference legitimate, he would not omit the one, or 
refute the other, because they had been put or 



168 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



drawn in the speech of the prisoner's counsel. 
He would be no more prejudiced against the 
defendant in a criminal than in a civil suit. He 
would select from the speeches of both counsel 
all that could be fairly urged for or against the 
defendant, and he would reply to their fallacious 
reasonings. The pure administration of justice 
requires of him, in either case, the same con- 
duct. Whether the whole bar spoke for the 
prisoner, or whether he was left to defend him- 
self, what can the judge do, or what ought he to 
do, but to state to the jury the facts as they are 
given in evidence, and the impression these 
facts have made upon his own mind 1 In the 
mean time, while the prisoner's counsel have 
been compelled to be silent, the accuser's, the 
opposite party, have enjoyed an immense ad- 
vantage. In considering what bears against 
the prisoner, the judge has heard, not only the 
suggestions of his own understanding, but he 
has been exposed to the able and artful reason- 
ing of a practised advocate, who has been pre- 
viously instructed in the case of which the 
judge never heard a syllable before he came 
into court. Suppose it to be a case depending 
upon circumstantial evidence ; in how many 
new points of view may a man of genius have 
placed those circumstances, which would not 
have occurred to the judge himself! How 
many inferences may he have drawn, which 
would have been unnoticed but for the efforts 
of a man whose bread and fame depend upon 
his exertions, and who has purposely, and on 
contract, flung the whole force of his under- 
standing into one scale! In the mean time, the 
prisoner can say nothing, for he has not the gift 
of learned speech; his counsel can say nothing, 
though he has communicated with the prisoner, 
and could place the whole circumstances, per- 
haps, in the fairest and clearest point of view 
for the accused party. By the courtesy of Eng- 
land this is called justice — we in the north can- 
not admit of the correctness of the appellation. 
It seems utterly to be forgotten, in estimating 
this practice, that two understandings are better 
than one. The judge must inevitably receive many 
new views against the prisoner by the speech 
of one counsel, and lose many views in favour 
of the prisoner by the silence of the other. We 
are not to suppose (like ladies going into court 
in an assize town) that the judge would have 
thoughtof every thing which the counsel against 
the prisoner has said, and which the counsel 
for the prisoner would have said. The judge, 
wigged and robed as he is, is often very inferior 
in acuteness to either of the persons who are 
pleading under him — a cold, slow, parchment 
and precedent man, without passions or prse- 
cordia, — perhaps a sturdy brawler for church 
and king, — or a quiet man of ordinary abilities, 
steadily, though perhaps conscientiously, fol- 
lowing those in power through thick and thin — 
through right and wrong. Whence comes it 
that the method of getting at truth, which is so 
excellent on all common occasions, should be 
considered as so improper on the greatest of all 
occasions, where the life of a man is concerned? 
If an acre of land is to be lost or won, one man 
says all that can be said on one side of the ques- 
tion — another on the other; and the jury, aided 
by the impartiality of the judge, decide. The 



wit of man can devise no better method of disen- 
tangling difficulty, exposing falsehood, and de- 
tecting truth. " Tell me why I am hurried away to 
a premature death, and 710 man suffered to speak in 
my defence, when at this very moment, and in my 
hearing, all the eloquence of the bar, on the other 
side of your' justice hall, is employed in defending 
a path or a hedge? Is a foot of land dearer to any 
man than my life is to me? The civil plaintiff has 
not trusted the smallest part of his fate or for- 
tune to his own efforts,- and will you grant me no 
assistance of superior wisdom, who have suffered a 
long famine to purchase it — who am broken by 
prison — broken by chains — and so shamed by this 
dress of guilt, and abashed by the presence of my 
superiors, that I have no words which you could 
hear without derision — that 1 could not give way 
for a moment to the fulness and agitation of my 
rtide heart without moving your contempt?" So 
spoke a wretched creature to a judge in our 
hearing! and what answer could be given but 
"Jailer, take him away?" 

We are well aware that a great decency of 
language is observed by the counsel employed 
against the prisoner, in consequence of the 
silence imposed upon the opposite counsel ; but 
then, though there is a decency as far as con- 
cerns impassioned declamation, yet there is no 
restraint, and there can be no restraint, upon 
the reasoning powers of a counsellor. He may 
put together the circumstances of an imputed 
crime in the most able, artful and ingenious 
manner, without the slightest vehemence or 
passion. We have no objection to this, if any 
counter statement were permitted. We want 
only fair play. Speech for both sides, or speech 
for none. The first would be the wiser system; 
but the second would be clear from the intolera- 
ble cruelty of the present. We see no harm 
that would ensue, if both advocates were to fol- 
low their own plan without restraint. But, if 
the feelings are to be excluded in all causes of 
this nature (which seems very absurd), then let 
the same restraint be exacted from both sides. 
It might very soon be established, as the eti- 
quette of the bar, that the pleadings on both 
sides were expected to be calm, and to consist 
of reasoning upon the facts. In high treason, 
where the partiality of the judge and power of 
the court are suspected, this absurd incapacity 
of being heard by counsel is removed. No 
body pretends to say, in such cases, that the 
judge would be counsel for the prisoner; and 
yet, how many thousand cases are there in a 
free country which have nothing to do with high 
treason, and where the spirit of party, unknown 
to himself, may get possession of a judge? 
Suppose any trial for murder to have taken 
place in the Manchester riots, — will any man 
say that the conduct of many judges on such a 
question ought not to have been watched with 
the most jealous circumspection ? Would any 
prisoner — would any fair mediator between the 
prisoner and the public — be satisfied at such a 
period with the axiom that the judge is counsel 
for the prisoner? We are not saying that there is 
no judge who might not be so trusted, but that 
all judges are not, at all times, to be so intrusted. 
We are not saying that any judge would wil- 
fully do wrong ; but that many might be led to 
do wrong by passions and prejudices of which 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



169 



they were unconscious ; and that the real safe- 
guard to the prisoner, the best, the only safe- 
guard, is full liberty of speech for the counsel 
he has employed. 

What would be the discipline of that hospi- 
tal where medical assistance was allowed in all 
trifling complaints, and withheld in every case 
of real danger? where Bailey and Halford were 
lavished upon stomach-aches and refused in 
typhus fever? where the dying patient beheld 
the greatest skill employed upon trifling evils of 
others, and was told, because his was a case of 
life and death, that the cook or the nurse was to 
be his physician? 

Suppose so intolerable an abuse (as the at- 
torney and solicitor-general would term it) had 
been established, and that a law for its correc- 
tion was now first proposed, entitled an Act to 
prevent the Counsel for Prisoners from being heard 
in their Defence ! ! ! 

What evil would result from allowing counsel 
to be heard in defence of prisoners ? Would 
too many people be hung from losing that valu- 
able counsellor, the judge ? or would too few 
people be hung? or would things remain much 
as they are at present ? We never could get 
the admirers of this practice to inform us what 
the results would be of deviating from it ; and 
we are the more particularly curious upon this 
point, because our practice is decidedly the re- 
verse, and we find no other results from it than 
a fair administration of criminal justice. In all 
criminal cases that require the intervention of 
a jury in Scotland, a prisoner must have, 1st, a 
copy of the indictment, which must contain a 
minute specification of the offence charged ; 
2dly, a list of witnesses; 3dly, a list of the as- 
size; and, 4thly, in every question that occurs, 
and in all addresses to the jury, the prisoner's 
counsel has the last word. Where is the boasted 
mercy of the English law after this ? 

The truth is, it proceeds from the error which, 
in all dark ages, pervades all codes of laws, of 
confounding the accused with the guilty. In the 
early part of our state trials, the prisoners were 
not allowed to bring evidence against the wit- 
nesses of the crown. For a long period after 
this, the witnesses of the prisoner were not suf- 
fered to be examined upon oath. One piece of 
cruelty and folly has given way after another. 
Each has been defended by the attorney and 
solicitor-general for the time, as absolutely 
necessary to the existence of the state, and the 
most perfect performance of our illustrious an- 
cestors. The last grand hope of every foolish 
person is the silence of the prisoner's counsel. 
In the defence of this, it will be seen what stu- 
pidity driven to despair can achieve. We beg 
pardon for this digression; but flesh and blood 
cannot endure the nonsense of lawyers upon 
this subject. 

The society have some very proper remarks 
upon the religious instructions of the chaplain — 
an appointment of vast importance and utility; 
unfortunately very ill paid, and devolving en- 
tirely upon the lower clergy. It is said that the 
present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Ryder, goes 
into jails and busies himself with the temporal 
■wretchedness and the eternal welfare of the 
prisoners. If this is so, it does him great 
honour, and is a noble example to all ranks of 
22 



clergy who are subject to him. Above all, do 
not let us omit the followin? beautiful anecdote, 
while we are talking of good and pious men. 

" The committee cannot refrain from extract- 
ing from the report of the Paris Society, the 
interesting anecdote of the excellent P6re Jous- 
sony, who being. sent, by the Consul at Algiers, 
to minister to the slaves, fixed his residence in 
their prison; and, during a period of thirty 
years, never quitted his post. Being compelled 
to repair to France, for a short period, he re- 
turned again to the prison, and at length resign- 
ed his breath in the midst of those for whose 
interests he had laboured, and who were dearer 
to him than life." — Report, p. 30. 

It seems to be a very necessary part of the 
prison system, that any poor person, when ac- 
quitted, should be passed to his parish ; and 
that all who are acquitted should be immediately 
liberated. At present, a prisoner, after acquit- 
tal, is not liberated till the grand jury are dis- 
missed,* in case (as it is said) any more bills 
should be preferred against him. This is really 
a considerable hardship; and we do not see, 
upon the same principle, why the prisoner may 
not be detained for another assize. To justify 
such a practice, notice should, at all events, fte 
given to the jailer of intention to prefer other 
charges against him. To detain a man who is 
acquitted of all of which he has been accused, 
and who is accused of nothing more, merely 
because he may be accu^d of something more, 
seems to be a great perversion of justice. The 
greatest of all prison improvements, however, 
would be the delivery of jails four times in the 
year. It would save expense; render justice 
more terrible, by rendering it more prompt; 
facilitate classification, by lessening numbers ; 
keep constantly alive, in the minds of wicked 
men, the dread of the law ; and diminish the 
unjust sufl'erings of those who, after long im- 
prisonment, are found innocent. 

" From documents," says Mr. Western, "upon 
the table of the House of Commons in 1819, 1 
drew out an account, which I have already ad- 
verted to in part, but which I shall restate here, 
as it places, in a strong point of view, the ex- 
tent of injustice, and inconsistency, too, arising 
out of the present system. It appeared that, at 
the Maidstone Lent Assizes of that year there 
were one hundred and seventy-seven prisoners 
for trial; of these, seventeen were in prison be- 
fore the 1st of October, eighty-three before the 
1st of January, the shortest period of confine- 
ment before trial being six months of the former, 
three months of the latter. Nothing can show 
us more plainly the injustice of such confine- 
ment than the known fact of six months' impri- 
sonment being considered a sufficient punish- 
ment for half the felonies that are committed: 
but the case is stronger, whert we consider the 
number acquitted; seventeenof the twenty-seven 
first mentioned were acquitted, nineof the seven- 
teen were discharged, not being prosecuted, or 
having no bill found against them. On the 
other side it appeared, that twenty-five con- 
victed felons were sentenced to six months' im- 
prisonment, or under, the longest period of 
whose confinement did not, therefore, exceed 



♦ This has since been done away with 
P 



170 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the shortest of the seventeen acquitted, or that 
of the nine, against whom no charge was ad- 
duced; there were three, who, after being about 
seven months in prison, were then discharged, 
whilst various convicted felons suffered six- 
sevenths only of the punishment, including the 
time before trial as well as after condemnation. 
By the returns from the Lent Assizes at Chelms- 
ford, the same year, the cases were not less 
striking than those of Maidstone: the total num- 
ber was one hundred and sixty-six ; of these, 
twenty-five were in prison before the 1st of Oc- 
tober, of whom eleven were acquitted, and of 
these eleven, six were discharged without any 
indictment preferred; two were in prison eight 
months; three, seven months and fifteen days. 
three, six months and fifteen days. On the other 
hand, sixteen convicted of felony, were consi- 
dered to be sufficiently puoished by imprisonment 
under six months. Upon the whole, it appeared 
that four hundred and five persons had been in 
gaol before the 1st of October, whilst eight hun- 
dred convicted felons were sentenced to a lighter 
punishment, to a shorter duration of imprison- 
ment, than these four hundred and five had ac- 
tually undergone. 

"It is a curious fact, that, upon an average, 
more than one-third of the total number com- 
mitted for trial are acquitted. In the seven 
years ending 1819, seventy-two thousand two 
hundred and sixteen persons were committed ; 
of these, fourteen thousand two hundred and 
ninety-one were acquitted on trial, eleven thou- 
sand two hundred and seventy-four were dis- 
charged, there being no prosecutions, or no bills 
found against them. This large proportion of 
acquittals aggravates the evil and injustice of 
long confinement before trial; but were it other- 
wise, what possible right can we have to detain 
a man in custody six months, upon any charge 
exhibited against him, before he is brought to 
trial 1 What excuse or palliation can be found 
for so barbarous a violation of all the principles 
of justice and humanity? How contemptible 
it is, by way of delisnce, to talk of the inexpe- 
diency of increasing the number of the judges, 
the expense, inconvenience, trouble, &c.! It is 
wrong to contend with such arguments against 
the unanswerable claims of justice, as it is only 
to admit they are entitled to weight. The fact 
is, we are so completely under the influence of 
habitual respect for established practice, that 
we do not stop to question the possibility of the 
existence of any serio-us defects in the adminis- 
tration of the law that can be capable of remedy. 
The public attention has never been earnestly 
and steadily fixed and devoted to the attainment 
of a better system." — Western, pp. 80—83. 

The public cannot be too grateful to Mr. 
W'estern for his labours on this subject. We 
strongly recommend his tract for general cir- 
culation. It is full of stout good sense, without 
one particle of nonsense or fanaticism : — good 
English stuff, of the most improved and best 
sort. Lord Londonderry has assented to the 
measure; and his assent does him and the 
government very great credit. It is a measure 
of first-rate importance. The multiplicity of 
imprisonments is truly awful. 

Within the distance of ten miles round Lon- 
don, thirty-one fairs are annually held, which 



continue eighty days within the space of seven 
months. The effect of these fairs, in filling 
the prisons of the metropolis, it is easy to ima- 
gine; and the topic is very wisely and properly 
brought forward by the society. 

Nothing can be so absurd as the reasoning 
used about Jlds/i houses. They are sufiered to 
exist, it seems, because it is easy to the oflicers 
of justice to find, in such places, the prisoners 
of whom they are in search I But the very 
place where the thief is found is most probably 
the place which made him a thief. If it facili- 
tates the search, it creates the necessity for 
searching, and multiplies guilt while it pro- 
motes detection. Wherever thieves are known 
to haunt, that place should be instantly purged 
of thieves. 

We have pushed this article to a length 
which will prevent us from dwelling upon that 
part of the plan of the Prison Society which 
embraces the reformation of juvenile delin- 
quents, of whom it is calculated there are 
not less than 8000 in London who gain their 
livelihood by thieving. To this subject we 
may, perhaps, refer in some future number. 
We must content ourselves at present with a 
glimpse at the youthful criminals of the metro- 
polis, 

" Upon a late occasion (in company with Mr.. 
Samuel Hoare, the chairman of the Society for 
the Reform of Juvenile Delinquents), I visited^ 
about midnight, many of those receptacles of 
thieves which abound in this metropolis. We 
selected the night of that day in which an exe- 
cution had taken place; and our object was, to 
ascertain whether that terrible demonstration^ 
of rigour could operate even a short suspen. 
sion of iniquity, and keep for a single nigh 
the votaries of crime from their accustomed 
orgies. In one room, I recollect, we found a 
large number of children of both sexes, the 
oldest under eighteen years of age, and in the 
centre of these a man who had been described 
to me by the police as one of the largest sellers 
of forged bank-notes. At another part, we were 
shown a number of buildings, into which only 
children were allowed to enter, and in which, 
if you could obtain admission, which you can- 
not, you would see scenes of the most flagrant,. 
the most public, and the most shocking de- 
bauchery. Have I not, then, a right to say, 
that you are growing crimes at a terrible rate, 
and producing those miscreants who are to dis- 
turb the public peace, plunder the public pro- 
perty, and to become the scourge and the dis- 
grace of the country 1" — Buxton, pp. 66, 67. 

Houses dedicated to the debauchery of chil- 
dren, where it is impossible to enter ! ! ! Whence 
comes this impossibility'? 

To show that their labours are not needlessly 
continued, the society make the following state- 
ment of the present state of prisons : — 

" But although these considerations are highly 
encouraging, there is yet much to accomplish 
in this work of national improvement. So ex- 
tensive are the defects of classification, that in 
thirty gaols, constructed for the confinement of 
2985 persons, there were, at one time in the last 
year, no fewer than 5837 prisoners; and the 
whole number imprisoned in those gaols, dur- 
ing that period, amounted to 26,703. There are 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



ITl 



yet prisons where idleness and its attendant 
evils reign unrestrained — where the sexes are 
not separated— where all distinctions of crime 
are confounded — where few can enter, if uncor- 
rupted, without pollution; and, if guilty, with- 
out incurring deeper stains of criminality. — 
There are yet prisons which receive not the 
pious visits of a Christian minister — which the 
light of knowledge never enters — and where 
the truths and consolations of the Gospel are 
never heard. — There are yet prisons where, for 
the security of the prisoners, measures are re- 
sorted to as revolting to British feeling as they 
are repugnant to the spirit and letter of English 
law." — Report, pp. 63, 64. 

With this statement we take our leave of the 
subject of prisons, thoroughly convinced that, 
since the days of their cleanliness and salu- 



brity, they have been so managed as to become 
the great school for crimes and wretchedness ; 
and that the public, though beginning to awake, 
are not yet sufficiently aware of this fact, and 
sufficiently alarmed at it. Mrs. Fry is an ami- 
able, excellent woman, and ten thousand times 
better than the infamous neglect that preceded 
her; but hers is not the method to stop crimes. 
In prisons, which are really meant to keep the 
multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil 
doers, there must be no sharing of profits—no 
visiting of friends — no education but religious 
education — no freedom of diet — no weavers' 
looms or carpenters' benches. There must be 
a great deal of solitude ; coarse food ; a dress 
of shame; hard, incessant, irksome, eternal la- 
bour; a planned and regulated and unrelenting 
exclusion of happiness and comfort. 



172 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



PERSECUTING bishops; 

[Edinburgh Revieu^ 1822.] 



It is a great point in any question to clear 
away encumbrances, and to make a ualied 
circle about the object in dispute, so that there 
may be a clear view of it on every side. In 
pursuance of this disencumbering process, we 
shall first acquit the bishop of all wrong inten- 
tions. He has a very bad opinion of the prac- 
tical effects of high Calvinistic doctrines upon 
the common people ; and he thinks it his duty 
to exclude those clergymen who profess them 
from his diocese. There is no moral wrong 
in this. He has accordingly devised no fewer 
than eighty-seven interrogatories, by which he 
thinks he can detect the smallest taint of Cal- 
vinism that may lurk in the creed of the can- 
didate ; and in this also, whatever we may 
think of his reasoning, we suppose his pur- 
pose to be blameless. He believes, finally, 
that he has legally the power so to in- 
terrogate and exclude; and in this perhaps 
he is not mistaken. His intentions, then, are 
good, and his conduct, perhaps, not amenable 
to the law. All this we admit in his favour: 
but against him we must maintain, that his 
conduct upon the points in dispute has been 
singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and, 
in its effects (though not in its intentions), 
very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy. 

We have no sort of intention to avail our- 
selves of an anonymous publication to say 
unkind, uncivil, or disrespectful things to a 
man of rank, learning, and character — we 
hope to be guilty of no such impropriety; but 
we cannot believe we are doing wrong in 
ranging ourselves on the weaker side, in the 
cause of propriety and justice. The mitre 
protects its wearer from indignity; but it does 
not secure impunity. 

It is a strong presumption that a man is 
wrong, when all his friends, whose habits na- 

*l. An Appeal to the Legislature and Public ; or, the Le- 
gality of the Eighty-seven Questions proposed by Dr. Her- 
bert Marsh, the Bishop of Peterborough, to Candidates for 
Holy Orders, and for Licenses, within that Diocese, consi- 
dered. 2d Edition. London, Seely, 1821. 

2. A Speech, delivered in the House of Lords, on Friday, 
June 7, 1822, by Herbert, Lord Bishop'of Peterbnrouirh, on 
the Presentation of a Petition an-ainst his Examination 
Questions : with Explanatory J^otes, a Supplement, and a 
Copy of the Questions. London. Rivinirton. 1822. 

3. The Wrongs of the Clergy of the Diocese ,>f Peterbo- 
rough stated and illustrated. By the Rev. T. S. Gri.ii- 
SHAWE, M. A., Rector of Burton, North.-iniptonshire ; and 
Vicar of Biddenhain, Bedfordshire. London, !*eely, 1822. 

4. Episcopal Innovation : or, the Test of Modern Ortho- 
doxy, in Eighty-seven Questions, imposed, as Articles of 
Faith, upon Candidates for License.<i and for Halii Orders, 
in the Diocese of Peterborough ; with a distinct Answer to 
each Question, and General Reflections Relative to their Il- 
legal Structure and Pernicious Tendency. London, Seely 
1820. 

5. Official Correspondence between the Right Rev. Her- 
bert, Lord Bishop of Peterborough, and the Rev. John 
Oreen, respecting his Jfomination to the Curacy of Bla- 
therwycke, in the Diocese of Peterborough, and County of 
Northampton : Also, between His Grace Charles, Lord 
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Rev. Henry William 
Jfevile, M. A., Rector of Blatherwycke, and of Cottesmore 
in the County of Rutland. 1821. 



turally lead them to coincide with him, think 
him wrong. If a man were to indulge in 
taking medicine till the apothecary, the drug- 
gist, and the physician, all called upon him to 
abandon his philo-cathartic propensities — if he 
were to gratify his convivial habits till the 
landlord demurred and the waiter shook his 
head — we should naturally imagine that ad- 
vice so wholly disinterested was not given be- 
fore it was wanted, and that it merited some 
little attention and respect. Now, though the 
Bench of Bishops certainly love power, and 
love the church, as well as the Bishop of 
Peterborough, yet not one defended him — not 
one rose to say, " I have done, or I would do 
the same thing." It was impossible to be pre- 
sent at the last debate on this question, without 
perceiving that his lordship stood alone — and 
this in a very gregarious profession, that ha- 
bitually combines and butts against an oppo- 
nent with a very extended front. If a lawyer 
is wounded, the rest of the profession pursue 
him, and put him to death. If a churchman is 
hurt, the others gather round for his protection, 
stamp with their feet, push with their horns, 
and demolish the dissenter who did the mis- 
chief. 

The bishop has at least done a very un- 
usual thing in his Eighty-seven Questions. 
The two archbishops, and we believe eveiy 
other bishop, and all the Irish hierarchy, ad- 
mit curates into their dioceses without any 
such precautions. The necessity of such se- 
vere and scrupulous inquisition, in short, has 
been apparent to nobody but the Bishop of 
Peterborough ; and the authorities by which he 
seeks to justify it are any thing but satisfac- 
tory. His lordship states, that forty years ago, 
he was himself examined by written inter- 
rogatories, and that he is not the only bishop 
who has done it; but he mentions no names; 
and it was hardly worth while to state such 
extremely slight precedents for so strong a de- 
viation from the common practice of the 
church. 

The bishop who rejects a curate upon the 
Eighty-seven Questions is necessarily and in- 
evitably opposed to the bishop who ordained 
him. The Bishop of Gloucester ordains a 
young man of twenty-three years of age, not 
"thinking it necessary to put to him these inter- 
rogatories, or putting them perhaps, and ap- 
pro v^ing of answers diametrically opposite to 
those that are required by the Bishop of Peter- 
borough. The young clergyman then comes 
to the last-mentioned bishop, and the bishop, 
after putting him to the question, says, "You 
are unfit for a clergyman," — though, ten days 
before, the Bishop of Gloucester has made him 
one ! It is bad enough for ladies to pull caps, 
but still worse for bishops to pull mitres. 
Nothing can be more mischievous or indecent 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



173 



than such scenes; and no man of common 
prudence, or knowledge of the world, but must 
see that they ought immediately to be put a 
stop to. If a man is a captain in the army in 
one part of England, he is a captain in all. 
The general who commands north of the 
Tweed does not say. You shall never appear 
in my district, or exercise the functions of an 
officer, if you do not answer eighty-seven 
questions on the art of war, according to my 
notions. The same officer who commands a 
ship of the line in the Mediterranean, is con- 
sidered as equal to the same office in the 
North Seas. The sixth commandment is sus- 
pended, by one medical diploma, from the 
north of England to the south. But, by this 
new system of interrogation, a man may be 
admitted into orders at Barnet, rejected at 
Stevenage, re-admitted at Brogden, kicked out 
as a Calvinist at Witham Common, and hail- 
ed as an ardent Armmian on his arrival at 
York. 

It matters nothing to say that sacred things 
must not be compared with profane. In their 
importance, we allow^they cannot; but in their 
order and discipline they may be so far com- 
pared as to say, that the discrepancy and con- 
tention which would be disgraceful and per- 
nicious in worldly affairs, should, in common 
prudence, be avoided in the affairs of religion. 
Mr. Greenough has made a map of England, 
according to its geological varieties; — blue for 
the chalk, gi-een for the clay, red for the sand, 
and so forth. Under this system of Bishop 
Marsh, we must petition for the assistance of 
the geologist in the fabrication of an ecclesias- 
tical map. All the Arminian districts must 
be purple. Green for one theological extre- 
mity — sky-blue for another — as many colours 
as there are bishops — as many shades of these 
colours as there are archdeacons — a tailor's 
pattern card — the picture of vanity, fashion, 
and caprice ! 

The bishop seems surprised at the resist- 
ance he meets with; and yet, to Avhat purpose 
has he read ecclesiastical history, if he expects 
to meet with any thing but the most determined 
opposition 1 Does he think that every sturdy su- 
pralapsarian bullock whom he tries to sacrifice 
to the genius of orthodoxy, will not kick, and 
push, and toss ; that he will not, if he can, 
shake the axe from his neck, and hurl his 
mitred butcher into the air? His lordship has 
undertaken a task of which he little knows the 
labour or the end. We know these men fully 
as well as the bishop; he has not a chance of 
success against them. If one motion in Par- 
liament will not do, they will have twenty. 
They will ravage, roar, and rush, till the very 
chaplains, and the masters and Misses Peter- 
borough request his lordship to desist. He is 
raising up a storm in the English church, of 
which he has not the slightest conception; 
and which will end, as it ought to end, in his 
lordship's disgrace and defeat. 

The longer we live, the more we are con- 
vinced of the justice of the old saying, that an 
ounce of mother wit is ivorth a pound of clergy ,- 
that discretion, gentle manners, common sense, 
and good nature, are, in men of high ecclesias- 
tical station, of far greater importance than 



the greatest skill in discriminating between 
sublapsarian and supralapsarian doctrines- 
Bishop Marsh should remember, that all men 
wearing the mitre work by character, as well 
as doctrine ; that a tender regard to men's 
rights and feelings, a desire to avoid sacred 
squabbles, a fondness for quiet, and an ardent 
wish to make everybody happy, would be of 
far more value to the Church of England than 
all his learning and vigilance of inquisition. 
The Irish tithes will probably fall next session 
of Parliament; the common people are regu- 
larly receding from the Church of England — 
baptizing, burying, and confirming for them- 
selves. Under such circumstances, what 
would the worst enemy of the English church 
require? — a bitter, bustling, theological bishop, 
accused by his clergy of tyranny and oppres- 
sion — the cause of daily petitions and daily 
debates in the House of Commons — the idone- 
ous vehicle of abuse against the Establish- 
ment — a stalking-horse to bad men for the 
introduction of revolutionary opinions, mis- 
chievous ridicule, and irreligious feelings. 
Such will be the advantages which Bishop 
Marsh will secure for the English Establish- 
ment in the ensuing session. It is inconceiv- 
able how such a prelate shakes all the upper 
works of the church, and ripens it for dissolu- 
tion and decay. Six such bishops, multiplied 
by eighty-seven, and working with five hun- 
dred and twenty-two questions, would fetch 
every thing to the ground in less than six 
months. But what if it pleased Divine Provi- 
dence to afflict every prelate with the spirit of 
putting eighty-seven queries,, and the two 
archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as 
many, and the Bishop of Sodor and Man with 
the spirit of putting only forty-three queries 1 — 
there would then be a grand total of two thou- 
sand three hundred and tliirty-five interroga- 
tions flying about the English church; and 
sorely vexed would the land be with Question 
and Answer. 

We will suppose this learned prelate, with- 
out meanness or undue regard to his worldly 
interests, to feel that fair desire of rising in his 
profession, which any man, in any profession, 
may feel without disgrace. Does he forget that 
his character in the ministerial circles will 
soon become that of a violent, impracticable 
man — whom it is impossible to place in the 
highest situations — who has been trusted with 
too much already, and must be trusted with no 
more 1 Ministers have something else to do 
with their time, and with the time of Parlia- 
ment, than to waste them in debating squabbles 
between bishops and iheir clergy. They natu- 
rally wish, and, on the whole, reasonably 
expect, that every thing should go on silently 
and quietly in the church. They have no ob- 
jection to a learned bishop ; but they deprecate 
one atom more of learning than is compatible \ 
with moderation, good sense, and the soundest 
discretion. It must be the grossest ignorance 
of the world to suppose, that the cabinet has 
any pleasure in watching Calvinists. 

The bishop not only puts the question, but 
he actually assigns the limits within which 
they are to be answered. Spaces are left in the 
paper of interrogations, to which limits the ■ 



174 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



answer is to be confined ; — two inches to ori- 
ginal sin; an inch and a half to justification; 
three quarters to predestination ; and to free 
will only a quarter of an inch. But if his lord- 
ship gives them an inch they will take an ell. 
His lordship is himself a theological writer, 
and by no means remarkable for his concise- 
ness. To deny space to his brother theologians, 
who are writing on the most difficult subjects, 
not from choice, but necessity; not for fame, 
but for bread; and to award rejection as the 
penalty of prolixity, does appear to us no slight 
deviation from Christian gentleness. The 
tyranny of calling for such short answers is 
very strikingly pointed out in a letter from Mr. 
Thurtell to the Bishop of Peterborough ; the 
style of which pleads, we think, very power- 
fully in favour of the writer. 

"Beccles, Suffolk, Jugust 23th, 1821. 

"My Lord — I ought, in the first place, to 
apologise for delaying so long to answer your 
lordship's letter : but the difficulty in which I 
was involved, by receiving another copy of 
your lordship's Questions, with positive direc- 
tions to give short answers, may be suflicient to 
account for that delay. 

"It is my sincere desire to meet your lord- 
ship's wishes, and to obey your lordship's di- 
rections in every particular; and I would 
therefore immediately have returned answers, 
without any 'restrictions or modifications,' to 
the Questions which your lordship has thought 
fit to send me, if, in so doing, I could have dis- 
charged the obligations of my conscience, by 
showing what my opinions really are. But it 
appears to me, that the Questions proposed to 
me by your lordship are so constructed as to 
elicit only two sets of opinions ; and that by 
answering them in so concise a manner, I 
should be representing myself to your lordship 
as one who believes in either of two particular 
creeds, to neither of which I do really subscribe. 
For instance, to answer Question I. chap, ii., in 
the manner your lordship desires, I am reduced 
to the alternative of declaring, either that ' man- 
kind are a mass of mere corruption,' which 
expresses more than I intend, or of leaving 
room for the inference, that they are only par- 
tially corrupt, which is opposed to the plainest 
declarations of the Homilies; such as these, 
' Man is altogether spotted and defiled' (Horn, on 
Nat.), ' without a spark of goodness in him' 
(Serra. on Mis. of Man, &c.). 

"Again, by answering the Questions com- 
prised in the chapter on 'Free Will,' according 
to your lordship's directions, I am compelled 
to acknowledge either that man has such a 
share in the work of his own salvation as to 
exclude the sole agency of God, or that he has 
no share whatever; when the Homilies for Ro- 
gation Week and Whitsunday positively de- 
clare, that God is the 'only Worker,' or, in 
other words, sole Agent ; and at the same time 
assign to man a certain share in the work of 
his own salvation. In short, I could, with your 
lordship's permission, point out twenty Ques- 
tions, involving doctrines of the utmost im- 
portance, which I am unable to answer, so as to 
convey my real sentiments, without more room 
for explanation than the printed sheet afifords. 



"In this view of the subject, therefore, and 
in the most deliberate exercise of my judgment, 
I deem it indispensable to my acting with that 
candour and truth with which it is my wish 
and duty to act, and with which I cannot but 
believe your lordship desires I should act, to 
state my opinions in that language which ex- 
presses them most fully, plainly, and unre- 
servedly. This I have endeavoured to do in 
the answers now in the possession of your 
lordship. If any further explanation be re- 
quired, I am most willing to give it, even to a 
minuteness of opinion beyond what the Arti- 
cles require. At the same time, I would humbly 
and respectfully appeal to your lordship's can- 
dour, tvhether it is not hard to demand my decided 
opinion upon points u'hich have been the themes of 
volumes ; upon which the most pious and learned 
men of the church have conscientiously differed; and 
upon which the Articles in Ike judgment of Bishop 
Burnet have pronounced no definite sentence. To 
those Articles, my lord, I have already sub- 
scribed; and I am willing again to subscribe 
to every one of them, 'in its literal and gram- 
matical sense,' according to his majesty's decla- 
ration prefixed to them. 

" I hope, therefore, in consideration of the 
above statement, that your lordship will not 
compel me, by the conciseness of my answers, 
to assent to the doctrines which I do not be- 
lieve, or to expose mysejf to inferences which 
do not fairly and legitimately follow from my 
opinions. " I am, my Lord, &c. «fcc." 

We are not much acquainted with the prac- 
tices of courts of justice; but, if we remember 
right, when a man is going to be hanged, the 
judge lets him make his defence in his own 
way, without complaining of its length. We 
should think a Christian bishop might be 
equally indulgent to a man who is going to be 
ruined. The answers are required to be clear, 
concise, and correct — short, plain, and positive. 
In other words, a poor curate, extremely agitated 
at the idea of losing his livelihood, is required 
to write with brevity and perspicuity on the fol- 
lowing subjects ; — Redemption by Jesus Christ 
— Original Sin — Free Will — Justification — Jus- 
tification in reference to its causes — Justifica- 
tion in reference to the time when it takes 
place — Everlasting Salvation — Predestination 
— Regeneration on the New Birth — Renova- 
tion, and the Holy Trinity. As a specimen of 
these questions, the answer to which is required 
to be so brief and clear, we shall insert the fol- 
lowing quotation : — 

" Section II. — Of Justification in reference to its 
cause. 

" 1. Does not the eleventh Article declare, that 
we are 'justified by Faith only?' 

" 2. Does not the expression ' Faith only' derive 
additional strength from the negative ex- 
pression in the same Article ' and not for 
our own works'?' 

"3. Does not therefore the eleventh Article ex- 
clude good works from all share in the ofl5ce 
of Justifying? Or can we so construe the 
term ' Faith' in that Article, as to make it 
include good works 1 

"4. Do not the twelfth and thirteenth Articles 
fwtlur exclude them, the one by asserting 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMTH. 



175 



that good works follow after Justification, 
the other by maintaining that they cannot 
precede it ? 
■" 5. Can that, which never precedes an effect, 
be reckoned among the causes of that effect] 
^' 6. Can we then, consistently with our Articles, 
reckon the performance of good works 
among the causes of Justification, whatever 
qualifying epithet be used with the term 
cause ?" 
We entirely deny that the Calvinistical 
clergy are bad members of their profession. 
We maintain that as many instances of good, 
serious, and pious men — of persons zealously 
interesting themselves in the temporal and 
spiritual welfare of their parishioners are to 
be found among them, as among the clergy 
who put an opposite interpretation on the 
Articles. The Articles of Religion are older 
than Arminianism, eo nomine. The early re- 
formers leant to Calvinism; and would, to a 
man, have answered the bishop's questions in 
a way which would have induced him to refuse 
them ordination and curacies ; and those who 
drew up the Thirty-nine Articles, if they had 
not prudently avoided all precise interpretation 
of their creed on free-will, necessity, absolute 
decrees, original sin, reprobation, and election, 
would have, in all probability, given an inter- 
pretation of them like that which the bishop 
considers as'a disqualification for holy orders. 
Laud's Lambeth Articles were illegal, mis- 
chievous, and are generally condemned. The 
Irish clergy in 1641 drew up one hundred and 
four articles as the creed of their church ; and 
these are Calvinistic, and not Arminian. They 
were approved and signed by Usher, and never 
abjured by him ; though dropped as a test or 
qualification. Usher was promoted (even in 
the days of Arminianism) to bishoprics and 
archbishoprics — so little did a Calvinistic inter- 
pretation of the Articles in a man's own breast, 
or even an avowal of Calvinism, beyond what 
was required by the Articles, operate even then 
as a disqualification for the cure of souls, or 
of any other office in the church. Throughout 
Charles II. and William III.'s time, the best 
men and greatest names of the church not only 
allowed latitude in interpreting the Articles, 
but thought it would be wise to diminish their 
number, and render them more lax than they 
are ; and be it observed, that these latitudina- 
rians leant to Arminianism rather than to high 
Calvinism ; and thought, consequently, that the 
Articles, if objectionable at all, were exposed 
to the censure of being " too Calvinistic," 
rather than too Arminian. How preposterous, 
therefore, to twist them, and the subscription 
to them required by law, by the machinery of 
a long string of explanatory questions, into a 
barrier against Caivinists, and to give the 
Arminians a monopoly in the church ! 

Archbishop Wake, in 1716, after consulting 
all the bishops then attending Parliament, 
thought it incumbent on him "to employ the 
authority irhich the ecclesiastical latvs then in force, 
and the custom and laws of the realm, vested in him," 
and taking care that " no unu-orthy person might 
hereafter be admitted into the sacred ministry of the 
church;" and he drew np twelve recommenda- 
tions to the bishops of England, in which he 



earnestly exhorts them not to ordain persons 
of bad conduct or character, or incompetent 
learning ; but he does not require from the 
candidates for holy orders or preferment, any 
explanation whatever of the Articles which 
they had signed. f 

The correspondence of the same eminent 
prelate with Professor Turretin in 1718, and 
with Mr. Le Clerc and the pastors and profes- 
sors of Geneva in 1719, printed in London, 
1782, recommends union among Protestants, 
and the omission of controverted points in 
confessions of faith, as a means of obtaining 
that union ; and a constant reference to the 
practice of the Church of England is made in 
elucidation of the charity and wisdom of such 
policy. Speaking of men who act upon a 
contrary principle he says, quantum potuit 
insana (piXAvrix ! 

These passages, we think, are conclusive 
evidence of the practice of the church till 
1719. For Wake was not only at the time 
Archbishop of Canterbury, but both in his 
circular recommendations to the bishops of 
England, and in his correspondence with fo- 
reign churches, was acting in the capacity of 
metropolitan of the Anglican church. He, a 
man of prudence and learning, publicly boasts 
to Protestant Europe, that his church does not 
exact, and that he de facto has never avowed, 
and never will, his opinions on those very 
points upon which Bishop Marsh obliges every 
poor curate to be explicit, upon pain of expul- 
sion from the church. 

It is clear, then, the practice was, to extract 
subscription and nothing else, as the test of 
orthodoxy — to that Wake is an evidence. As 
far as he is authority on a point of opinion, it 
is his conviction that his practice was whole- 
some, wise, and intended to preserve peace in 
the church; that it would be wrong at least, 
if not illegal, to do otherwise ; and that the ob- 
servance of this forbearance is the only method 
of preventing schism. The Bishop of Peter- 
borough, however, is of a different opinion ; 
he is so thoroughly convinced of the pernicious 
effects of Calvinistic doctrines, that he does 
what no other bishop does, or ever did do, for 
their exclusion. This may be either wise or 
injudicious, but it is at least zealous and bold; 
it is to encounter rebuke, and opposition, from 
a sense of duty. It is impossible to deny this 
merit to his lordship. And we have no doubt, 
that, in pursuance of the same theological 
gallantry, he is preparing a set of interroga- 
tories for those clergymen who are presented 
to benefices in his diocese. The patron will 
have his action of Qiiare impedit, it is true; and 
the judge and jury will decide whether the 
bishop has the right of interrogation at all ; 
and whether Calvinistical answers to his inter- 
rogatories disqualify any man from holding 
preferment in the Church of England. If 
either of these points are given against the ^ 
Bishop of Peterborough, he is in honour and 
conscience bound to give up his examination 
of curates. If Calvinistic ministers are, in the 
estimation of the bishops, so dangerous as 
curates, they are of course m uch more dangerous 
as rectors and vicars. He has as much right to 
examine one as the other. Why then does he 



176 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pass over the greater clanger, and guard against 
the lessl Why does he not show his zeal 
when he would run some risk, and where the 
excluded person (if excluded unjustly) could 
appeal to the laws of his country 1 If his con- 
duct is just and right, has he any thing to fear 
from that appeal 1 What should we say of a 
police officer who acted in all cases of petty 
larceny, where no opposition was made, and 
let off all persons guilty of felony who threat- 
ened to knock him down 1 If the bishop values 
his own character, he is bound to do less, — or 
to do more. God send his choice may be right ! 
The law, as it stands at present, certainly af- 
fords very unequal protection to rector and 
to curate ; but if the bishop will not act so as 
to improve ihe law, the law must be so changed 
as to improve the bishop ; an action of Quare 
impcdit must be given to the curate also — and 
then the fury of interrogation will be calmed. 

We are aware that the Bishop of Peterbo- 
rough, in his speech, disclaims the object of 
excluding the Calvinists by this system of in- 
terrogation. We shall take no other notice of 
his disavowal, than expressing our sincere 
regret that he ever made it; but the question 
is not at all altered by the intention of the inter- 
rogator. Whether he aims at the Calvinists 
only, or includes them with other heterodox 
respondents — the fact is, the)' are included in 
the proscription, and excluded from the church. 
The practical effect of the practice being, that 
men are driven out of the church, who have 
as much right to exercise the duties of cler- 
gymen as the bishop himself. If heterodox 
opinions are the great objects of the bishop's 
apprehensions, he has his ecclesiastical courts, 
where regular process may bring the offender 
to punishment, and from whence there is no ap- 
peal to higher courts. This would be the fair 
thing to do. The curate and the bishop would 
be brought into the light of day, and subjected 
to the wholesome restraint of public opinion. 

His lordship boasts that he has excluded 
only two curates. So the Emperor of Hayti 
boasted that he had only cut off two persons' 
heads for disagreeable behaviour at his table. 
In spite of the paucity of the visitors executed, 
the example operated as a considerable impe- 
diment to conversation; and the intensity of 
the punishment was found to be a full compen- 
sation for its rarity. How many persons have 
been deprived of curacies which they might 
have enjoyed, but for the tenour of these in- 
terrogatories ] How many respectable cler- 
gymen have been deprived of the assistance of 
curates connected with them by blood, friend- 
ship, or doctrine, and compelled to choose per- 
sons, for no other qualification than that they 
could pass through the eye of the bishop's 
needle'? Violent measures are not to be 
judged of merely by the number of times they 
have been resorted to, but by the terror, mise- 
ry, and restraint which the severity is likely to 
have produced. 

We never met with any style so entirely 
clear of all redundant and vicious ornament, 
as that which the ecclesiastical Lord of Peter- 
borough has adopted towards his clergy. It, 
in fact, may be all reduced to these few 
words — "Reverend Sir, I shall do what I 



please. Peterborough." — Even in the House 
of Lords, he speaks what we must call very 
plain language. Among other things, he says, 
that the allegations of the petitions are false. 
Now, as every bishop is, besides his other 
qualities, a ge-ntleman ; and as the word fake 
is used only by laymen, who mean to hazard 
their lives by the expression; and as it cannot 
be supposed that foul language is ever used 
because it can be used with personal impunity, 
his lordship must, therefore, be intended to 
mean not false, but mistaken — not a wilful de- 
viation from truth, but an accidental and un- 
intended departure from it. 

His lordship talks of the drudgery of wading 
through ten pages of answers to his eighty- 
seven questions. Who has occasioned this 
drudgery, but the person who means to be so 
much more active, useful, and important, than 
all other bishops, by proposing questions 
which nobody has thought to be necessary but 
himself? But to be intolerably strict and 
harsh to a poor curate, who is trying to earn a 
morsel of hard bread, and then to complain of 
the drudgery of reading his answers, is much 
like knocking a man down with a bludgeon, 
and then abusing him for splashing you with 
his blood, and pestering you with his groans. 
It is quite monstrous, that a man who inflicts 
eighty-seven new questions in theology upon 
his fellow-creatures, should talk of the drudgery 
of reading their answers. 

A curate — there is something which excites 
compassion in the very name of a curate ! I ! 
How any man of purple, palaces, and prefer- 
ment, can let himself loose against this poor 
workman of God, we are at a loss to conceive, 
— a learned man in a hovel, with sermons and 
saucepans, lexicons and bacon, Hebrew books 
and ragged children — good and patient — a com- 
forter and a preacher — the first and purest 
pauper in the hamlet, and yet showing, that, 
in the midst of his worldly misery, he has the 
heart of a gentleman, and the spirit of a Chris- 
tian, and the kindness of a pastor ; and this 
man, though he has exercised the duties of a 
clergyman for twenty years — though he has 
most ample testimonies of conduct from cler- 
gymen as respectable as any bishop — though 
an archbishop add his name to the list of wit- 
nesses, is not good enough for Bishop Marsh ; 
but is pushed out in the street, with his wife 
and children, and his little furniture, to sur- 
render his honour, his faith, his conscience, 
and his learning — or to starve 1 

An obvious objection to these innovations 
is, that there can be no end to them. If eighty- 
seven questions are assumed to be necessary 
by one bishop, eight hundred may be con- 
sidered as the minimum of interrogation by 
another. When once the ancient faith-marks 
of the church are lost sight of and despised, ^ jf 
any misled theologian may launch out on the • '. 
boundless sea of polemical vexation. 

The Bishop of Peterborough is positive, that 
the Arminian interpretation of the articles is 
the right interpretation, and that Calvinists 
should be excluded from it; but the country 
gentlemen who are to hear these matters de- 
bated in the Lower House, are to remember, 
that other bishops have written upon these 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



177 



points before the Bishop of Peterborough, and 
have arrived at conclusions diametrically op- 
posite. When curates are excluded because 
their answers are Calvinistical, a careless lay- 
man might imagine that this interpretation of 
the Articles had never been heard of before in 
the church — that it was a gross and palpable 
perversion of their sense, which had been 
scouted by all writers on church matters, from 
the day the Articles were promulgated, to 
this hour — that such an unheard-of monster 
as a Calvinistical curate had never leapt over 
the pale before, and been detected browsing 
in the sacred pastures. 

The following is the testimony of Bishop 
Sherlock : — 

" ' The church has left a latitude of sense to 
prevent schisms and breaches upon every 
different opinion. It is evident the Church of 
England has so done in some articles, Avhich 
are most liable to the hottest disputes ; which 
yet are penned with that temper as to be will- 
ingly subscribed by men of different apprehen- 
sions in those matters.' — Sherlock's Defence of 
Stillingfleet's U7vreasonableness of Separation." 

Bishop Cleaver, describing the difficulties 
attending so great an undertaking as the for- 
mation of a national creed, observes : — 

" ' These difficulties, however, do not seem 
to have discouraged the great leaders in this 
work from forming a design as wise as it was 
liberal, that of framing a confession, which, 
in the enumeration and method of its several 
articles, should meet the approbation, and en- 
gage the consent, of the whole reformed world. 

" ' If, upon trial, it was found that a compre- 
hension so extensive could not be reduced to 
practice, still as large a comprehension as 
could be contrived, within the narrower limits 
of the kingdom, became, for the same reasons 
which first suggested the idea, at once an ob- 
ject of prudence and duty, in the formation 
and government of the English church.' 

" After dwelling on the means necessary to 
accomplish this object, the bishop proceeds to 
remark :^' Such evidently appears to have 
been the origin, and such the actual complexion 
of the confession comprised in the Articles of 
our church ; the true scope and design of which 
will not, I conceive, be correctly apprehended in 
any other view than that of one drawn up and 
adjusted with an intention to comprehend the as- 
sent of all, rather than to exclude that of any 
who concurred in the necessity of a reformation. 

" ' The means of comprehension intended 
were, not any general ambiguity or equivoca- 
tion of terms, hut a prudent forbearance in all 
parties not to insist on the full extent of their 
opinions in matters not essential or fundamental ; 
and in all cases to wave, as much as possible, 
tenets which might divide, where they wish to 
^ unite.'' — Remarks on the Design and Formation 
^ of the Articles of the Church of England, by 
William, Lord Bishop of Bangor, 1802." — 
pp. 23—25. 

We will finish with Bishop Horsley. 

" It has been the fashion of late . to talk 

about Arminianism as the system of the 

Church of England, and of Calvinism as 

something opposite to it, to which the church 

23 



is hostile. That I may not be misunderstood 
in what I have stated, or may have occasion 
further to say upon this subject, 1 must here 
declare, that I use the words Arminianism and 
Calvinism in that restricted sense in which 
they are now generally taken, to denote the 
doctrinal part of each system, as unconnected 
with the principles either of Arminians or 
Calvinists upon church discipline and church 
government. This being premised, I assert, 
what I often have before asserted, and by 
God's grace I will persist in the assertion to 
my dying day, that so far is it from the truth 
that the Church of England is decidedly Ar- 
minian, and hostile to Calvinism, that the truth 
is this, that upon the principal poi7tts in dispute 
between the Arminians and the Calvinists upon 
all the points of doctrine characteristic of the two 
sects, the Church of England maintains an ab- 
solute neutrality ; her articles explicitly assert 
nothing but what is believed both by Arminians 
and by Calvinisti. The Calvinists indeed hold 
some opinions relative to the same points, 
which the Church of England has not gone 
the (ength of asserting in her Articles; but 
neither has she gone the length of explicitly 
contradicting those opinions; insomuch that 
there is nothing to hinder the Arminian and the 
highest suprulapsarian Calvinists from walking 
together in the Church of England and Ireland 
as friends and brothers, if they both approve the 
discipline of the church, and both are willing to 
submit to it. Her discipline has been approved ; 
it has been submitted to ; it has been in former 
times most ably and zealously defended by the 
highest supralapsarian Calvinists. Such was 
the great Usher; such was Whitgift; such 
were many more, burning and shining lights 
of our church in her early days (when first 
she shook off the Papal tyranny), long since 
gone to the resting place of the spirits of the 
just. — Bishop Horslet's Charges, p. 216." — 
pp. 25, 26. 

So that these unhappy curates are turned 
out of their bread for an exposition of the Ar- 
ticles which such men as Sherlock, Cleaver, 
and Horsley think may be fairly given of their 
meaning. We do not quote their authority to 
show that the right interpretation is decided, 
but that it is doubtful — that there is a balance 
of authorities — that the opinion which Bishop 
Marsh has punished with poverty and degra- 
dation, has been considered to be legitimate, 
by men at least as wise and learned as him- 
self. In fact, it is to us perfectly clear, that 
the Articles were originally framed to prevent 
the very practices which Bishop Marsh has 
used for their protection — they were purpose- 
ly so worded, that Arminians and Calvinists 
could sign them without blame. They were 
intended to combine both these descriptions 
of Protestants, and were meant principally for 
a bulwark against Catholics. 

" Thus," says Bishop Burnet, " was the doc- 
trine of the church cast into a short and plain 
form ; in which they took care both to esta- 
blish the positive articles of religion, and to 
cut off the errors formerly introduced in the 
time of popery, or of late broached by the 
Anabaptists and enthusiasts of Germany; 



178 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



avoiding the niceties of schoolmen, or the peremp- 
toriness of the writers of controversy ,■ leaving, in 
matters that are more justly controvertible, a 
liberty to divines to follow their private opinions, 
without thereby disturbing the peace of the 
church." — History of the Reformation, Book I. 
part ii. p. 168, folio edition. 

The next authority is that of Fuller. 

"In the convocation now sitting, wherein 
Alexander Nowel, Dean of St Paul's, was pro- 
locutor, the nine-and-thirty Articles were com- 
posed. For the main they agree with those 
set forth in the reign of King Edward the 
Sixth, though in some particulars allowing 
more liberty to dissenting judgments. For 
instance, in this King's Articles it is said, that 
it is to be believed that Christ went down to 
hell (to preach to the spirits there) ; which 
last clause is left out in these Articles, and 
men left to a latitude concerning the cause, 
time, and manner of his descent. 

" Hence some have unjustly taxed the com- 
posers for too much favour extended in their 
large expressions, clean through the contex- 
ture of these Articles, which should have tied 
men's consciences up closer, in more strict 
and particularizing propositions, which indeed 
proceeded from their commendable moderation. 
Children's clothes ought to be made of the 
biggest, because afterwards their bodies will 
grow up to their garments. Thus the Articles 
of this English Protestant Church, in the in- 
fancy thereof, they thought good to draw up in 
general terms, foreseeing that posterity would 
grow up to fill the same : I mean these holy 
men did prudently prediscover, that differences 
in judgments would unavoidably happen in the 
church, and were loath to unchurch any, and 
drive them off from an ecclesiastical communimi, 
for such petty differences, which made them pen 
the Articles in comprehensive words, to take in 
all who, differing in the branches, meet in the 
root of the same religion. 

"Indeed most of them had formerly been 
sufferers themselves, and cannot be said, in 
compiling these Articles, (an acceptable ser- 
vice, no doubt,) to offer to God what cost them 
nothing, some having paid imprisonment, 
others exile, all losses in their estates, for this 
their experimental knowledge in religion, 
which made them the more merciful and tender 
in stating those points, seeing such who them- 
selves have been most patient in bearing, will 
be most pitiful in burdening the consciences 
of others." — See Fuller's Church History, 
book ix. p. 72, folio edit. 

But this generous and pacific spirit gives 
no room for the display of zeal and theologi- 
cal learning. The gate of admission has been 
left too widely open. I may as well be without 
power at all, if I cannot force my opinions 
upon other people. What was purposely left 
indefinite,. I must make definite and exclusive. 
Questions of contention and difference must 
be laid before the servants of the church, and 
nothing like neutrality in theological metaphy- 
sics allowed to the ministers of the Gospel. / 
come not to bring peace, &c. 

The bishop, however, seems to be quite sa- 



tisfied with himself, when he states, that he 
has a right to do what he has done — ^just as if 
a man's character with his fellow-creatures 
depended upon legal rights alone, and not 
upon a discreet exercise of those rights. A 
man may persevere in doing what he has a 
right to do, till the chancellor shuts him up in 
Bedlam, or till the mob pelt him as he passes. 
It must be presumed, that all men whom the 
law has invested with rights, nature has in- 
vested with common sense, to use those rights. 
For these reasons, children have no rights till 
they have gained common sense, and old men 
have no rights after they lose their common 
sense. All men are at all times accountable 
to their fellow-creatures for the discreet exer- 
cise of every right they possess. 

Prelates are fond of talking of my see, my 
clergy, my diocese, as if these things belonged 
to them, as their pigs and dogs belonged to 
them. They forget that the clergy, the dio- 
cese, and the bishops themselves, all exist 
only for the public good ; that the public are a 
third, and principal party in the whole con- 
cern. It is not simply the tormenting Bishop 
versus the tormented Curate, but the public 
against the system of tonnenting ; as tending 
to bring scandal upon religion and religious 
men. By the late alteration in the laws, the 
labourers in the vineyard are given up to the 
power of the inspectors of the vineyard. If 
he has the meanness and malice to do so, an 
inspector may worry and plague to death any 
labourer against whom he may have conceived 
an antipathy. As often as such cases are de- 
tected, we believe they will meet, in either 
House of Parliament, with the severest repre- 
hension. The noblemen and gentlemen of 
England will never allow their parish clergy 
to be treated with cruelty, injustice, and ca- 
price, by men who were parish clergymen 
themselves yesterday, and who were trusted 
with power for very different purposes. 

The Bishop of Peterborough complains of 
the insolence of the answers made to him. 
This is certainly not true of Mr. Grimshawe, 
Mr. Neville, or of the author of the Appeal. 
They have answered his lordship with great 
force, great manliness, but with perfect re- 
spect Does the bishop expect that humble 
men, as learned as himself, are to be driven 
from their houses and homes by his new the- 
ology, and then to send him letters of thanks 
for the kicks and cuffs he has bestowed upon 
them1 Men of very small incomes, be it 
known unto his lordship, have very often very 
acute feelings ; and a curate trod on feels a 
pang as great as when a bishop is refuted. 

We shall now give a specimen of some an- 
swers, which, we believe, would exclude a 
curate from the diocese of Peterborough, and 
contrast these answers with the articles of the 
church to which they refer. The 9th Article 
of the Church of England is upon Original 
Sin. Upon this point his lordship puts the 
following question : — 

"Did the Fall of Adam produce such an 
effect on his posterity, that mankind became 
thereby a mass of mere corruption, or of abso- 
lute and entire depravity? Or is the effect 
only such, that we are very far gone from on- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



179 



ginal righteousness, and of our own nature 
inclined to evil 1" 

Exduding Answer. The J^Tinth Article. 

" The fall of " Oriirinal Sin standetli not in the 
Adam produced following of Adam (as the Pela- 
such an effect on gians do vainly talk) ; but it is the 
his posterity, that fault or corruption of the nature of 
mankind became every man, that naturally is engen- 
thereby a mass of dered of the offspring of Adam, 
mere corruption, whereby man is very far gone from 
or of absolute and original righteousness, and is of his 
entire depravity." own nature inclined to evil, so that 
the flesh lusteth always contrary to 
the spirit; and therefore, in every 
person born into the world, it de- 
serveth God's wrath and damna- 
tion." 

The 9th Question, Cap. 3d, on Free Will, is 
as follows : — Is it not contrary to Scripture to 
say, that man has no share in the work of his 
salvation 1 
Excluding Answer. Tenth Article. 

" It is quite " The condition of man after the 
agreeable to Scrip- fall of Adam is such, that he cannot 
ture to say, that turn and prepare himself, by his 
man has no share own natural strength and good 
in the work of his works, to faith, and calling upon 
own salvation." God. Wherefore, we have no 
power to do good works pleasant 
and acceptable to God, without the 
grace of God by Christ preventing 
us, that we may have a good will, 
and working with us when we have 
that good will." 
On Redemption, his lordship has the follow- 
ing question, Cap. 1st, Question 1st: — Did 
Christ die for all men, or did he die only for a 
chosen few'? 

Excluding Ansver. Part of Article Seventeenth. 

"Christ did not " Predestination to life is the ever- 
die for all men, laatingpurposeofGod, whereby (be- 



but only for a cho- fore the foundations of the world 
sen few." were laid) he hath constantlydecreed 

by his counsel, secret to us, to deli- 
ver from curse and damnation those 
whom he hath chosen in Christ out 
of mankind, and to bring them by 
Christ unto everlasting salvation, 
as vessels made to honour." 

Now, whether these answers are right or 
wrong, we do not presume to decide; but we 
cannot help saying, there appears to be some 
little colour in the language of the Articles for 
the errors of the respondent. It does not ap- 
pear at first sight to be such a deviation from 
the plain, literal, and grammatical sense of 
the Articles, as to merit rapid and ignomi- 
nious ejectment from the bosom of the church. 

Now we have done with the Bishop. We 
give him all he asks as to his legal right ; and 
only contend, that he is acting a very indis- 
creet and injudicious part — fatal to his quiet — 
fatal to his reputation as a man of sense — 
blamed by ministers — blamed by all the Bench 
of Bishops — vexatious to the clergy, and 
highly injurious to the church. We mean no 
personal disrespect to the Bishop; we are as 
ignorant of him as of his victims. We should 
have been heartily glad if the debate in Parlia- 
ment had put an end to these blameable ex- 
cesses; and our only object, in meddling with 
the question, is to restrain the arm of power 
within the limits of moderation and justice — 
one of the great objects which first led to the 
establishment of this Journal, and which, we 
hope, will always continue to characterize its 
efforts. 



BOTANY BAY.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1823.] 



Mr. Bioge's Report is somewhat long, and 
a little clumsy; but it is altogether the pro- 
duction of an honest, sensible, and respectable 
man, who has done his duty to the public, and 
justified the expense of his mission to the fifth 
or pickpocket quarter of the globe. 

What manner of man is Governor Mac- 
quarrie 1 — Is all that Mr. Bennet says of him 
in the House of Commons truel These are 
the questions which Lord Bathurst sent Mr. 
Bigge, and very properly sent him, 28,000 
miles to answer. The answer is, that Go- 
vernor Macquarrie is not a dishonest man, 
nor a jobber; but arbitrary, in many things 
scandalously negligent, very often wrong- 
headed, and, upon the whole, very defi- 
cient in that good sense, and vigorous under- 
standing, which his new and arduous situation 
so manifestly requires. 



• 1. Letter to Earl Bathurst, By the Honourable H. 
Gbev Bennet, M. P. 

2. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state 
•/ the Colony of J^ew South Wales. Ordered by the 
House of Commons to be printed, 19th June, 1822. 



Ornamental architecture in Botany Bay! 
how it could enter into the head of any human 
being to adorn public buildings at the Bay, or 
to aim at any other architectural purpose but 
the exclusion of wind and rain, we are utterly 
at a loss to conceive. Such an expense is not 
only lamentable for the waste of property it 
makes in the particular instance, but because 
it destroys that guarantee of sound sense 
which the government at home must require 
in those who preside over distant colonies. A 
man who thinks of pillars and pilasters, when 
half the colony are wet through for want of 
any covering at all, cannot be a wise or pru- 
dent person. He seems to be ignorant, that 
the prevention of rheumatism in all young 
colonies is a much more important object 
than the gratification of taste, or the display 
of skill. 

"I suggested to Governor Macquarrie the ex- 
pediency of stopping all work then in progress 
that was merely of an ornamental nature, and 
of postponing its execution till other more im- 



180 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



portant buildings were finished. With this 
view it was, that I recommended to the go- 
vernor to stop the progress of a large church, 
the foundation of which had been laid pre- 
vious to my arrival, and which, by the esti- 
mate of Mr. Greenway the architect, would 
have required six years to complete. By a 
change that I recommended, and which the 
governor adopted, in the destination of the 
new court-house at Sydney, the accommodation 
of a new church is probably by this time 
secured. As I conceived that considerable 
advantage had been gained by inducing Go- 
vernor Macquarrie to suspend the progress of 
the larger church, I did not deem it necessary 
to make any pointed objection to the addition 
of these ornamental parts ol the smaller one; 
though I regretted to observe in this instance, 
as well as in those of the new stables at Syd- 
ney, the turnpike-gate house and the new 
fountain there, as well as in the repairs of an 
old church at Paramatta, how much more the 
embellishment of these places had been consi- 
dered by the governor than the real and press- 
ing wants of the colony. The buildings that I 
had recommended to his early attention in 
Sydney were, a new gaol, a school-house, and 
a market-house. The defects of the first of 
these buildings will be more particularly 
pointed out when I come to describe the build- 
ings that have been erected in New South 
Wales. It is sufficient for me now to observe, 
that they were striking, and of a nature not to 
be remedied by additions or repairs. The 
other two were in a state of absolute ruin; 
they were also of undeniable importance and 
necessity. Having left Sydney in the month 
of November, 1820, with these impressions, 
and with a belief that the suggestions I had 
made to Governor Macquarrie respecting them 
had been partly acted upon, and would con- 
tintie to be so during my absence in Van Die- 
men's Land, it was not without much surprise 
and regret that I learnt, during my residence 
in that settlement, the resumption of the work 
at the large church in Sydney, and the steady 
continuation of the others that I had objected 
to, especially the governor's stables at Sydney. 
I felt the greater surprise in receiving the in- 
formation respecting this last-mentioned struc- 
ture, during my absence in Van Diemen's 
Land, as the governor himself had, upon 
many occasions, expressed to me his own 
regret at having ever sanctioned it, and his 
consciousness of its extravagant dimensions 
and ostentatious character." — Report, pp. 51, 
52. 

One of the great difficulties in Botany Bay 
is to find proper employment for the great 
mass of convicts who are sent out. Governor 
Macquarrie selects all the best artisans, of 
every description, for the use of government ; 
and puts the poets, attorneys, and politicians, 
up to auction. The evil consequences of this 
are manifold. In the first place, from possess- 
ing so many of the best artificers, the gover- 
nor is necessarily turned into a builder ; and 
immense drafts are drawn upon the treasury 
at home, for buildings better adapted for Re- 
gent street than the Bay. In the next place, 
the poor settler, finding that the convict attor- 



ney is very awkward at cutting timber, or 
catching kangaroos, soon returns him upon 
the hands of government, in a much worse 
plight than that in which he was received. 
Not only are governors thus debauched into 
useless and expensive builders, but the colo- 
nists, who are scheming and planning with all 
the activity of new settlers, cannot find work- 
men to execute their designs. 

What two ideas are more inseparable than 
beer and Britannia? — what event more aw- 
fully important to an English colony than the 
erection of its first brewhouse 1 — and yet it 
required, in Van Diemen's land, the greatest 
solicitation to the government, and all the in- 
fiuence of Mr. Bigge, to get it effijcted. The 
government, having obtained possession of 
the best workmen, keep them ; their manu- 
mission is much more infrequent than that 
of the useless and unprofitable convicts ; in 
other words, one man is punished for his skill, 
and another rewarded for his inutility. Guilty 
of being a locksmith — guilty of stone-masonry, 
or brick-making; — these are the second ver- 
dicts brought in, in New South Wales ; and 
upon them is regulated the duration or miti- 
gation of punishment awarded in the mother 
country. At the very period when the gover- 
nor assured Lord Bathurst, in his despatches, 
that he kept and employed so numerous a 
gang of workmen, only because the inhabit- 
ants could not employ them, Mr. Bigge in- 
forms us, that their services would have been 
most acceptable to the colonists. Most of the 
settlers, at the time of Mr. Bigge's arrival, 
from repeated refusals and disappointments, 
had been so convinced of the impossibility of 
obtaining workmen, that they had ceased to 
make application to the governor. Is it to be 
believed that a governor, placed over a land 
of convicts, and capable of guarding his limbs 
from any sudden collision with odometrous 
stones, or vertical posts of direction, should 
make no distinction between the simple con- 
vict and the double and treble convict — the 
man of three juries, who has three times ap- 
peared at the Bailey, trilarcenous — three times 
driven over the seas 1 

" I think it necessary to notice the want of 
attention that has prevailed, until a very late 
period, at Sydney, to the circumstances of 
those convicts who have been transported a 
second and a third time. Although the know- 
ledge of these facts is transmitted to the hulk 
lists, or acquired without difficulty during the 
passage, it never has occurred to Governor 
Macquarrie or to the superintendent of con- 
victs, to make any difference in the condition 
of these men, not even to disappoint the views 
that they may be supposed to have indulged 
by the success of a criminal enterprise in Eng- 
land, and by transferring the fruits of it to 
New South Wales. 

"To accomplish this very simple but im- 
portant object, nothing more is necessary than 
to consign these men to any situation rather 
than that which their friends had selected for 
them, and distinctly to declare in the presence 
of their comrades at the first muster on their 
arrival, that no consideration or favour would 
be shown to those who had violated the law a 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



181 



second time, and that the mitigation of their 
sentences must be indefinitely postponed." — 
Report, p. 19. 

We were not a little amused at Governor 
Macquarrie's laureate — a regular Mr. Southey 
— who, upon the king's birth-day, sings the 
praises of Governor Macquarrie.* The case 
of this votary of Apollo and Mercury was a 
case for life ; the offence a menacing epistle, 
or, as low people call it, a threatening letter. 
He has been pardoned, however — bursting his 
shackles, like Orpheus of old, with song and 
metre, and is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge, 
but no specimen of his poetry given. One of 
the best and most enlightened men in the set- 
tlement appears to be Mr. Marsden, a clergy- 
man at Paramatta. Mr. Bennet represents 
him as a gentleman of great feeling, whose 
life is embittered by the scenes of horror and 
vice it is his lot to witness at Paramatta. In- 
deed, he says of himself, that, in consequence 
of these things, " he does not enjoy one happy 
moment from the beginning to the end of the 
week !" This letter, at the time, produced a 
very considerable sensation in this country. 
The idea of a man of refinement and feeling 
wearing away his life in the midst of scenes 
■of crime and debauchery to which he can 
apply no corrective, is certainly a very me- 
lancholy and afl:ecting picture ; but there is 
: no story, however elegant and eloquent, which 
does not require, for the purposes of justice, 
to be turned to the other side, and viewed in 
reverse. The Rev. Mr. Marsden (says Mr. 
Bigge), being himself accustomed to traffic in 
spirits, must necessarily feel displeased at 
having so many public houses licensed in the 
neighbourhood. — (p. 14.) 

" As to Mr. Marsden's troubles of mind 
(says the governor), and pathetic display of 
sensibility and humanity, they must be so 
deeply seated, and so far removed from the 
surface, as to escape all possible observation. 
His habits are those of a man for ever en- 
gaged in some active, animated pursuit. No 
man travels more from town to town, or from 
house to house. His deportment is at all 
times that of a person the most gay and happy. 
When 1 was honoured with his society, lie 
was by far the most cheerful person I met in 
the colon}^ Where his hours of sorrow were 
spent, it is hard to divine ; for the variety of 
his pursuits, both in his own concerns, and in 
those .of others, is so extensive, in farming, 
grazing, manufactories, transactions, that, with 
his clerical duties, he seems, to use a common 
phrase, to have his hands full of work. And 
the particular subject to which he imputes 
this extreme depression of mind, is, besides, 
one for which few people here will give him 
much credit." — Macquarrie's Letter to Lord Sid- 
viouth, p. 18. 

There is certainly a wide difference between 
a man of so much feeUng that he has not a 
moment's happiness from the beginning to the 
end of the week, and a little, merry, bustling 
clergyman, largely concerned in the sale of 
rum, and brisk at a bargain for barley. Mr. 
Bigge's evidence, however, is very much in 



* Ftde Report, p. 146. 



favour of Mr. Marsden. He seems to think 
him a man of highly respectable character 
and superior understanding, and that he has 
been dismissed from the magistracy by Gover- 
nor Macquarrie, in a very rash, unjustifiable, 
and even tyrannical manner; and in these 
opinions, we must say, the facts seem to bear 
out the report of the commissioner. * 

Colonel Macquarrie not only dismisses ho- 
nest and irreproachable men in a country 
where their existence is scarce, and their ser- 
vices inestimable, but he advances convicts 
to the situation and dignity of magistrates. 
Mr. Bennet lays great stress upon this, and 
makes it one of his strongest charges against 
the governor ; and the commissioner also 
takes part against it. But we confess we 
have great doubts on the subject ; and are by 
no means satisfied that the system of the go- 
vernor was not, upon the whole, the wisest 
and best adapted to the situation of the colony. 
Men are governed by words ; and by the infa- 
mous word convict are comprehended crimes 
of the most different degrees and species of 
guilt. One man is transported for stealing 
three hams and a pot of sausages ; and in the 
next berth to him on board the transport is a 
young surgeon, who has been engaged in the 
mutiny at the Nore ; the third man is for ex- 
torting money ; the fourth was in a respecta- 
ble situation of life at the time of the Irish 
rebellion, and was so ill read in history as to 
imagine that Ireland had been ill-treated by 
England, and so bad a reasoner as to suppose 
that nine Catholics ought not to pay tithes to 
one Protestant. Then comes a man who set 
his house on fire, to cheat the Phoenix office ; 
and, lastly, the mo5t glaring of all human vil- 
lains, a poacher, driven from Europe, wife and 
child, by thirty lords of manors, at the Quarter 
Sessions, for killing a partridge. Now, all 
these are crimes no doubt — particularly the 
last ; but they are surely crimes of very dif- 
ferent degrees of intensity, to which different 
degrees of contempt and horror are attached — 
and from which those who have committed 
them may, by subsequent morality, emanci- 
pate themselves, with different degrees of diffi- 
culty, and with more or less of success. A 
warrant granted by a reformed bacon stealer 
would be absurd ; but there is hardly any rea- 
son why a foolish, hot-brained young block- 
head, who chose to favour the mutineers at 
the Nore, when he was sixteen years of age, 
may not make a very loyal subject, and a very 
respectable and respected magistrate when he 
is forty j^ears of age, and has cast his Jacobin 
teeth, and fallen into the practical jobbing and 
loyal baseness which so commonly developes 
itself about that period of life. Therefore, to 
say that a man must be placed in no situation 
of trust or elevation, as a magistrate, merely 
because he is a convict, is to govern mankind 
with a dictionary, and to surrender sense and 
usefulness to sound. Take the following case, 
for instance, from Mr. Bigge : — 

"The next person, from the same class, that 
was so distinguished by Governor Macquarrie, 
was the Rev. Mr. Fulton. He was transported 
by the sentence of a court martial in Ireland, 
during the Rebellion ; and on his arrival in 
Q 



182 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



New South Wales in the year 1800, was sent 
to Norfolk Island to officiate as chaplain. 
He returned to New South Wales in the year 
1804, and performed the duties of chaplain at 
Sydney and Paramatta. 

" In the divisions that prevailed in the colo- 
ny previous to the arre?it of Governor Bligh, 
Mf. Fulton took no part; but, happening to 
form one of his family when the person of the 
governor was menaced with violence, he cou- 
rageously opposed himself to the military 
party that entered the house, and gave an ex- 
ample of courage and devotion to the authority 
of Governor Bligh, which, if partaken either 
by the officer or his few adherents, would 
have spared him the humiliation of a personal 
arrest, and rescued his authority from the dis- 
grace of. open and violent suspension." — Re- 
port, pp. 83, 84. 

The particular nature of the place, too, must 
be remembered. It is seldom, we suspect, 
that absolute dunces go to the Bay, but com- 
monly men of active minds, and considerable 
talents in their various lines — who have not 
learnt, indeed, the art of self-discipline and 
control, but who are sent to learn it in the 
bitter school of adversity. And when this 
medicine produces its proper effect — when 
sufficient time has been given to show a tho- 
rough change in character and disposition — a 
young colony really cannot affiard to dispense 
with the services of any person of superior 
talents. Activity, resolution, and acuteness, 
are of such immense importance in the hard 
circumstances of a new state, that they must 
be eagerly caught at, and employed as soon as 
they are discovered. Though all may not be 
quite so unobjectionable as could be wished — ■ 

" Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt 
Moliri" — 

as Colonel Macquarrie probably quoted to 
Mr. Commissioner Bigge. As for the conduct 
of those extra-moralists, who come to settle in 
a land of crime, and refuse to associate with 
a convict legally pardoned, however light his 
original offence, however perfect his subse- 
quent conduct — we have no toleration for such 
folly and foppery. To sit down to dinner with 
men who have not been tried for their lives is 
a luxury which cannot be enjoyed in such a 
country. It is entirely out of the question ; 
and persons so dainty, and so truly admirable, 
had better settle at Clapham Common than at 
Botany Bay. Our trade in Australasia is to 
turn scoundrels into honest men. If you come 
among us, and bring with you a good charac- 
ter, and will lend us your society, as a stimu- 
lus and reward to men recovering from degra- 
dation, you will confer the greatest possible 
benefit upon the colony ; but if you turn up 
your nose at repentance, insult those unhappy 
people with your character, and fiercely stand 
up as a moral bully, and a virtuous braggado- 
cio, it would have been far better for us if 
Providence had directed you to any other part 
of the globe than to Botany Bay — which was 
colonized, not to gratify the insolence of Pha- 
risees, but to heal the contrite spirit of repent- 
ant sinners. Mr. Marsden, who has no hap- 
piness from six o'clock Monday morning, till j 



the same hour the week following, will not 
meet pardoned convicts in society. We have 
no doubt Mr. Marsden is a very respectable 
clergyman ; but is there not something very 
difFerqnt from this in the Gospel 1 The most 
resolute and inflexible persons in the rejection 
of pardoned convicts were some of the march- 
ing regiments stationed at Botany Bay — men, 
of course, who had uniformly shunned, in the 
Old World, the society of gamesters, prosti- 
tutes, drunkards, and blasphemers — who had 
ruined no tailors, corrupted no wives, and had 
entitled themselves, by a long course of so- 
lemnity and decorum, to indulge in all the in- 
solence of purity and virtue. 

In this point, then, of restoring convicts to 
society, we side, as far as the principle goes, 
with the governor ; but we are far from under- 
taking to say that his application of the prin- 
ciple has been on all occasions prudent and 
judicious. Upon the absurdity of his con- 
duct in attempting to force the society of the ■ 
pardoned convicts upon the undetected part 
of the colony, there can be no doubt. These 
are points upon which every body must be 
allowed to judge for themselves. The great- 
est monarchs of Europe cannot control opinion 
upon those points — sovereigns far exceeding 
Colonel Lachlan Macquarrie, in the antiquity 
of their dynasty, and the extent, wealth, and 
importance of their empire. 

" It was in vain to assemble them" (the par- 
doned convicts), " even on public occasions, at 
Government House, or to point them out to the 
especial notice and favour of strangers, or to 
favour them with particular marks of his own 
attention upon these occasions, if they still 
continued to be shunned, or disregarded by the 
rest of the company. 

" With the exception of the Reverend Mr. 
Fulton, and, on some occasions, of Mr. Red- 
fern, I never observed that the other persons 
of this class participated in the general atten- 
tions of the company; and the evidence of 
Mr. Judge-Advocate Wylde and Major Bell 
both prove the embarrassment in which they 
were left on occasions that came within their 
notice. 

" Nor has the distinction that has been con- 
ferred upon them by Governor Macquarrie 
produced any effect in subduing the prejudices 
or objections of the class of free inhabitants 
to associate with them. One instance only 
has occurred, in which the wife of a respecta- I 
ble individual, and a magistrate, has been f 
visited by the wives of the officers of the gar- 
rison, and by a few of the married ladies of 
the colony. It is an instance that reflects 
equal credit upon the individual herself, as 
upon the feelings and motives of those by i 
whom she has been so noticed; but the cir- f 
cumstances of her case were very peculiar, 
and those that led to her introduction to society 
were very much of a personal kind. It has 
generally been thought, that such instances 
would have been more numerous if Governor 
Macquarrie had allowed every person to have 
followed the dictates of their own judgment 
upon a subject, on which, of all others, men 
are least disposed to be dictated to, and most, 
disposed to judge for themselves. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



188- 



"Although the emancipated convicts, whom 
he has selected from their class, are persons 
•who generally bear a good character in New 
South Wales, yet that opinion of them is by 
no means universal. Those, however, who 
entertained a good opinion of them would 
have proved it by their notice, as Mr. M'Arthur 
has been in the habit of doing, by the kind and 
marked notice that he took of Mr. Fitzgerald ; 
and those who entertained a different opinion, 
would not have contracted an aversion to the 
principle of their introduction, from being 
obliged to witness what they considered to be 
an indiscreet and erroneous application of 
it." — Report, p. 150. 

We do not think Mr. Bigge exactly seizes 
the sense of Colonel Macquarrie's phrase, 
when the colonel speaks of restoring men to 
the rank of society they have lost. Men may 
either be classed by wealth and education, or 
by character. All honest men, whether counts 
or cobblers, are of the same rank, if classed 
by moral distinctions. It is a common phrase 
to say that such a man can no longer be 
ranked among honest men ; that he has been 
degraded from the class of respectable per- 
sons ; and, therefore, by restoring a convict to 
tlie rank he has lost, the governor may very 
fairly be supposed to mean the moral rank. 
In discussing the question of granting offices 
of trust to convicts, the importance of the 
Scekrati must not be overlooked. Their num- 
bers are very considerable. They have one- 
eighth of all the granted land in the colony ; 
and there are among them individuals of very 
large fortune. Mr. Redfern has 2600 acres, 
Mr. Lord 4365 acres, and Mr. Samuel Terry 
19,000 acres. As this man's history is a spe- 
cimen of the mud and dirt out of which great 
families often arise, let the Terry Filii, the 
future warriors, legislators, and nobility of 
the Bay, learn from what, and whom, they 
sprang. 

"The first of these individuals, Samuel 
Terry, was transported to the colony when 
young. He was placed in a gang of stone- 
masons at Paramatta, and assisted in the 
building of the gaol. Mr. Marsden states, that 
during this period he was brought before him 
for neglect of duty, and punished ; but, by his 
industry in other ways, he was enabled to set 
up a small retail shop, in which he continued 
till the expiration of his term of service. He 
then repaired to Sydney, where he extended 
his business, and, by marriage, increased his 
capital. He for many years kept a public 
house and retail shop, to which the smaller 
settlers resorted from the country, and where, 
after intoxicating themselves with spirits, they 
signed obligations and powers of attorney to 
confess judgment, which were always kept 
ready for execution. By these means, and by 
an active use of the common arts of over- 
reaching ignorant and worthless men, Samuel 
Terry has been able to accumulate a consider- 
able capital, and a quantity of land in New 
South Wales, inferior only to that which is 
held by Mr. D'Arcy Wentworth. He ceased, 
at the late regulations introduced by the ma- 
gistrates at Sydney, in February, 1820, to seU 



spirituous liquors, and he is now become one 
of the principal speculators in the purchase 
of investments at Sydney, and lately esta- 
blished a water-mill in the swampy plains be- 
tween that town and Botany Bay, which did 
not succeed. Out of the 19,000 acres of land 
held by Samuel Terry, 140 only are said to be 
cleared ; but he possesses 1450 head of horned 
cattle, and 3800 sheep." — Report, p. 141. 

Upon the subject of the New South Wales 
Bank, Mr. Bigge observes, — 

"Upon the first of these occasions, it became 
an object both with Governor Macquarrie and 
Mr. Judge-Advocate Wyld, who took an active 
part in the establishment of the bank, to unite 
in its favour the support and contributions of 
the individuals of all classes of the colony. 
Governor Macquarrie felt assured that, without 
such co-operation, the bank could not be esta- 
blished; for he was convinced that the eman- 
cipated convicts were the most opulent mem- 
bers of the community. A committee was 
formed for the purpose of drawing up the 
rules and regulations of the establishment, in 
which are to be found the names of George 
Howe, the printer of the Sydney Gazette, who 
was also a retail dealer; Mr. Simon Lord, and 
Mr. Edward Eager, all emancipated convicts, 
and the last only conditionally. 

" Governor Macquarrie had always under- 
stood, and strongly wished, that in asking for 
the co-operation of all classes of the commu- 
nity in the formation of the bank, a share in 
its direction and management should also be 
communicated to them." — Report, p. 150. 

In the discussion of this question, we be- 
came acquainted with a piece of military 
etiquette, of which we were previously igno- 
rant. An officer, invited to dinner by the 
governor, cannot refuse, unless in case of 
sickness. This is the most complete tyranny 
we ever heard of. If the officer comes out to 
his duty at the proper mmute, with his proper 
number of buttons and epaulettes, what mat- 
ters it to the governor or any body else, where 
he dines 1 He may as well be ordered what 
to eat, as where to dine — be confined to the 
upper or under side of the meat — be denied 
gravy, or refused melted butter. But there is 
no end to the small tyranny and puerile vexa- 
tions of a military life. 

The mode of employing convicts upon their 
arrival appears to us very objectionable. If a , 
man is skilful as a mechanic, he is added to 
the government gangs ; and in proportion to 
his skill and diligence, his chance of manu- 
mission, or of remission of labour, is lessened. 
If he is not skilful, or not skilful in any trade 
wanted by government, he is applied for by 
some settler, to whom he pays from 5s. to lOs.,. 
a week; and is then left at liberty to go where, 
and work for whomsoever, he pleases. In the 
same manner, a convict who is rich is applied 
for, and obtains his weekly liberty and idle- 
ness by the purchased permission of the per- 
son to whom he is consigned. 

The greatest possible inattention or igno- 
rance appears to have prevailed in manumit- • 
ting convicts for labour — and for sitch labour I 
not for cleansing Augean stables, or draining; 



184 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Pontine marshes, or damming out a vast 
length of the Adriatic, but for working five 
■weeks with a single horse and cart in making 
the road to Bathurst Plains. Was such labour 
worth five pounds 1 And is it to be under- 
. stood, that liberty is to be restored to any man 
who will do five pounds' worth of work in 
Australasia] Is this comment upon trans- 
portation to be circulated in the cells of New- 
gate, or in the haunts of those persons who 
are doomed to inhabit them 1 

"Another principle by which Governor 
Macquarrie has been guided in bestowing 
pardons and indulgences, is that of considering 
them as rewards for any particular labour or 
enterprise. It was upon this principle, that 
the men who were employed in working upon 
the Bathurst road, in the year 1815, and those 
who contributed to that operation by the loan 
of their own carts and horses, or of those that 
they procured, obtained pardons, emancipa- 
tions, and tickets of leave. To 39 men who 
were employed as labourers in this work, 
three free pardons were given, one ticket of 
leave, and 35 emancipations ; and two of them 
only had held tickets of leave before they com- 
menced their labour. Seven convicts received 
emancipations for supplying horses and carts 
for the carriage of provisions and stores as 
the party was proceeding; six out of this 
number having previously held tickets of 
leave. 

"Eight other convicts (four of whom held 
tickets of leave) received emancipations for 
assisting with carts, and one horse to each, in 
the transport of provisions and baggage for 
the use of Governor Macquarrie and his suite, 
on their journey from the river Nepean to 
Bathurst, in the year 1816; a service that did 
not extend beyond the period of five weeks, 
and was attended with no risk, and very little 
exertion. 

"Between the months of January, 1816, and 
June, 1818, nine convicts, of whom six held 
tickets of leave, obtained emancipations for 
sending carts and horses to convey provisions 
and baggage from Paramatta to Bathurst, for 
the use of Mr. Oxlej^ the surveyor-general, in 
his two expeditions into the interior of the 
country. And in the same period, 23 convict 
labourers and mechanics obtained emancipa- 
tions for labour and service performed at 
Bathurst. 

" The nature of the services performed by 
these convicts, and the manner in which some 
of them were recommended, excited much 
surprise in the colony, as well as great suspi- 
cion of the purity of the channels through 
which the recommendations passed." — Report, 
pp. 122, 123. 

If we are to judge from the number of jobs 
detected by Mr. Bigge, Botany Bay seems veiy 
likely to do justice to the mother-country from 
whence it sprang. Mr. Redfern, surgeon, 
seems to use the public rhubarb for his pri- 
vate practice. Mr. Hutchinson, superintend- 
ent, makes a very comfortable thing of the 
assignment of convicts. Major Druit was 
found selling their own cabbages to govern- 



ment in a very profitable manner; and many 
comfortable little practices of this nature are 
noticed by Mr. Bigge. 

Among other sources of profit, the superin- 
tendent of convicts was the banker ; two 
occupations which seem to be eminently com- 
patible with each other, inasmuch as they 
afford to the superintendent the opportunity 
of evincing his impartiality and loading with 
equal labour every convict, without reference 
to their banking accounts, to the profit they 
afford, or the trouble they create. It appears, 
however (very strangely), from the report, 
that the money of convicts was not always 
recovered with the same readiness it was 
received. 

Mr. Richard Fitzgerald, in September, 1819, 
was comptroller of provisions in Emu Plains, 
storekeeper at Windsor, and superintendent 
of government works at the same place. He 
was also a proprietor of land and stock in the 
neighbourhood, and kept a public house in 
Windsor, of which an emancipated Jew was 
the ostensible manager, upon whom Fitzgerald 
gave orders for goods and spirits in payment 
for labour on the public works. These two 
places are fifteen miles distant from each 
other, and convicts are to be watched and 
managed at both. It cannot be imagined that 
the convicts are slow in observing or follow- 
ing these laudable examples ; and their con- 
duct will add another instance of the vigilance 
of Macquarrie's government. 

"The stores and materials used in the dif- 
ferent buildings at Sydney are kept in a ma- 
gazine in the lumber yard, and are distributed 
according to the written requisitions of the 
different overseers that are made during the 
day, and that are addressed to the storekeeper 
in the lumber yard. They are conveyed from 
thence to the buildings by the convict mecha- 
nics ; and no account of the expenditure or 
employment of the stores is kept by the over- 
seers, or rendered to the storekeeper. It was 
only in the early part of the year 1820 that an 
account was opened by him of the different 
materials used in each work or building; and 
in February, 1821, this account was consider- 
ably in arrear. The temptation, therefore, that 
is afforded to the convict 'mechanics who 
work in the lumber yard, in secreting tools, 
stores, and implements, and to those who work 
at the different buildings, is very great, and 
the loss to government is considerable. The 
tools, moreover, have not latterly been mus- 
tered as they used to be once a month, except 
where one of the convicts is removed from , 
Sydney to another station." — Report, pp. 36, I 
37. 1 

If it was right to build fine houses in a new 
colony, common sense seems to point out a 
control upon the expenditure, with such a de- 
scription of workmen. What must beconie 
of that country where the buildings are use- 
less, the governor not wise, the public the 
paymaster, the accounts not in existence, and 
all the artisans thieves 1 

An horrid practice prevailed, of the convicts 
accepting a sum of money from the captain, 
in their voyage out, in lieu of their regular 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



1S5 



ration of provisions. This ought to be re- 
strained by the severest penalties. 

What is it that can be urged for Governor 
Macquarrie, after the following picture of the 
hospital at Paramatta'? It not only justifies 
his recall, But seems to require (if there are 
means of reaching such neglect) his severe 
punishment. 

" The women, who had become most pro- 
fligate and hardened by habit, were associated 
in their daily tasks with those who had very 
lately arrived, to' whom the customs and 
practices of the colony were yet unknown, 
and who might have escaped the consequences 
of such pernicious lessons, if a little care, and 
a small portion of expense, had been spared 
in providing them with a separate apartment 
during the hours of labour. • As a place of 
employment, the factory of Paramatta was 
not only very defective, but very prejudicial. 
The insufficient accommodation that it afforded 
to those females who might be well disposed 
presented an early imjitement, if not an ex- 
cuse, for their resorting 'to indiscriminate 
prostitution; and on the evening of their 
arrival at Paramatta, those who were not 
deploring their state of abandonment and dis- 
tress, were traversing the streets in search of 
the guilty means of future support. The- state 
in which the place ^it§elf was kept, and the 
state of disgusting filth in which I found it, 
both on an early visit after my arrival, and on 
one preceding my departure ; the disordered, 
unruly, and licentious appearance of the 
women, manifested the little degree of control 
in which the female convicts were kept, and 
the little attention that was paid to any thing 
beyond the mere performance of a certain 
portion of labour." — Report, p. 70. 

It might naturally be supposed, that any 
man sent across the globe with a good salary, 
for the express purpose of governing, and, if 
possible, of reforming convicts, would have 
preferred the morals of his convicts lo the 
accommodation of his horses. Let Mr. Bigge, 
a very discreet and moderate man, be heard 
upon these points. 

"Having observed, in Governor Macquarrie's 
answer to Mr. Marsden, that he justified the 
delay that occurred, and was still to take place, 
in the construction of a proper place of recep- 
tion for the female convicts, by the want of 
any specific instructions from' your lordship 
to undertake such a building, and which he 
states that he solicited at an early period of 
his government, and considered indispensable, 
I felt it to be my duty to call to the recollection 
of Governor Macquarrie, that he had under- 
taken several buildings of much, less urgent 
necessity than the factory at Paramatta, with- 
out waiting for any such indispensable author- 
ity: and I now find that the construction of it 
was announced by him to your lordship in the 
year 1817, as then in his contemplation, with- 
out making any specific allusion to the evils 
which the want of it had so long occasioned; 
that the contract for building it was announced 
to the public on the 21st May, 1818, and that 
your lordship's approval of it was not signified 
until the 24th August, 1818, and could not 
24 



have reached Governor Macquarrie's hands 

until nearly a year after the work had been 
undertaken. It appears, therefore, that if want 
of authority had been the sole cause of the 
delay in building the factory at Paramatta, j^ 
that cause would not only have operated in the 
month of March, 1818, but it would have con- 
tinued to operate until the want of authority 
had been formally supplied. Governor Mac- 
quarrie, however, must be conscious, that after 
he had stated to Mr. Marsden in the year 1815,' 
and with an appearance of regret, that the 
want -of authority prevented him from under- 
taking the construction of a building of such 
undeniable necessity and importance as the 
factory at Paramatta, he had undertaken sev- 
eral buildings, which, though useful in them- 
selves, were of less comparative importance; 
and had commenced, in the month of August, 
1817, the laborious and expensive cmistruction 
of his own stables at Sydney, to ivhich I have 
already alluded, without any previous commu- 
nication to your lordship, and in direct oppo- , 
sition to an instruction that must have then 
reached him, and that forcibly warned him of 
the consequences." — Report, p. 71. 

It is the fashion very much among the tories 
of the House of Commons, and all those who 
love the effects of public liberty, without know- 
ing or caring how it is preserved, to attack 
every person who complains of abuses, and to 
accuse him of gross exaggeration. No sooner 
is the name of any public thief, or of any tor- 
mentor, or oppressor, mentioned in that hon- 
ourable house, than out bursts the spirit of 
jobbing eulogium., and there is not a virtue 
under heaven which is not ascribed to the de- 
linquent in question, and vouched for by the 
most irrefragable testimony. If Mr. Bennet or 
Sir Francis Burdett had attacked them, and 
they had now been living, how many honour- 
able members would have vouched for the 
honesty of Dudley and Empson, the gentleness 
of Jeffries, or the genius of Blackmore 1 What 
human virtue did not Aris and the governor of 
Uchester gaol possess 1 Who was not ready 
to come forward to vouch for the attentive 
humanity of Governor Macquarrie 1 What 
scorn and wit would it have produced from 
the treasury bench, if Mr. Bennet had stated 
the superior advantages of the horses over the 
convicts 1 — and all the horrors and immorali- 
ties, the filth and wretchedness, of the female 
prison of Paramatta 1 Such a case, proved 
as this now is beyond the power of contradic- . 
tion, ought' to convince the most hardy and 
profligate scoffers, that there is really a great 
deal of occasional neglect and ojjpression in 
the conduct of public servants; and that in 
spite of all the official praise, which is ever 
ready for the perpetrators of crime, tliere is a 
great deal of real malversation which should 
be dragged to the light of day, by the exertions 
of bold and virtuous men. If we had found, 
from the report of Mr. Bigge, that the charges 
of Mr'. Bennet were without any, or without 
adequate foundation, it would have given us 
greatpleasure to have vindicated the governor; 
but Mr. Bennet has proved his indictment It 
is impossible to redd the foregoing quotation, 
a2 



186 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



and not to perceive that the conduct and pro- 
ceedings of Governor Macquarrie imperiously 
Required the exposure they have received ; and 
that it would have been much to the- credit of 
government if he had been removed long ago 
from a situation which, but for the exertions 
of Mr. Bennet, we believe he would have held 
to this day. 

The sick, from Mr. Bigge's report, appear 
to have fared as badly as the sinful. Good 
water was scarce, proper persons to wait upon 
the patients could not be obtained; and so nu- 
pierous were the complaints from this quarter, 
that the governor makes an order for the ex- 
clusion of all hospital grievances and com- 
plaints, except mi one day in the month — dropsy 
swelling, however, fever burning, and ague, 
shaking, in the mean time, without waiting for 
the arrangements of Governor Macquarrie, or 
consulting the Mollia tempora fandi. 

In permitting individuals to distil their own 
grain, the government of Botany Bay appears 
to us to be quite right. It is impossible, in 
such a colony, to prevent unlawful distillation 
to a considerable extent; and it is as well to 
raise upon spirits (as something must be 
taxed) that slight duty which renders the con- 
traband trade not worth following. Distilla- 
tion, too, always insures a magazine against 
famine, by which New South Wales has more 
than once been severely visited. It opens a 
market for grain where markets are very dis- 
tant, and where redundance and famine seem 
very often to succeed each other. The cheap- 
ness of spirits, to such working people as know 
how to use them with moderation, is a great 
blessing; and we doubt whether that modera- 
tion, after the first burst of ebriety, is not just 
as likely to be learnt .in plenty as in scarcity. 

We were a little surprised at the scanty 
limits allowed to convicts for sleeping on board 
the transports. Mr. Bigge (of whose sense 
and humanity we really have not the slightest 
doubt) states eighteen inches to be quite suffi- 
cient — twice the length of a small sheet of 
letter-paper. The printer's devil, who carries 
our works to the press, informs us, that the 
allowance to the demons of the type is double 
foolscap length, or twenty-four inches. The 
great city upholsterers generally consider six 
feet as barely sufficient for a person just rising 
in business, and assisting occasionally at offi- 
cial banquets. 

Mrs. Fry's* system is well spoken of by Mr. 
Bigge; and its useful effect in promoting order 
and decency among floating convicts fully ad- 
mitted. 



* We are sorry it should have been imagined, from 
f!0:ne of our l:ite observations on prison discipline, that 
we meant to disparage the exertioni of Mrs. Fry. For 
prisoners before trial, it is perfect ; liut where imprison- 
ment is intended for punishment, and not for. detention, 
it requires, as we have endeavoured to show, a very 
difft^rent system. The Prison Society (an excellent, ho- 
nourable, and most useful institution of anme of the best 
m^n in England) have certainly, in their first numbers, 
fall-n into the common mistake nf supposing that the re- 
formation of the culprit, and not the prevention of the 
crime, was the main object of imprisonment ; and have, 
in consequence, taken some fa'se views of the method 
of treating prisoners— the exposition of which, after the 
usual manner of flesh and blood, makes them a little 
angry. But, in objects of so high a nature, what matters 
vha is right— the only question is, jeAot is rigiitf 



In a voyage to Botany Bay by Mr. Read, be 
states that, while the convict vessel lay at 
anchor, about to sail, a boat from shore reached 
the ship, and from it stepped a clerk of the 
Bank of England. The convicts felicitated 
themselves upon the acquisition of so gentle- 
man-like a companion; but it soon turned out 
that the visitant had no intention of making so 
long a voyage. Finding that they were not to 
have the pleasure of his company, the convicts 
very naturally thought of picking his pockets ; 
the necessity of which professional measure 
was prevented by a speedy distribution of their 
contents. Forth from his bill-case, this votary 
of Plutus drew his nitid Newlands;.all the 
forgers and utterers were mustered on deck; 
and to each of them was well and truly paid 
into his hand a five pound note; less accepta- 
ble, perhaps, than if privately removed from 
the person, but still joyfully received. This 
was well intended on the part of the directors: 
but the consequences it is scarcely necessary 
to enumerate ; a large stock of rum was im- 
mediately laid in from the circumambient slop 
boats; and the materials of constant intoxica- 
tion secured for the rest of the voyage. 

The following account of pastoral convicts 
is striking and picturesque : — 

" I observed that a great many of the con 
victs in Van Diemen's Land wore jackets and 
trowsers of the kangaroo skin, and sometimes 
caps of the same material, which they obtain 
from the stock-keepers who are employed in 
the interior of the country. The labour of se- 
veral of them differs, in this respect, from that 
of the convicts in New South Wales, and is 
rather pastoral than agri,cultural. Permission 
having been given, for the last five years, to 
the settlers to avail themselves of the ranges 
of open plains and valleys that lie on either 
side of the road leading from Austin's Ferry 
to Launceston, a distance of 120 miles, their 
flocks and herds have been committed to the 
care of convict shepherds and stock-keepers, 
who are sent to these cattle ranges, distant 
sometimes thirty or forty miles from their mas- 
ters' estates. 

"The boundaries of these tracts are de- 
scribed in the tickets of occupation by which 
they are held, and which are made renewable 
every year, on payment of a fee to the lieute- 
nant governor's clerk. One or more convicts 
are stationed on them, to attend to the flocks 
and cattle, and are supplied with wheat, tea, 
and sugar, at the monthly Visits of the owner. 
They are allowed the use of a musket and a 
few cartridges to defend themselves against 
the natives; and they have also dogs, with 
which they hunt the kangaroos, whose flesh 
they eat, and dispose of their skins to-persons 
passing from Hobart Town to Launceston, in 
exchange for tea and sugar. They thus obtain 
a plentiful supply of food, and sometimes sue-' 
ceed in cultivating a few vegetables. Their 
habitations are made of turf and thatched, as 
the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, or gum-trees 
of the plains ; and the interior', in Van Die- 
men's Land, is not of sufficient expanse to form 
covering or shelter." — Report, pp. 107, 108. 

A London thief, clothed in kangaroo's skins, 



WORKS Ot THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



187 



lodged under the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, 
and keeping sheep, fourteen thousand miles 
from Piccadilly, with a crook bent into the 
shape of a picklock, is not an uninteresting 
picture ; and an engraving of it might have a 
very salutary effect — provided no engraving 
were made of his convict master, to whom the 
sheep belong. 

The Maroon Indians were hunted by dogs — 
fhe fugitive convicts are recovered, by the 
natives. 

"The native blacks that inhabit the neigh- 
bourhood of Port Hunter and Port Stephens 
have become very active in retaking the fugi- 
tive convicts. They accompany the soldiers 
who are sent in pursuit, and, by the extraordi- 
nary strength of sight they possess, improved 
by their daily exercise of it in pursuit of kan- 
garoos and opossums, they can trace to a 
great distance, and with wonderful accuracy, 
the impressions of the human foot. Nor g.re 
they afraid o'f meeting the fugitive convicts in 
the woods, when sent in their pursuit, without 
the soldiers ; by their skill in throwing their 
long and pointed wooden darts, they wound 
and disable them, strip them of their clothes, 
and bring them 'back as prisoners, by un- 
known roads and paths, to the Coal river. * 

"They are rewarded for these enterprizes 
by presents of maize and blankets ; and, not- 
withstanding the apprehensions of revenge 
from the convicts whom they bring back, they 
continue to live in Newcastle and its neigh- 
bourhood ; but are observed to prefer the so- 
ciety of the soldiers to that of the convicts.!' 
— Report, p. 117. . 

Of the convicts in New South Wales, Mr. 
Bigge found about eight or nine in an hundred 
to be persons of respectable character and 
conduct, though the evidence respecting them 
is not quite satisfactory. But the most strik- 
ing and consolatory passage in the whole re- 
port is the following : — 

" The marriages of the native-born youths 
with female. convicts are very rare ; a cirgum- 
stance that is attributable to the general disin- 
clination to early marriage that is observable 
amongst them, and partly to the abandoned 
and dissolute habits of the female convicts; 
•but chiefly to a sense of pride in the native- 
bom youths, approaching 'to contempt for the 
vices and depravity of the convicts, even when 
manifested in the persons of their own pa- 
rents." — Report, p. 105. 

Every thing is to be expected from these 
feelings. They convey to the mother-country 
the first proof that the foundations of a mighty 
empire are laid. 

We were somewhat surprised to find Go- 
vernor Macquarrie contending with Mr. Bigge, 
that it was no part of his, the governor's duty, 
to select and separate the useless from the 
useful cgnvicts, or to determine, except in par- 
ticular cases, to whom they are to be assigned. 
In other words, he wishes to effect the cus- 
tomary separation of salary and duty— the 
grand principle which appears to pervade all 
human institutions, and to be the most invin- 
cible of all human abus'es. Not only are 



church, king, and sta^te, allured by this prin- 
ciple, of vicarious labour, but the pot-boy has 
a lower pot-boy, who, for a small portion of 
the small gains-of his principal, arranges, with 
inexhaustible sedulity, the subdivided portions 
of drink, and, intensely perspiring, disperses, 
in bright pewter, the frothy elements of joy. 

There is a very awkward story of a severe 
flogging inflicted upon three freemen by Go- 
.vernor Macquarrie, without complaint to, or 
intervention of, any magistrate; a fact not de- 
nied by the governor, and for which no ade- 
quate apology, nor any thing approaching to an 
adequate apology, is offered. These Asiatic 
an(l Satrapical proceedings, however, we have 
reason lo think, are exceedingly disrelished by 
London juries. The profits of having been 
unjustly flogged at Botany Bay (Scarlett for 
the plaintiff) is good property, and would fetch 
a very considerable sum at the auction mart 
The governor, in many instances, appears to 
have confounded diversity of opinion upon 
particular measures, with systematic opposi- 
tion to his government, and to have treated as 
disaffected persons those whom, in favourite 
measures, he could not persuade by his argu- 
ments, nor influence by his example, and on 
points where eveiy man has a right to judge 
for himself, and where authority has no legi- 
timate right to interfere, much less to dictate. 

To the charges confirmed by the statement of 
Mr. Bigge, Mr. Bennet adds, from the evidence 
collected by the gaol committee, 'that the fees 
,in the governor's court, collected by the au- 
thority of the governor, are most exorbitant 
and oppressive; and that illegal taxes are col- 
lected under the sole authority of the governor. 
It has been made, by colonial regulations, a 
capital offence to steal the wild cattle ; and, in 
1816, three persons were convicted of stealing 
a wild bull, the property of our sovcreigti lord 
the king. Now our sovereign lord the' king 
(whatever be his other merits or demerits) is 
certainly a very good-natured man, and would 
be the first to lament that an unhappy convict 
was sentenced to death for killing one of his 
wild bulls on the other side of the Avorld. The 
cases of Mr. Moore and of William Stewart, 
as quoted by Mr. Bennet, are very strong. If 
they are answerable, they should be answered. 
The concluding letter to Mr. Stewart is, to us, 
the most decisive proof of the unfitness of 
Colonel Macquarrie for the situation in which 
he was placed. The ministry at home, after 
the authenticity of the letter was proved, should 
have seized upon the first decent pretext of 
recalling the governor, of thanking him, in the 
name of his sovereign, for his valuable ser- 
vices (notomitting'his care of the wild' bulls), 
and of dismissing him lo half pay — and in- 
significance. 

As to the trial by jury, we cannot agree with 
Mr. Bennet, that it would be right to introduce 
it at present, for reasons we have given in a 
previous article, and which we see no reason 
for altering. The time of course will "come 
when it would be in the highest decree unjust 
and absyrd to refuse to that settlement the be- 
j nefit of popular institu-tions. But they are too 
young, too few, and too deficient for such civi- 
• lized machinery at present " I cannot come to 



198 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



serve upon the jury — the waters of the Hawks- 
bury are out, and I have a mile to swim— the kan- 
garoos will break into my corn — the convicts 
have robbed me — my little boy has been bitten 
by an omithorynchus paradoxus — I have sent 
a man fifty miles with a sack of flour to buy 
apair of breeches /or the assizes, and he is 
not returned." These are the excuses which, 
in new colonies, always prevent trial by jury ; 
and make it desirable for the first half century 
of their existence, that they should live under 
the simplicity and convenience of despotism — 
such modified despotism (we mean) as a Bri- 
tish House of Commons (alwa3rs containing 
men as bold and honest as the member^ for 
Shrewsbury) will permit, in the governors of 
their distant colonies. 

Such are the opinions formed of the conduct 
of Governor Macquarrie by Mr. .Bigge. Not 
the slightest insinuation is made against the 
integrity of hi^ character. Though almost 
every body else has a job, we do not perceive 
that any is imputed to this gentleman ; but he 
is negligent, expensive, arbitrary, ignorant, 
and clearly deficient in abilities for the task 
committed to hi? charge. It is our decided 
opinion, therefore, that Mr. Bennet has ren- 
dered a valuable service to the public, in at- 
tacking and exposing his conduct. As a gen- 
tleman and an honest man, there is not the 
smallest charge against the governor; but a 
gentleman, and a very honest man, may very 
easily ruin a very fine colony. The colony 
itself, disencumbered of Colonel Lachlan Mac- 
quarrie, will probably become a very fine em- 
pire ; but we can scarcely believe it is of any 
present utility as a place of punishment. The 
history of emancipated convicts, who have 
made a great deal of money by their industry 
and their speculations, necessarily reaches 
this country, and prevents men who are goad- 
ed by want, and hovering between vice and 
virtue, from looking upon it as a place of suf- 
fering — perhaps leads them to consider it as 
the land of hope and refuge, to them unattain- 
able, except by the commission of crime. And 
so they lift up their heads at the bar, hoping 
to be transported, — 

"Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum 
Tendebantque manus, rips ulterioris ainore." 

It is not possible, in the present state of the 
law, that these enticing histories of convict 
prosperity should be prevented, by one uniform 
system of severity exercised, in New South 
Wales, upon all transported persons. Such 
difierent degrees of guilt are included under 
the term of convict, that it would violate every 



feeling of humanity, and every principle of 
justice, to, deal out one measure of punish- 
ment to all. We strongly suspect that this is 
the root of the evil. We want new gradations 
of guilt to be established by law — new names 
for those gradations — and a diSerent measure 
of good and evil treatment attached to those 
denominations. In this manner, the mere 
convict, the rogue and convict, and the incorrigi- 
ble convict, would expect, upon their landing, 
to be treated with very diiferent degrees of se- 
verity. The first might be merely detained in 
New South Wales without labour or coercion ; 
the second compelled, at all events, to worlc 
out two-thirds of his time, without the possi- 
bility of remission ; and the third be destined 
at once for the Coal River.* If these conse- 
quences steadily followed these gradations of 
conviction, they would soon be understopd"by 
the felonious world at home. At present, the 
prosperity of the best convicts is considered 
to be attainable by all; and transportation to 
another hemisphere is looked upon as Ihe re- 
novation of fallen fortunes, and the passport' 
to wealth and power. 

Another circumstance, which destroys all 
idea of punishment in transportation to New 
S^uth Wales, is the enormous expense which 
that settlement would, occasion, if it really 
was ihade a place of punishment. A little 
wicked tailor arrives, of no use to the ar- 
chitectural projects of the governor. He is 
turned over to a settler, who leases this sarto- 
rial Borgia his liberty for five shillings per 
week, and allows him to steal and snip, what, 
when, and where he can. The excuse for all 
this mockery of law and justice is, that the 
expense of his maintenance is saved to the 
government at home. But the expense is not 
saved to the. country at large. The nefarious 
needleman writes home, that he is as com- 
fortable as a finger in a thi^nble ! that though 
a fraction .only of humanity, he has several 
wives, and is filled every day with rum and 
kangaroo. This, of course, is not lost upon 
the shop-board ; and, for the saving of fifteen 
pence per day, the foundation of many crimi- 
nal tailors is laid. What is true of tailors, is 
true of tinkers and all other trades. The 
chances of escape from labour, and of manu- 
mission in the Bay, we may depend upon it, 
are accurately reported, and perfectly under- 
stood in the flash-houses of St. Giles ; and, 
while Earl Bathurst is full of jokes and joy, 
public morals are thus sapped to their foun- 
dation. 



* This practice is now resorted to. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



^ 



GAME LAWS/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1823.] 



About the time of the publication of this 
little pamphlet of Mr. Herbert, a committee of 
the House of Commons published a Report on 
the Game Laws, containing a great deal of 
very cuWous information respecting the sale of 
game, an epitome of which we shall now lay 
before our readers. The country higglers who 
collect poultry, gather up the game from the 
depots of llje poachers, and transmit it in the 
same manner as poultry, and in the same pack- 
ages, to the London poulterers, by whom it is 
distributed to the public; and this traffic is car- 
ried on (as far as game is concerned) even 
from the distance of Scotland. The same bu- 
siness is carried on by the porters ' of stage 
coaches ; and a great deal of game is sold clan- 
destinely by lords pf manors, or by game- 
keepers, without the knowledge of lords of 
manors ; and principally, as the evidence states, 
from Norfolk and Suffolk, the great schools of 
steel traps and spring ?uns. The supply of 
game, too, is proved to oe quite as regular as 
the supply of poultry ; the number of hares 
and partridges supplied rather exceeds that of 
pheasants; but any descriptiort of game may 
be had to any amount. Here is a part of the 
evidence. 

'* Can you at any time procure any quantity 
of game? I have no doubt of it. — If you were 
to receive almost an unlimited order, could you 
execute iil Yes, I_ would supply the whole 
city of London, any fixed day once a week, all 
the year through, so that every individual in- 
habitant should have ;ganie fot his table. — Do 
you think you could procure a thousand phea- 
sants 1 Yes; I would be bound to produce ten 
thousand a week. — You would be bound to pro- 
vide every family in London with a dish of 
game ? Yes ; a partridge, or a pheasant, or. a 
hare, or a grouse, or something or other. — How 
would yoU set about doing it? I should, of 
course, request the persons with whom lam 
in the habit of dealing, to use their influence to 
bring me what they could by a certain day ; I 
should speak to the dealers and the mail-guards, 
•and coachmen, to produce a quantity ; and I 
should send to my own connections in one or 
two manors where I have the privilege of sel- 
ling for those gentlemen : and should send to 
Scotland to say, that everyweek the largest 
quantity they could produce was to be sent. — 
Being but a petty salesman, I sell a very small 
■quantity ; but I have had about 4000 head direct 
from one man; — Can you state the quantity of 
game which has been sent to you during the 
year? No ; I may say, perhaps, 10,000 head ; 
mine is a limited trade ; I speak comparatively 
to that of others; I only supply private fa- 
milies." — Report, p. 20. 



* ^ Letter to the Chairman of the Committee of the House 
of Commons, on the Oame Laws. By tlie Hon. and Rev. 
William Herbert. Ridgway, 1823. 



Poachers who go out at night cannot, of 
course, like regular tradesmen, proportion the 
supply to the demand, but having once made a 
contract, they kill all they can ; and hence it 
happens that the game market is 'sometimes 
"very much overstocked, and great quantities 
of game either thrown away, or disposed of 
by Irish hawkers to the common people at veiy 
inferior prices. 

'• Does it ever happen tt) you to be obliged 
to dispose of poultry at the same low prices 
you are obliged to dispose of game ? It de- 
pends, upon ihe weather ; often, when there is 
a considerable quantity on hand, and owing to 
the weather, it will not keep till the following 
day, I am obliged to take any price that is 
offered; but we can always tUrn either poultry 
or game into some price or. other ; and if it 
was not for the Irish hawkers, hundreds and 
hundreds of heads of game would be spoiled 
and thrown 'away. It is out of the power of 
any person to conceive for one moment the 
quantity of game that is hawked in the streets. 
I have had opportunity more than other per- 
sons of knpwing this; for I have sold, I may 
say, mor.e game than any other person in the 
city; and we serve hawkers indiscriminately, 
persons who come and purchase probably six 
fowls or turkeys and geese, and they will buy 
heads of game with them." — Report, p. 22. 

"Live birds are sent up as well as dead; eggs 
as well as birds. The price of pheasants' 
eggs last year was 8s. per dozen ; of partridges' 
eggs, 2s. The price o^ hares was from 3s. to 
5s. &(]. ; of partridges, from Is. 6^?. to 2s. 6rf. ; of 
pheasants, from 5s. to 5s. Qd. each, and some- 
times as low as Is. M. 

" What have you given for game this year? 
It is very low indeed ; I am sick of ij; ; I do not 
think I shall ever deal again. We have got 
game this season as low as half-a-crown a 
brace (birds), and pheasants as low as 7s. a 
brace. It is so plentiful there has been no end 
to spoiling it this season. It is«o .plentiful, it 
is of no use. In war time it was worth hav- 
ing; then they fetched 7s. and 8s. a brace." — 
Report, p. 33. ^ 

All the poulterers, 'too, even the most re- 
spectable, state that it is absolutely necessary 
they should carry on this illegal traffic in the 
present state of the game laws ; because their 
regular customers for poultry would infallibly 
leave any poulterer's shop from whence they 
could notrbe supplied with game. 

"I have no doubt that it is the general wish 
at present of the trade not to deal in the article ;* 
but they are all, of course, compelled from 
their connections. If they cannot get game 
from one person, they can from another. 

"Do you. believe that poulterers are not to 
be found who would take out licenses, and 



lao 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



would deal with those very persons, for the 
purposes of obtaining a greater profit than they 
would have dealing as you would do? I think 
the poulterers in general are a respectable set 
of men, and would not countenance such a 
thing; they feel now that they are driven into 
a corner; that there may be men who would 
countenance irregular proceedingg, I have no 
doubt. — Would it be their interest to do so, 
considering the penalty! No, I think not. The 
poulterers are perfectly well aware that they 
are committing a breach of the law at present. 
— Do you suppose that those persons, respecta- 
ble as they are, who are now committing a 
breach of the law, would not equally commit 
that breach if the law were altered T No, cer- 
tainly not; at present it is so connected with 
their business that they cannot help it. — You 
said just now, that they were driven into a 
corner ; what did you mean by that 1 We are 
obliged to aid and abet those men who commit 
those depredations, because of the constant 
demand for game, from different customers 
whom we supply with poultry. — Could you 
carry on your business as a poulterer, if you 
refused to supply game 1 By no means; be- 
cause some of the first people in the land re- 
quire it of me." — Report, p. 15. 

When . that worthy errorist, Mr. Bankes, 
brought in his bill of additional severities 
against poachers, there was no man of sense 
and reflection who did not anticipate the fol- 
lowing consequences of the measure. 

« Do you find that less game has been sold 
in consequence of the bill rendering it penal 
to sell game 1 Upon my word, it did riot make 
the slightest difference in the world. — Not im- 
mediately after it was made 1 No ; I do not 
think it made the slightest difference. — It did 
not make the slightest sensation 1 No, I never 
sold a bird less. — Was not there a resolution 
of the poulterers not to sell game 1 I was sec- 
retary to that committee. — What was the con- 
sequence of that resolution 1 A great deal of 
ill blood in the trade. One gentleman who just 
left the room did not come into my ideas. I 
never had a head of game in my house ; all 
my neighbours sold it; and as we had people 
on the watch, who were ready to watch it into 
the houses, it came to this, we were prepared 
to bring our actions against certain individuals, 
after sitting, perhaps from three to four months, 
every week, which we did at the Crown and 
Anchor in the Strand, but we did not proceed 
with our actions, to prevent ill blood in the 
trade. We regularly met, and, as we con- 
ceived at the time, formed a committee of the 
most respectable ol the tr&de. I was secretary 
of th'at committee. The game was sold in th£ 
city, in the vicinity of the Royal Exchange, 
cheaper than ever was known, because the 
people at our end of the town were afraid. I, 
as a point of honour, never had it in my house. 
I never had a head of game in my house that 
season.: — What was the consequence 1 — I lost 
my trade, and gave .offence to gentlemen ; a 
nobleman's steward, or butler, or cook, treated 
it as contumely; 'Good God, what is the use 
of your running your head against the wall V — 
You were obliged to begin the trade again 7 
Yes, and sold more than ever." — Report,- ip. 18. 



These consequences are confirmed by the 
evidence of every person before the committee. 

All the evidence is very strong as to the fact, 
that pealing in game is. not discreditable; that 
there are a gr£at numbgr of respectable per- 
sons, and, among (he rest, the first poulterers in 
London, who buy game knowing it to'have 
been illegally procured, but who would never 
dream of purchasing any other article procured 
by dishonesty. 

" Are there not, to your knowledge, a_ great 
many people in this town who deal in game, 
by buying or selling it, that would not on any 
account buy or sell stolen property 1 Cer- 
tainly ; there are many capital tradesmen, poul- 
terers, who deal in game, that would have 
nothing to do with stolen property ; and yet I 
do not think there is a poulterer's shop in Lon- 
don where they could not get game, if they 
wanted it. — Do you think any discredit attaches 
to any man in this town for buying or selling 
game ? I think none at all : and I do not think 
that the men to whom I have just referred 
would have any thing to do with stolen goods. 
Would it not, in the opinion of the inhabitants 
of London, be considered a very different thing 
dealing in stolen game, or stolen poultry 1 
Certainly. — The one would be considered dis- " 
graceful, aijd the Other not 1 Certainly; they 
think nothing of dealing in game; and' the. 
farmers in the country will not give informa- 
tion ; they will have a hare or two of the very 
men who work for them-, and they are afraid to 
give us information." — Report, p. 31. 

The evidence of Daniel Bishop, one of the 
Bow Street officers, who has been a good deal 
employed in the apprehension of poachers, is 
curious and important, as it shows the enor- 
mous extent of the evil, and the ferocious spirit 
which the game laws engender in the common 
people. " The poachers," he says, ♦•' came 16 
miles. The whole of the village from which 
they were taken .were poachers ;the constable 
of the village, and the shoemaker, and other 
inhabitants of the village. I fetched one man 
22 miles. There was the son of a respectable 
gardener; one of these was a sawyer, and an- 
otl^er a baker, who kept a good shop there. If 
the village had been alarmed, we should have 
had some mischief; but we were all prepared 
with fire-arms. If poachers have a spite with 
the gamekeeper, that would induce them to go 
out in numbers to resist him. This party I 
speak of had something in their hats to distin- 
guish them. They take a delight in setting to ■ 
with the gamekeepers ; and talk it over after- 
wards how they served so and so. They 
fought with the butt-ends of their guns at Lord 
Hovve's ; they beat? the gamekeepers shocking- 
ly." — " Does it occur to you (Bishop is asked) 
to have had more applications, iind to have de- 
tected more persons this season than in any 
former one 1 Yes ; I think within four months 
(here have been twenty-one transported that I 
have been at the taking of, and through one 
man turning evidence in each case, and without 
that they could not have been identified ; the 
gamekeepers could not, or would not, identify 
them. The poachers go to the public house 
and spend their money; if they have a good 
night's work, they will go and get drunk with- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



191 



the money. The gangs are connected together 
at different public houses, just like a club at a 
public house; they are all sworn together. If 
the keeper took one of them, they would go and 
attack him for so doing." 

Mr. Stafford, chief clerk of Bow .Street, says, 
"All the offences against the g^me laws which 
are of an atrocious description I think are gen- 
erally reported to the public office in Bow 
Street, more especially in cases where the 
keepers have either been killed, or dangerously 
wounded, and the assistance of an officer from 
Bow Street is required. The applications have 
been much more numerous of late years* than 
they were formerly. Some of them have been 
cases of murder ; but I do not think many have 
amounted to murder. There are many in- 
stances in which keepers have been very'ill 
treated — they have been wounded, skulls have 
been fractured, and bones broken ; and they 
have been sHot at. A man takes an hare, or a 
pheasant, with a very different feeling from 
that with which he would take a pigeon or a 
fowl out of a farm-yard. The number of per- 
sons that assemble together is more for the 
purpose of protecting themselves against those 
that may apprehend them, than from any idea 
that they are actually committing depredation 
■upon the property of another person ; they do 
not consider it as property. I think there is a 
sense of morality and a distinction of crime ex- 
isting in the men's minds, although they are 
mistaken about it. Men feel that if they go in 
a great body together, to break into a house, or 
to rob a person, or to steal his poultry-, or his 
sheep, they are committing a crime against that 
man's property; but I think with respect to the 
game, they do not feel that they are doing any 
thing which is wrong; but think they have 
committed no crime when they have done the 
thing, and their only anxiety is to escape detec- 
tion." In addition, Mr. Stafford states that he 
remembers not ome single conviction under Mr. 
Bankes's Jlct against buying game ; and not one 
conviction for buying or selling game within 
the last year has been made at Bow Street. 

The inferences from these facts are exactly 
a-s we predicted, and as every man of common 
sense must have predicted — that to prevent the 
sale of game is absolutely. impossible. If game 
is plentiful, and cannot be obtained at any law- 
ful market, an illicit trade will be established, 
which it is utterly impossible to prevent by any 
increased severity of the laws. There never was 
a more striking illustration of the necessity of 
attending to public opinion in all penal enact- 
ments. Mr. Bankes (a perfect representative 
of all the ordinary notions about forcing man- 
kind by pains and penalties) took the floor. To 
buy a partridge (though still considered as in- 
ferior to murder) was visited with the very 
heaviest infliction of the law; and yet, though 
game is sold as openly in London as apples 
and oranges, though three years have elapsed 

* It is only 'of late years that men have been trans- 
ported for shooting at night. There are instances of 
rflen who have lieen transpirted at the ^Sessions for 
night poaching, who made no resistance' at all when 
taKen ; but then their characters as old' poachers 
weighed against them — characters estimated probably 
by the very lords of manors who had lo^t their game. 
This di9£;racefiil law is the occasion of all the murders 
committed fur game. 



since this legislative mistake, the officers of the 
police can hardly recollect a single instance 
where the information has been laid, or the 
penalty levied: and why? because every man's 
feelings and every man's understanding tell 
him, that it is a most absurd and ridiculous 
tyranny to prevent one man, who has more 
game than he wants, from exchanging it with 
another man, who has more money than he 
wants— because magistrates will not (if they 
can avoid it) inflict such absurd penalties — be- 
cause even common informers know enough of 
the honest indignation of mankind, and are too 
well aware of the coldness of pump and pond to 
act under the bill of the Lycurgus of Corfe 
Castle. 

The plan now proposed is, to undersell the 
poacher, which may be successful or unsuc- 
cessful ; but the threat is, if you attempt this 
plan there will- be no game — and if there is no 
game there will be no country gentlemen. We 
deny every part of this enthymeme — the last 
proposition as well as the first. We really 
■cannot believe that all our rural mansions would 
be deserted, although no game was to be found 
in their neighbourhood. Some come into the 
country for health, some for quiet, for agricul- 
ture, for economy, from attachment to family 
estates, from love of retirement, from the neces- 
sity of keeping up provincial interests, and 
from a vast variety of causes. Partridges and 
pheasants, though they form nine-tenths of 
human motives, still leave a small residue, 
which may be classed under some other head. 
Neither is a great proportion of those whom 
the love of shooting brings into the«coun1ry of 
the smallest value or importance to the country. 
A colonel of the Guards, the second son just 
entered at Oxfdrd, three diners out from Pic- 
cadilly — Major Rock, Lord John, Lord Charles, 
the colonel of the regiment quartered at the 
neighbouring, town, two Irish peers, and a Ger- 
man baron; — if all this honourable company 
proceed with fustian jackets, dog-whistles, and 
chemical inventions, to a solemn destruction of 
pheasants, how is the* country benefited by 
tbeir presence! or how would earth, air, or 
sea, be injured by their annihilation 1 There 
are certainly many valuable men brought into 
the country by a love of shooting, who, coming 
there for that purpose, are useful for many bet- 
ter purposes ; but a vast muJtitude of shooters 
are of no more service to the country than the 
ramrod which condenses the charge, or the 
barrel which contains it. We do not deny that 
the annihilation of the game laws would thin 
the aristocratical population of the country ; but 
it would not thin that population so much as is 
contended ; and the loss of many of the persons 
so banished would be a good rather than a 
misfortune. At all events, we cannot at all 
comprehend the policy of alluring the belter 
classes of society into the country, by the 
temptation of petty tyranny and injustice, or of 
monopoly in sports. How absurd it would be 
to offer to the higher orders the exclusive use 
of peaches, nectarines, and apricots, as the pre- 
mium of rustication — to put vast quantitief of 
men into prison as apricot eaters, apricot buy^- 
ers, and apricot sellers — to appoint a regular 
day for beginning to eat, and another for Icav- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



ingoff— to have a lord of the manor for green 
gages — and to rage "with a penalty of five 
pounds against the unqualified eater of the 
gage ! And yet the privilege of shooting a set 
of wild poultry is stated to be the bonus for the 
residence of country gentlemen. . As far as 
this immense advantage can be obtained with- 
out the sacrifice of justice and reason, well and 
good — but we would not oppress any order of 
society, or violate right and wrong, to obtain any 
population of squires, however dense. It is the 
grossest of all absurdities to say the present 
state of the law is absurd and unjust; but it 
must not be altered, because the alteration 
would drive gentlemen out of the country !' If 
gentlemen cannot breathe frer.h air without in- 
justice, let them putrefy in Cranborne Alley. 
■ Make just laws, and let squires live and die 
where they please. 

The evidence collected in the Mouse of Com- 
mons respecting the game laws is so striking, 
and so* decisive against the gentlemen of the 
trigger, that their only resource is to represent 
it as not worthy of belief. But why not worthy 
of belief? It is not staled what part of it is 
incredible. Is it the plenty of game in London 
for sale? the unfrequency of convictions ? the 
occasional but frequent excess of supply above 
demand in an article supplied by stealing? or 
its destruction when the sale is not without 
risk, and the price extremely low ? or the readi- 
ness of grandees to turn the excess of their 
game into fish or poultry? All these circum- 
stances appear to us so natural and so likely, 
that we should, without any evidence, have but 
little doubt "of their existence. There are a 
few absurdities in the evidence of one of the 
poulterers; but, with this exception, we see no 
reason whatever for impugniug the credibility 
and exactness of the mass of testimony pre- 
pared by the committee. 

It is utteHy impossible to teach the common 
people to respect property in animals bred the 
possessor knows not where — which he cannot 
recognize by any mark, which may leave him 
the next moment, which are kept, 'not for his 
profit, but for his amusement. Opinion never 
will be in favour of such property; if the 
animus fnrandi exists, the propensity will.be 
gratified by poaching. It is in vain to increase 
the severity of the protecting laws. They make 
the case weaker, instead of stronger ; and are 
more resisted and worse executed, exactly in 
proportion as they are contrary to public opi- 
nion : — the case of the game laws is a memo- 
rable lesson upon the philosophy of legisla- 
tion. If 'a certain degree of punishment does 
not cure the oflfence, it is supposed, by the 
Bankes School, that there is nothing to be 
done but to multiply this punishment by two, 
and then again and again, till the. object is ac- 
complished. The efficient maximum of pun- 
ishment, however, is not what the legislature 
chooses to enact, but what the great mass of man- 
kind think the maximum ought to he. The moment 
the punishment passes this Rubicon, it becomes 
less|jand .less, instead of greater and greater. 
Juries and magistrates will not commit — in- 
formers* are afraid of public indignation — 



* There Is a remarkable instance of this in the new 
Turnpike Act. The penalty for taking more than the 



poachers will not submit to be sent to Botany 
Bay without a battle — blood is shed for phea- 
sants — the public attention is called to this pre- 
po.sterous state of the law — and even ministers 
— (whom nothing pesters so much as the in- 
terests of humanity) are at least compelled to 
cfivae forward "and do what is' right. Apply 
this 10 the game laws. It was before penal to 
sell game: within these few years it has been 
made penal to' buy it. From the scandalous 
cruelty of the law, night poachers are trans- 
ported for peven yp ars. And yet, never was so 
much game sold, or such a spirit of ferocious 
resistance excited to the law^-. One-fourth of 
all the commitments in Great Britain are for 
offences against the game laws. There is a 
general feeling that some.ajieration must take 
place — a feehng not only among Reviewers, 
who never see nor eat game, but. among the 
double-barreled," shot-belted members of the 
House of Common.s, who are either alarmed 
or disgusted by the vice and misery which 
their cruel laws and childish passion for 
amusement are spreading among the lower 
orders of mankind. 

It is !»aid, " In spite of all the game sold, 
there is game enoiigh left ; let the laws there- 
fore remain as they are ;" and so it was said 
formerly, " There is sugar enough ; let the 
slave trade remain as it is." But at what ex- 
pense of humaft happiness is this quantity of. 
game or of sugar, and this state o/ poacher 
law and slave law, to remain ! The first object 
of a good government is, not that rich men 
should have ti\eir pleasures in perfection, but 
that all orders of men should be good and 
happy; and if crowded covies and chuckling 
cock-pheasants are only to be procured by 
encouraging the common people in vice, and 
leading them into cruel and disproportionate 
punishment, it is the duty of the government 
to restrain the cruelties which the country 
members, in reward for their assiduous loyalty, 
have been allowed to introduce into the game 
laws. 

The plan of the new bill (long since antici- 
pated, in all its provisions, by the acute author 
of the pamphlet before us,) is, that the public 
at l^rge should be supplied by persons licensed 
by magistrates, and that all qualified persons 
should be permitted to sell their game to these 
licensed distributors ; and there seems a fair 
chance that such a plan would succeed. The 
questions are, Would sufficient game come into 
the hands of the licensed salesman? Would 
the licensed salesman confine himself to tiie 
purchase of game from qualified persons? — . 
Would buyers of gatae puifahase elsewhere 
than from the licensed salesman ? Would the' 
poacher be under-sold by the honest dealer?^— 
Would game remain in the same plenty as be- 
fore ? It is understood that the game laws are 
to remain as they are; with this only differ- 



legal number of outside passengers is ten pounds per 
head, if the coachman is in part or wholly the owner.. 
This will rarfly be levied ; because it is too much. A 
penalty of lOOi would produce pcrfi^ct impunity. The 
maximum of practical severity would have been about 
five pounds. Any magistraie would cheerfully levy 
this sum ; while doubling it will produce reluctance in 
the .judge; resistance in the culprit, and unwillingness 
in the informer. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



1?*' 



enee, that the qualified man can sell to the 
licensed man, and the licentiate to the public. 

It seems probable to us, that vast quantities 
of game would, after a little time, find their way 
into the hands of licensed poulterers. Great 
people are very often half eaten up by their es- 
lablisments. The quantity of game killed in a 
large shooting party is very great; to eat -it is 
impossible, and to dispose of it in presents 
very troublesome. The preservation of game 
is very expensive ; and, when it could be bought, 
it would be no more a compliment to send it as 
a present than it would be to send geese and 
fowls. If game were sold, very large shooting 
establishments might be made to pay their own 
expenses. The shame is made by the law ; 
there is a disgrace in being detected and fined. 
If that barrier were removed, superfluous par- 
tridges would go to the poulterers as readily 
as superfluous venison does to the venison 
butcher— or as a gentleman sells the corn and 
mutton off his farm which he cannot consume. 
For these reasons, we do not doubt that the' 
shops of licensed poulterers would be full of 
game in the season ; and this part of the argu- 
ment, we think, the arch-enemy, Sir John Shel- 
ley, himself would concede to us. 

The next question is. From whence they 
would procure it 1 A license for selling game, 
granted by country magistrates, would, from 
their jealousy upon these subjects, be granted 
only to persons of some respectability and pro- 
perty. The purchase of game from unqualified 
persons would, of course, be guarded against 
by very heavy penalties, both personal and pe- 
cuniary ; and these penalties would be inflicted, 
because opinion would go with them. " Here 
is a respectable tradesman," it would be said, 
*< who might have bought as much game as he' 
pleased in a lawful manner, but who, in order 
to increase his profits by buying it a little 
cheaper, has encouraged a poacher to steal it." 
Public opinion, therefore, would certainly be 
in favour of a very strong punishment ; and a 
licensed vender of game, who exposed himself 
to these risks, would expose himself to the loss 
of liberty, property, character, and license. — 
The persons interested to put a stop to such a 
practice, would not be the paid agents of gov- 
"ernment, as in cases of smuggling ; but all the 
gentlemen of the country, the customers of the 
tradesman for fish, poultry, or whatever else he 
dealt in, would have an interest in putting down 
the practice. In all probability, the practice 
would become disreputable, like the purchase 
of stolen poultry ;and this would be a stronger 
barrier than the strongest laws. There would, 
of course, be som^ exceptions to this statement. 
A few shabby people would, for the chance of 
gaining sixpence, incur the risk of ruin and dis- 
grace ; but it is probable that the general prac- 
tice would be otherwise. 

For the same reasons, the consumers 'of 
game would rather give a little more for it to a 
licensed poulterer, than expose themselves to 
severe penalties by purchasing from poachers. 
The great mass of London consumers are sup- 
plied now, not from shabby people, in whom 
they can have no confidence — not from hawk- 
ers and porters, but from respectable trades- 
men, in whose probity they have ihe most per- 
25 



feet confidence. Men will brave the law for 
pheasants, but not for sixpence or a shilling;^, 
and the law itself is much more difficult to be 7 
braved, when it allows pheasants to be bought j. 
at some price, than when it endeavours to ren- - 
der them utterly inaccessible to wealth. AH., 
theJicensed salesmen, too, would have a directi . 
interest in stopping the contraband trade of* 5 
game. They would lose no character in doings- 
so ; their informations would be reasonable and ■, 
respectable. 

If all this is true, the poacher would have 
to compete with a great mass of game fairly 
and honestly poured into the market. He,-; 
would be selling with a rope about his neck, to^ . 
a person who bought with- a rope about his-ij^ 
neck; his description of customers would be..<-, 
much the same as the customers for stolen 
poultry, and his profits would be very materi- 
ally abridged. At present, the poacher is in 
the same situation as the smuggler would be, 
if rum and brandy could not be purchased of 
any fair trader.. The great check to the profits 
of the smuggler are, that if you want his com- 
modities, and will pay an higher, price, you 
may have them elsewhere without risk or dis- 
grace. But forbid the ^purchase of these luxu- 
ries at any price. Shut up the shop of the 
"brandy merchant, and you render the trade of 
the smuggler of incalculably value. The ob- 
ject of the intended billis,toVaise up precisely 
the same competition to the trade of the poach- 
er, by giving the public an opportunity of buy- 
ing lawfully and honestly the tempting articles 
in which he now deals exclusively. Such an 
improvement would not, perhaps, altogether 
annihilate his. trade ; but it would, in all proba- 
bility, act as a very material check upon it. 

The predominant argument against all this 
is, that the existing prohibition against buying 
game, though partially violated, does deter many 
persons from coming into the market; that if 
this prohibition were removed, the demand for 
game- would be increased, the legal supply 
would be insufficient, and the residue would, 
and must be, supplied by the poacher, whose 
trade would, for these reasons, be as lucrative 
and flourishing as before. But it is only a few 
years since the purchase of game has been 
made illegal : and the market does not appear 
to have been at all narrowed by the prohibition ; 
not one head of game the less has'been sold by 
the poulterers ; and scarcely one single con- 
viction has taken place under that law. How, 
then, would the removal of the prohibition, and 
the alteration of the law, extend the market 
and increase the demand, when the enactment 
of the prohibition has had no effect in narrow- 
ing it 1 But if the demand increases,. why not ■ 
the legal supply also? Game is increased 
upon an estate by feeding them in winter, by 
making some abatement to the tenants for 
guarding against depradations, by a large ap- 
paratus of gamekeepers and spies — in short by ■ 
expense. But if this pleasure of shooting, so . 
natural to country gentlemen, is made to pay 
its own expenses, by sending superfluous game 
to market, more men, it is reasonable to sup- 
pose, will thus preserve and augment their 
game. »The love of pleasure and amusement 
will produce in the owners of game that desire 
B 



194 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



to mnltiply game, which the love of gain does 
in the farmer to multiply poultry. Many gen- 
tlemen of small fortune will remember, that 
they cannot enjoy to any extent this pleasure 
without this resource; that the legal sale of 
poultry will discountenance poaching; and 
they will open an account with the poulterer, 
not to get richer, but to enjoy a great pleasure 
without an expense, in which, upon other terms, 
they could not honourably and conscientiously 
indulge. If country gentlemen of moderate 
fdrtune will do this (and we think after a little 
time {hey will do it), game may be multiplied 
and legally supplied to any extent. Another 
keeper, and another bean-stack, will prodiice 
their proportional supply of pheasants. The 
only reason why the great lord has more game 



per acre than the little squire is, that he spendS;, 
more money per acre to preserve it. 

For these reasons, we think the experiment 
of legalizing the sale of game ought to be tried. 
The game laws have been carried to a pitch 
of oppression which is a disgrace to the coun- 
try. The pris6ns are half filled with peasants, 
shut up for the irregular slaughter of rabbits 
and birds — a sufficient reason for killing a 
weasel, but not for imprisoning a man. Some-' 
thing should be done; it is disgraceful to a 
government to stand by, and see such enormous 
evils without interference. It is true, they are 
not connected with the struggles of party; but 
s'till, the happiness of the common people, what- 
ever gentlemen may say, ought every now and 
then to be considered. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



106 



€IIUEL TREATMENT OF UNTRIED PEISONEUS.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1824.] 



It has been the practice, all 6ver England, 
for these last fifty years,f not to compel prison- 
ers to work before guilt was proved. Within 
these last three or four years, however, the 
magistrates of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 
considering it improper to support any idle 
person at the county expense, have resolved, 
that prisoners committed to the house of cor- 
rection for trial, and requiring county support, 
should work for -their livelihood; and no sooner 
was the treadmill brought into fashion, than 
that machine was adopted in the North Riding 
as the. species of labour by which such prison- 
ers were to earn their maintenance. If these 
magistrates did not consider themselves em- 
powered to burden the county rates for the 
support of prisoners before trial, who would 
not contribute to support themselves, it does 
not appear, from the publication of the reve- 
rend chairman of the sessions, that any opi- 
nions of counsel were taken as to the legality 
of so putting prisoners to work, or of refusing 
them maintenance if they choose to be idle ; 
but the magistrates themselves decided that 
such was the law of the land. Thirty miles 
oflT, however, the' law of the land was differently 
interpreted; and in the Castle of York large 
sums were annually expended in the mainte- 
nance of idle prisoners before trial, and paid 
by the different Ridings, without remonstrance 
or resistance.^ 

Such was the state of affairs in the county 
of York before the enactment of the recent 
prison bill. After that period, enlargements 
and alterations were necessary in the county 
jail; and it was necessary also for these ar- 
rangements, that the magistrates should know 
whether or not they were authorized to main- 
tain such prisoners at the expense of the 
county, as, being accounted able and, unwilling 
to work, still claimed the county allowance. 
TJo questions proposed upon these points to 
three barristers, the following answers were 
returned : — . 

" 2dly, I am of opinion, that the magistrates 
are empowered, and are compelled to main- 
tain, at the expense of the county, such prison- 
ers before trial as are able tg work, unable to 
•maintain themselves, and not willing to work; 
and that they have not the power of compell- 



* \. A Letter to the Right ffonourable Robert Peel, one 
of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, <S(-c. ^c. <^c. 
on Prison Labour. By John Headlam, M. A , Chairman 
of the Quarter Sessions for the North Ridine of the 
County of York. London. Ilatchard and Son, 1823. 

2. Information and Observations, respecting the proposed 
Improvements at York Castle. Printed by Order of the 
Committee of Magistrates.- September, 1823. 

t Headlam, p. 6. 

t We mention the case of the North Riding, to convince 
our readers that the practice of condemning prisoners to 
worli before trial has existed in some parts of England ; 
for in questions like this we have always found it more 
difficult to prove the e.xistence of the f.icts, than to prove 
tbat they were mi^chievoua and unjust. 



ing such prisoners to work, either at the tread- 
mill, or any other species of labour. 

"J. GURWET. 

" Lincoln s Inn Fields, ^d September, 1823." 

"I think the magistrates are empowered, 
under the tenth section (explained by the 37th 
and 38th), to maintain prisoners before trial 
who are able to work, unable to maintain '., 
themselves by their own means, or by employ- 
ment which they themselves can procure, and 
not willing to work ; and I think also, that the 
words " shall be lawful," in that section, do 
not leave them a discretion on the subject, but 
are compulsory. Such prisoners can only be 
employed in prison labour with their oum 
consent; and it cannot be intended that the 
justices may force such consent, by withhold- 
ing from them the necessaries of life, if they 
do not give it. Even those who are convicted 
cannot be employed at the treadmill, which I 
consider as a species of severe labour. 

" September ^th, 1823." "J.JPahke. 

" 2dly, As to the point of compelling prison- 
ers confined on criminal charges, and receiv- 
ing relief from the magistrates, to reasonable 
labour; to that of the treadmill for instance, 
in which, when properly conducted, there is 
nothing severe or unreasonable ; had the ques- 
tion arisen prior . to the late act, I should' with 
confidence have said, I thought the magistrates 
had a compulsory power in this respect. 
Those who cannot live wythout relief in a jail, 
cannot live without labour out of it. Labour 
then is their avocation. Nothing is so injuri- 
ous to the morals and habits of the. prisoner 
as the indolence prevalent in prisons ; nothing 
so injurious to good order in the prison. The 
analogy between this and other cases of public 
support is exceedingly strong; one may almost 
consider it a general principle, that those who 
live at the charge of the community shall, as 
far as they are able, give the community a 
compensation through their labour. But the 
question does not depend on mere abstract 
reasoning. The stat. 19 Ch. .2, c. 4, sec. 1, en- 
titled, 'An Act. for Relief of poor Prisoners, 
and setting them on work,' speaks of persons 
committed for felony and other misdemeanours 
to the common jail, who many times perish 
before trial; and then proceeds as to setting 
poor prisoners on work. Then stat. 31 G. 3, 
c. 46, sec. 13, orders money to be raised for 
such prisoners of every description, as, being 
confined within the said jails, or other places 
of confinement, are not able to work. A late 
stat. (52 G. 3, c. 160) orders parish relief to 
such debt6rs on me^ie process in jails, not 
county jails, as are not able to support them- 
selves ; but says nothing of finding or com- 
pelling work. "Could it be doubted, that if the 
justices were to provide work, and the prisoner 
refused it, such debtors might, like any other' 



196 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYKNEY SMITH. 



parish paupers, be refused the relief mentioned 
by the statute 1 In all the above cases, the 
authority to insist on the prisoner's labour, as 
the condition and consideration of relief grant- 
ed him, is, I think, either expressed, or neces- 
sarily implied; and thus viewing tha Subject, 
I think it was in the power of magistrates, 
prior to the late statute, to compel prisoners, 
subsisting in all or in part on public relief, to 
work at the treadmill. The objection 'com- 
monly made is, that prisoners, prior to trial, 
are to be accounted innocent, and to be de- 
tained, inerely that they may be secured for 
(rial ;■ to this the answer is obvious, that the 
labour is neither meant as a punishment or a 
disgrace, but simply as a compensation for the 
relief, at their own request, afforded them. 
Under the present statute, I, however, have no 
doubt, that poor prisonei-s are entitled to public 
support, and that there can be no compulsory 
labour prior to trial. The two statutes advert- 
ed to (19 Ch. 2, c. 4,. and 31 G. 3) are, as far 
• as this subject is concerned, expressly re- 
pealed. The legislature then had in contem- 
plation tlie existing power of magistrates to 
order labour before trial, and having it in con- 
templation, repeals it ; substituting (sec. 38) a 
power of setting to labour onlt/ sentenced per- 
sons. The 13th rule, too (p. 177), speaks of 
labour as%)nnected with convicted prisoners, 
and sec. 37 speaks in general terms of persons 
committed for trial, as labouring with their 
own consent. In opposition to these clauses, 
I think it impossible to speak of implied 
power, or power founded on general reasening 
or analogy. So strong, however, are the argu- 
ments in favour of a more extended authority 
in justices of the peace, that it is scarcely to 
be doubted, that Parliament, on a calm revision 
of the •subject, would be willing to restore, in 
a more distinct manfter than it has hitherto 
been enacted, a general discretion on the sub- 
ject. Wtre this done, there is one observation 
I will venture to make, which is, that should 
some unfortunate association of ideas render 
the treadmill a matter of ignominy to common 
feelings, an enlightened magistracy would 
scarcely compel an untried prisoner to a spe- 
cies of labour which would disgrace him in 
his own mind, and in that of the public. 

" S. W. NiCOLL. 

"York, August 27th, 1823." 

In consequence, we believe, of these opinions, 
the North Riding magistrates,- on the 13th of 
October (the new bill commencing on the 1st 
of September), passed the following resolu- 
tion: — "That persons committed for trial, who 
are able to work, and have the means of em- 
ployment offered them by the visiting magis- 
trates, by which they may earn their support, 
but who obstinately refuse to work, shall be 
allowed bread and water only." 

By this resolution they admit, of course, 
that the counsel are right in their interpreta- 
tion of the present law ; and that magistrates 
are forced to maintain prisoners before trial 
who do not choose to work. The magistrates 
say, however, by their resolution, that the food 
shall be of the plainest and humblest kind, 
bread and water ; meaning, of course, that 



such prisoners should have a sufficient quantity 
of bread and water, or otherwise the evasion 
of the law would be in the highest degree 
mean and reprehensible. But it is impossible 
to suppose any such thing to be. intended by 
gjentlemen so' highly respectable. Their inten- 
tion is not that idle persons before trial shall 
starve, but that they shall have barely enough of 
the plainest food for the supportof life and health. 

■ Mr. Headlam has written a pamphlet to 
show that the old law was very reasonable 
and proper ; that it is quite right that prisoners 
before trial, who a,r(* able to support them- 
selves, but unwilling to work, should be com- 
pelled to work, and at the treadmill, or that all 
support should be refused them. We are en- 
tirely of an opposite opinion; "and maintain ■ 
that it is neither legal nor expedient.to compel 
prisoners before trial to work at the treadmill, 
or at any species of labour,' and that those who 
refuse to work should be supported upon a 
plain, healthy diet. We impute no sort of 
blame to the magistrates of the North Riding, 
or to Mr. Headlam, {heir chairjnan. We have 
no doubt but that they thought their measures 
the wisest and the best for correcting evil, and 
that they adopted them in pursuance of what 
they thought to be their duty. Nor do we 
enter into any discussion with Mr. Headlam, 
as chairman of a Quarter Sessions, but as the 
writer of a pamphlet. It is only in his capa- 
city of author that we have any thing to do 
with him. In answering the^ argviments of 
Mr. Headlam, we shall notice, at the same 
time, a few other observations commonly re- 
sorted to in defence of a system which we be- 
lieve to be extremely pernicious, and pregnant 
with the worst consequences ; and so thinking, 
we contend against it, and in support of the 
law as it now stands. 

We will not dispute with Mr. Headlam, 
whether his exposition of the old law is right 
or wrong: because time cannot be more un-. 
profitably employed than in hearing gentlemen 
who are not lawyers discuss points of law. 
We dare to say Mr. Headlam knows as much 
of the laws of his country as magistrates in 
general do ; but he will pardon us for believ- 
ing, that for the moderate sum of three guineas 
a much better opinion of what the law is now, 
or was then, can be purchased, than it is in the 
power of Mr. Headlam, or any other county 
magistrate, to give for nothing — Cuilibetin arte 
sua credendum est. . It is concerning the expe- 
diency of such laws, and upon that point 
alone, that we are at issue with Mr. Headlam; 
and do not let this gentleman suppose it to be 
any answer to our remarks to state what is 
done in the prison in which he is concerned, 
now the law is altered. The question is, 
whether he is right or wrong in his reasoning, 
upon what the law ought to be ; we wish to 
hold out such reasoning to public notice, and 
think it important it should be refuted — doubly 
important, when it comes from an author, the 
leader of the quorum, who may say with the 
pious 2Eneas, — 

— QusGqiie ipse miserrima vidi, 

Et quorum pars magna fui. 

If, in this discussion, we are forcejl to insist 
upon the plainest and most elementary trUths^^. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



197 



the fault is not with us, but with those who 
forget them ; and who refuse to be any longer 
restrained by those principles which have hith- 
erto been held to be as clear as they are im- 
portant to human happiness. 

To begin, then, with the nominative case 
and the verb — we must remind those advor 
Gates for the treadmill, a parte ante (for which 
the millers a parte post we have no quarrel), 
that it is one of the oldest maxims of common 
sense, common humanity, and common law, 
to consider every man as innoct?nt till he is 
proved to be guilty ; and not only to consider 
him to be innocent, but to treat him as if he 
was so ; to ej^ercise upon his case not merely 
a barren speculation, but one which produces 
practical effects, and which secures to a pri- 
soner the treatment of an honest, unpunished 
man. Now, to compel prisoners before trial 
to work at the treadmill, as the condition of 

• their support, must, in a great number of in- 
stances, operate-as a very severe punishment. 
A prisoner may be a tailor, a watchmaker, a 

. bookbinder, a printer, totally unaccustomed to 
any such species of labour. Such a man may 
be cast into jail at the end of August,* and not 
tried till the March following; is it no punish- 
ment to such a man to walk up hill like a turn- 
spit dog, in an infamous machine, for six 
months'? and yet there are gentlemen who 
suppose that the common people do not con- 
sider this as punishment ! — that the gayest and 
most joyous of human beings is a treader, 
untried by a jury of his countrymen, in the 
fifth month of lifting up the leg, and striving 
against the law of gravity, supported by the 
glorious Information which he receives from 
the turnkey, that he has all the time been 
grinding flour on the other side of the wall ! 
If this sort of exercise, necessarily painful to 
sedentary persons, is agreeable to persons ac- 
customed to labour, then make it voluntary — 
give the prisoners their choice — give more 
money and more diet to those who can and 
will labour at the treadmill, if the treadmill 
(now so dear to magistrates) is a proper pun- 
ishment for untried prisoners. The position 
we are contending against is, that all poor 
prisoners who are able to work should be put 
to work upon the treadmill, the inevitable con- 
sequence of which practice is, a repetition of 
gross injustice by the infliction of undeserved 
punishment; for punishment, and severe pun- 
ishment, to such persons as we have enume- 
rated, we Tuust consider it to be. 

But punishment's are not merely to be esti- 

, . jnated by pain to the limbs, but by the feelings 
of the mind. Gentlemen punishers are some- 
times apt to forget that the common people 
have any mental feelings at all, and think, if 
«f body and belly are attended to, that persons 
under a certain income have no right to likes 
and dislikes. The labour of the treadmill is 
irksome, dull, monotonous, and disgusting to 
the last degree. A man does not see his work. 



*Mr. Headlam, as we understand him, would extend 
this labour to all poor prisoners before trial in jails which 
are delivered twice a year at the assizes, as well as to 
houses of correction delivered four times a year at the 
Sessions; i. e. not to extend the labour, but.to refuse all 
support to those who refuse the labour — a distinction, 
but not a difference. 



does not know what he is doing, what progress 
he is making; there is no room for art, con- 
trivance, ingenuity, and* superior skill— ^all 
which are the cheering circumstances of hu- 
man labour. The husbandman sees the field 
gradually subdued by the plough ; the smith 
beats the rude mass of iron by degrees into 
its meditated shape, and gives it a meditated 
utility; the tailor accommodates his parallelo- 
gram of cloth to the lumps and bumps of the 
human body, and, holding it up, exclaims, 
"This will contain the lower moiety of an hu- 
man being." But the treader does nothing but " 
tread; he sees no change of objects, admires 
no new relation of parts, imparts no new qua- 
lities to matter, and gives to it no new ar- . 
rangements and positions ; or, if he does, he 
sees and knows it not, but is turned at once 
from a rational being, by a justice of peace, 
into a primum mobile, and put upon a level 
with a rush of water or a puff of steam. It 
is impossible to get gentlemen to attend to the 
distinction between raw and roasted prisoners, 
without which all discussion on prisoners is 
perfectly ridiculous. Nothing can be more 
excellent than this kind of labour for persons 
to whom you mean to make labour as irksome 
as possible ; but for this very reason, it is the 
labour to which an untried prisoner ought not 
to be put. 

It is extremely uncandid to say that a man ^ 
is obstinately and incorrigibly idle, because ^ 
he will not submit to such tiresome and de- 
testable labour as that of the treadmill. It is 
an old feeling among Englishmen that there is 
a difference between tried and untried per- 
sons, between accused and convicted persons. 
These old opinions were in fashion before this 
new magistrate's plaything was inyented ; and 
we are convinced that many industrious per- 
sons, feeling that they have not had their trial, 
and disgusted with the nature of the labour, 
would refuse to work at the treadmill, who 
would not be averse to join in any common 
and fair occupation. Mr. Headlam says, that 
labour may be a privilege as well as a punish- 
ment. So may taking physic be a privilege, 
in cases where it is asked for as a charitable 
relief, but not if it is stuffed down a man's 
throat whether he say yea or nay. Certainly 
labour is not necessarily a punishment: no- 
body has said it is ,so ; but Mr. Headlam's la- 
bour is a punishment, because it is irksome, 
infamous, unas'ked for, and undeserved. This 
gentleman, however, observes, that committed 
persons have offended the laws ,- and the senti- 
ment expressed in these words is the tl'ue key 
to his pamphlet and his system — a perpetual 
tendency to confound the convicted and the 
accused. 

"^ With respect to those sentenced to labour 
as a punishment, I apprehend there is no dif- 
ference of opinion. AH are agreed that it is 
a great defect in any prison where such con- 
victs are unemployed. But as to all other pri- 
soners, whether debtors, persons committed for 
trial, or convicts not sentenced to hard labour, 
if they have no means of subsisting them- 
selves, and must, if discharged, either labour 
for their livelihood or apply for parochial re- 
lief, it seems unfair to society at large, and 
r2 



196 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



especially to those who maintain themselves 
by honest industry^ that those M'ho, hy offend- 
ing the laws, have subjected theviselves to impri- 
sonment, should be lodged, and clothed, and 
fed, without being called upon for the same 
exertions, wliich others have to use to obtain 
such advantages."— f/eat?/a/w, pp. 23, 24. 

Now nothing can be more unfair than to say 
that such men have offended the laws. That 
is the very question to be tried, whether they 
have -offended the laws or not 1 It is merely 
because this little circumstance is taken for 
granted, that we have any quarrel at all with 
Mr. Headlam and his school. 

"I can make," says Mr. Headlam, "every 
delicate' consideration for the rare case of a 
person perfectly innocent being committed to 
jail on suspicion of crime. Such person is 
deservedly an object of compassion, for hav- 
ing fallen under circumstances which subject 
him to be charged with crime, and, conse- 
quently, to be deprived of his liberty : but if 
he has been in the habit of labouring for his 
bread before his commitment, there does not 
appear to be any addition to his misfortune in 
being called upon to work for his subsistence 
in prison." — Headlam, p. 24. 

And y£X Mr. Headlam describes this very 
punishment, which does not add to the mis- 
fortunes of an innocent man, to be generally 
disagreeable, to be dull, irksome, to excite t strong 
dislike, to be a dull, monotonous labour, to be a 
contrivance which connects the idea of discomfort 
with a Jail. (p. 36.) So that Mr. Headlam looks 
upon it to be no increase of an innocent man's 
misfortunes, to be constantly employed upon 
a dull, irksome, monotonous labour, which ex- 
cites a strong dislike, and cgnriects the idea of 
discomfort with a jail. We cannot stop, or 
stoop to consider, whether beating hemp is 
more or less dignified than working in a mill. 
The simple rule is this, — whatever felons do, 
men not yet proved to be felons should not be 
compelled to do. It is^of no use to look into 
laws become obsolete by alteration of man- 
ners. For these fifty years past, and before 
the invention of treadmills, untried men were 
not put upon felons' work ; but with the mill 
came in the mischief. Mr. Headlam asks, 
How can men be employed upon the ancient 
trades, in a prison 1 — certainly they cannot; 
but are human occupations safew, and is the 
ingenuity of magistrates and jailers so limited, 
that no occupations can be found for innocent 
men, bpt those which are shameful and odious 1 
Does Mr. Headlam really believe, that grown 
up and baptized persons are to be satisfied 
with such arguments, or repelled by such dif- 
ficulties 1 

It is some compensation to an acquitted per- 
son, that the labour he has gone through un- 
justly in jail has taught him some trade, given 
him an insight into some species of labour in 
which he may hereafter improve himself; but 
Mr. Headlam's prisoner, after a verdict of ac- 
quittal, has learnt no other art than of walking 
up hill ; he has nothing to remember or re- 
compense him but three months of undeserved 
and unprofitable torment. The verdict of the 
jury has pronounced him .steady in his morals ; 



the conduct of the justices has made him stiflf 
in his joints. 

But it is next contended by some persons, 
that the poor prisoner is not compelled to 
work, because he has the' alternative of starv- 
ing, if he refuses to work. You take up a 
poor man -upon suspicion, deprive him of all 
his iisual methods of getting his livelihood, 
and then giving him the first view of the tread- 
mill, he of the quorum thus addrtsses him: — 
" My amiabje friend, we use no compulsion 
with untried prisoners. You are free as air 
till you are found guilty ; only it is my duty to 
inform you, as you have no money of your 
own, that the disposition to eat and drink 
which you have allowed you sometimes 'feel, 
and upon Vhich I do not mean to cast any 
degree of. censure, cannot possibly be grati- 
fied but by constant grinding in this machine. 
It has its inconveniences, I admit ; but balance 
them against the total want of meat and drink, 
and decide for yourself. You are perfectly at 
liberty to make your choite, and I by no meafis 
wish to influence your judgment." But Mr. 
NicoU has a curious remedy for all this mise- 
rable tyranny; he says it is not meant as. a 
punishment. But if I am conscious that I 
never have committed the offence, certain that I 
have never been found guilty of it, and find 
myself tossed into the middle of ^n infernal 
machine, by the folly of those who do not 
know how to use the power entrusted to them, 
is it any consolation to me to be told, that it is 
not intaided as a punishment, that it is a lucu- 
bration of justices, a new theory of prison dis- 
cipline, a valuable county experiment going 
on at the expense of my arms, legs, back, 
feelings, character, and rights 1 We must tie 
those praegustant punishers down by one 
question. Do you mean to inflict any degree 
of punishment upon persons merely for being 
suspected? — or at least any other degrpe of 
punishment than that without which criminal 
justice cannot exist, detention? If you do, 
why let any one out upon bail ? For the ques- 
tion between us is not, how suspected persons 
are to be treated, and whether or not they are 
to be punished; but how suspected poor per- 
sons are to be treated, who want county sup- 
port in prison. If to be suspected is deserving 
of punishment, then no man ought to be let 
out upon bail, but every one should be, kept 
grinding from accusation to trial; and so ought 
all prisoners to be treated for offences not bail- 
able, and who do not want the county allow- 
ance. And yet ^no 'grinding philosopher con- 
tends, that all suspected persons should be put 
in the mill — but only those who are too poor 
to find bail, or l5uy provisions. 

If there are, according to the doctrines of 
the millers, to be two punishments, the first for 
being suspected of committing the offence; 
and the second for committing it, there should 
be two trials as well af: two punishments. Is 
the man really suspected, or do his accusers 
only pretend to suspect him? Are the sus- 
pecting of better character than the suspected?. 
Is it a light suspicion which may be atoned 
for by grinding a peck a day ? Is it a bushel 
case? or is it one deeply criminal, which re- 
quires the flour to be ground fine enough for 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



199 



French rolls 1 But we must put an end to 
such absurdities. 

It is very untruly stated, that a prisoner, be- 
fore trial, not compelled to work, and kept 
upon a plain diet, merely sufficient to main- 
tain him in health, is better off than he was 
previous to his accusation ; and it is asked, 
with a triumphant leer, whether the situation 
of any man ought to be improved, merely be- 
cause he has become an object of suspicion 
to his fellow-creatures 1 This happy and for- 
tunate man, however, is separated from his 
wife and family ; his liberty is taken away ; 
he is confined within four walls ; he has the 
reflection that his family are existing upon a 
precarious parish support, that his little trade 
and property are wasting, -that his character 
has become infamous, that he has incurred 
ruin by the malice of others, or by his own 
crimes, that in a few weeks he is to forfeit his 
life, or be banished from every thing he loves 
upon earth. This is the improved situation, 
and the redundant happiness which requires 
the penal circumvolutions of the justice's 
mill to cut off so unjust a balance of gratifi- 
cation, and bring him a little nearer to what 
he was before imprisonment and accusation. 
It would be just as reasonable to say, that an 
idle man in a fever is better off than a healthy 
man who is well and earns his bread. He 
may be better off if you look to the idleness 
alone, though that is doubtful; but is he better 
off if all the aches, agonies, disturbances, de- 
liriums, and the nearness to death, are added 
to the lot 1 

Mr. Headiam's panacea for all prisoners be- 
fore trial is the treadmill : we beg his pardon — 
for all poor prisoners ; but a man who is about 
to be tried for his life, often wants all his leisure 
time to reflect upon his defence. The exertions 
of every man within the walls of a prison are 
necessarily crippled and impaired. What can 
a prisoner answer who is taken hot and reeking 
from the treadmill, and asked what he has to 
say in his defence ; his answer naturally is — 
" I have been grinding corn instead of thinking 
of my defence, and have never been allowed 
the proper leisure to think of protecting my 
character and my life." This is a very strong 
feature of cruelty and tyranny in the mill. We 
ought to be sure that every man has had the 
fullest leisure to prepare for his defence, that 
his mind and body have not been harassed by 
vexations and compulsory employment. The 
public purchase, at a great price, legal accu- 
racy, and legal talent, to accuse a man who has 
not, perhaps, one shilling to spend upon his 
defence. It is atrocious cruelty not to leave 
him full leisure to write his scarcely legible 
letters to his witnesses, and to use all the 
melancholy and feeble means which suspected 
poverty can employ for its defence against the 
long and heavy arm of power. 

A prisoner, upon the system recommended 
by Mr. Headlam, is committed, perhaps at the 
end of August, and brought to trial the March 
following; and, after all, the bill is either thrown 
out by the grand jury, or the prisoner is fully 
acquitted ; and it has been found, we believe, 
by actual returns, that, of committed prisoners, 
about a half are actually acquitted, or their ac- 



cusations dismissed by the grand jury. This 
may be very true, say -the advocates of this 
system, but we know that many men who are 
acquitted are guilty. They escape through 
some mistaken lenity of the law, or some cor- 
ruption of evidence ; and as they have not had 
their deserved punishment after trial, we are 
not sorry they had it before. The English law 
says, better many guilty escape, than that one 
innocent man perish ; but the humane notions 
of' the mill are bottomed upon the principle, 
that" all had better be punished lest any escape. 
They evince a total mistrust in the jurispru- 
dence of the country, and say the results of 
trial are so uncertain, that it is better to punish 
all the prisoners before they come into court. 
Mr. Headlam forgets that general rules are not 
beneficial in each individual instance, but 
beneficial upon the whole; that they are pre- 
served because they do much more good than 
harm, though in some particular instances they 
do more harm than good ; yet no respectable 
man violates them on that account, but holds 
them sacred for the great balance of advantage 
they confer upon mankind. It is otje of the 
greatest crimes, for instance, to take away the 
life of a man ; yet there are many men whose 
death would be a good to society, rather than 
an evil. Every good man respects the pro- 
perty of others ; yet to take from a worthless 
miser, and* to give it to a virtuous man in dis- 
tress, would be an advantage. Sensible men 
are never staggered when they see the excep- 
tion. They know the importance of the rule, 
and protect it most eagerly at the very moment 
when it is doing more harm than goodi The 
plain rule of justice is, that no man should be 
punished till he is .found guilty; but because 
Mr. Headlam occasionally sees a bad man 
acquitted under this rule, and sent out unpun- 
ished upon the world, he forgets all the general 
good aqd safety of the principle are debauched 
by the exception, and applauds and advocates 
a system of prison discipline which renders 
injustice certain, in order to prevent it from 
being occasional. 

The meaning of all preliminary imprison- 
ment is, that the accused person should be 
forthcoming at the time of trial. It was never 
intended as a punishment. Bail is a far better 
invention than imprisonment, in cases where 
the heavy punishment of the offence would not 
induce the accused person to run away from 
any bail. Now, let us see the enormous dif- 
ference this new style of punishment makes 
between two men, whose only difference is, that 
one is poor and the other rich. A and B are- 
accused of some bailable offence. A has no- 
bail to offer, and no money to support himself 
in prison, and takes, therefore, his four or five 
months in the treadmill. B gives bail, appears 
at his trial, and both are sentenced to two 
months' imprisonment. In this case, the one 
suffers three times as much as the other for the 
same offence : but suppose A is acquitted and 
B found guilty, — the innocent man has. then 
laboured in the treadmill five months because 
he was poor, and tlje guilty man labours two 
months because he was rich. We are aware 
that there must be, even without the treadmill, 
a great and aa inevitable difference between 



200 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



men (in pari delicto), some of whom can give 
■bail, and some not ; but that difference becomes 
infinitely more bitter and objectionable, in pro- 
portion as detention before trial assumes the 
character of severe and degrading punishment. 
If motion in the treadmill was otherwise as 
fascinating as millers describe it to be, still the 
mere degradation of the punishment is eno^jgh 
to revolt every feeling of an untried person. 
It is a punishment consecrated to convicted 
felons — and.it has every character that such 
punishment ought to have. An untried person 

■feels at once, in getting into the mill, that he is 
put to the labour of the guilty ; that a mode of 
employment has been selected for him, which 

^renders him infamous before a single fact or 
argument has been advanced to establish his 
guilt. If men are put into the treadmill before 
trial, it is literally of no sort of consequence 
whether they are acquitted or not. Acquittal 
does not shelter them from punishment, for 
they have already been punished. It does not 
screen them from infamy, for they have already 
been treated as if the}' were infamous ; and the 
association of the treadmill and crimes is not 
to be got over. This machine flings all the 
power of juries into the hands of the magis- 
trates, and makes every simple commitment 
more terrible than a conviction ; for, in a con- 
viction, the magistrate considers whether the 
offence has been committed or nqt; arid does 
not send the prisoner to jail unless he thinks 
him guilty; but in a simple commitment, a 
man is not sent to jail because the magistrate 
is convinced of his guilt, but because he thinks 
a fair question may be made to a jury whether 

,the accused person is guilty -or not. Still, how- 
ever, the convicted and the suspected both go 
to the same mill-, and he who is there upon' the 
doubt, grinds as much flour as the other whose 
guilt is established by a full examination of 
conflicting evidence. 

Where is the necessity for such a violation 
of common sense and common justice 1 No- 
body asks for the idle prisoner before trial more 
than a very plain and moderate diet. Offer him, 
if you please,, some labour which is less irk- 
some, and less infamous than the treadmill, — 
bribe him by improved diet, and a share of the 
earnings ; there will not be three luen out of an 
hundred who would refuse such an invitation, 
and spurn at such an improvement of their 
condition. A little humane attention and per- 
suasion, among men who ought, upon every 
principle of justice, to be considered as inno- 
cent, we fhould have thought much more con- 
sonant to English justice, and to the feelings 
of English magistrates, than the rack and wheel 
of Cubitt.* 

Prison discipline is an object of considerable 
importance ; but the common rights of mankind, 
and the common principles of justice, and hu- 
manity, and liberty, are of greater consequence 
even than prison discipline. Right and wrong, 
innocence and guilt, must not be confounded, 
that a prison-fancying justice may. bring his 
friend into the prison and say, "Look what a 



* It is singular enough, that \ve use these observations 
in reviewing the pamphlet and System of a gentleman 
remarkable for the urbanity of his manners, and the mlld- 
«ne9<aqd Uumanity of his disposition. 



spectacle of order, silence, and decorum we 
have established here ! no idleness, all grind- 
ing ! — we produce a penny roll every second — 
our prison is supposed to be the best regulated 
prison in England,' — Cubitt is making us a new 
wheel of forty felon power, — look how white 
the flour is, all done by untried prisoners — as 
innocent as lambs!" If prison discipline is to 
supersede every other consideration, why are 
pennyless prisoners'" alone ,to be put into the 
mill before trial 1 If idleness in jails is so 
pernicious, why not put all prisoners in the 
treadmill, the rich as well as those who are 
unable to support themselves 1 Why are the 
debtors left out? If fixed principles are to be 
given up, and prisons turned into a plaything 
for magistrates, nothitig can be more unpictu- 
resque than to see one-half of the prisoners 
looking on, talking, gaping, and idling, while 
their poorer bretliren are grinding for dinners 
and suppers. 

It is a very weak argument to talk of the 
prisoners earning their support, and the ex- 
pense to a county of maintaining prisoners 
before trial, — as if any rational man could ever 
expect to gain a farthing by an expensive mill, 
where felons are the moving power, and jus- 
tices the superintendents, or as jf such a trade 
must not necessarily be carried on at a great 
loss. If it were just and proper that prisoners, 
before trial, should be condemned to the mill, 
it would be of no consequence whether the 
county gained or lost by the trade. But the in- 
justice of the practice can never be defended 
by its economy ; and the fact is, that it increases 
expenditure, while it violates principle. We 
arei aware, that by leaving out repairs, altera- 
tions, and first costs, and a number of little 
particulars, a very neat account, signed by a 
jailer, may be made up, which shall make the 
mill a miraculous combination of mercantile 
speculation and moral improvement ; but we 
are too old for all this. We accuse nobody of 
intentional misrepresentation. This is quite 
out of the question with persons so highly re- 
spectable; but men are constantly misled by 
the spirit of system, and egregiously deceive 
themselves — even very good and sensible 
men. . • 

Mr. Headlam compares the case of a pri- 
soner before trial, claiming support, to that of 
a pauper claiming relief from his parish. But 
it seems to us that no two cases can be more 
dissimilar. The prisoner was no pauper be- 
fore you took him up, and deprived him of his 
customers,, tools, and market. It is by your 
act and deed that he is fallen into a state of 
pauperism ; and nothing can be more prepos- 
terous, than first to make a man a pauper, and 
then to punish him for being so. It is true, 
that the apprehension and detention of the pri- 
soner were necessary for the purposes of 
criminal jilstice ; but the consequences arising 
from Ihis necessary act cannot be imputed to 
the prisoner. He has brought it upon him- 
self, it will be urged; but that remains to be 
seen, and will not be known till he is tried; 
and till it is known you have no right to take 
it for granted, and to punish him as if it were 
proved. ' 

There seems to be in the minds of some 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



201 



gentlemen a notion, that when once a person 
is in prison, it is of little consequence how he 
is treated afterwards. The tyranny which pre- 
vailed, of putting a person in a particular 
dress before trial, now abolished by act of Par- 
liament, was justified by this train of reason- 
ing: — The man has been rendered infamous 
by imprisonment. He cannot be rendered 
more so, dress him as you will. His character 
is not rendered worse by the treadmill, than it 
is by being sent to the place where the tread- 
mill is at work. The substance of this way 
of thinking is, that when a fellow-creature is 
in the frying-pan, there is no harm in pushing 
him into the fire ; that a little more misery — a 
little more infamy — a few more links, are of 
no sort of consequence in a prison-life. If this 
monstrous style of reasoning extended to hos- 
pitals as well as prisons, there would be no 
harm in breaking the small bone of a man's 
leg, because the large one was fractured, or in 
peppering with small shot a person who was 
wounded with a cannon-ball. The principle 
is, because a man is very wretched, there is no 
harm in making him a little more so. The 
steady answer to all this is, that a man is im- 
prisoned before trial, solely for the purpose of 
securing his appearance at his trial ; and that 
no punishment nor privation, not clearly and 
candidly necessary for that purpose, should be 
inflicted upon him. I keep you in prison, 
because criminal justice would be defeated by 
your flight, if I did not: but criminal justice 
can go on very well without degrading you to 
hard and infamous labour, or denying you any 
reasonable gratification. For these reasons, 
the first of those acts is just, the rest are mere 
tyranny. 

Mr. Nicoll, in his opinion, tells us, that he 
has no doubt Parliament would amend the 
bill, if the omission was stated to them. We, 
on the contrary, have no manner of doubt that 
Parliament would treat such a petition with 
the contempt it deserved. Mr. Peel is too much 
enlightened and sensible to give any counte- 
nance to such a great and glaring error. In 
this case, — and we wish it were a more fre- 
quent one — the wisdom comes from within, 
and the error from without the walls of Par- 
liament. 

A prisoner before trial who can support him- 
self, ought to be allowed every fair and rational 
enjoyment which he can purchase, not incom- 
patible with prison discipline. He should be 
allowed to buy ale or wine in moderation, — to 
use tobacco, or any thing else he can pay for 
within the above-mentioned limits. If he can- 
not support himself, and declines work, then 
he should be supported upon a very plain, but 
still a plentiful diet (something better, we think, 
than bread and water); and all prisoners be- 
fore trial should be allowed to work. By a 
liberal share of earnings (or rather by rewards, 
for there would be no earnings), and also by 
26 



an improved diet, and in the hands of humane 
magistrates,* there would soon appear to be no 
necessity for appealing to the treadmill till 
trial was over. 

This treadmill, after trial, is certainly a very 
excellent method of punishment, as far as we 
are yet acquainted with its eff'ects. We think, 
at presentf however, it is a little abused; and 
hereafter it is our intention to express our 
opinion upon the limits to which it ought to be 
confined. Upon this point, however, we do 
not much differ from Mr. Headlam ; although, 
in his remarks on the treatment of prisoners 
before trial, we think he has made a very 
serious mistake, and has attempted (without 
knowing what he was doing, and meaning, we 
are persuaded, nothing but what was honest 
and just) to pluck up one of the ancient land- 
marks of human justice.f 



* All magistrates should remember, that nothing is 
more easy to a person entrusted with power than to con- 
vince himself it is his duty to treat his fellow-creatures 
with severity and rigour, — and then to persuade him- 
self that he is doing it very reluctantly, and contrary to 
his real feeling. 

+ We hope this article will conciliate our old friend 
Mr. Roscoe ; who is very angry with us for some of our 
former lucubrations on prison discipline, — and, above all, 
because we are not grave enough for him. The differ- 
ence is thus stated :— Si.\ ducks are stolen.*- Mr. Roscoe 
would commit the man to prison for six weeks, perhaps, 
— reason with him, argue with him, give him tracts, 
send clergymen to him, work him gently at some useful 
trade, and try to turn him from the habit of stealing 
poultry. fVe would keep him hard at work twelve hours 
every day at the treadmill, feed him only so as not to 
impair his health, and then give him as much of Mr. 
Roscoe's system as was compatible with our own ; and 
we think our method would diminish the number of 
duck-stealers more effectually than that of the historian 
of Leo X. The primary duck-stealer would, we think, 
be as effectually deterred from repeating the offence by 
the terror of our injprisonment, as by the e.xcellence of 
Mr. Roscoe's education — and, what is of infinitely greater 
consequence, innumerable duck-stealers would be pre- 
vented. Because punishment does not annihilate crime, 
it is folly to say it does not lessen it. It did not stop the 
murder of Mrs. Donatty ; but how many Mrs. Donattys 
has it kept alive ! When we recommend severity, we 
recommend, of course, that degree of severity which 
will not e.xcite compassion for the sufferer, and lessen 
the horror of the crime. This is why we do not recom- 
mend torture and amputation of limbs. When a man 
has been proved to have committed a crime, it is expe- 
dient that society should make use of that man for the 
diminution of crime : he b^ongs to them for that pur- 
pose. Our primary duty, in such a case, is so to treat 
the culprit that many other persons may be rendered 
better, or prevenjed from being worse by dread of the 
same treatment; and, making this the principal object, 
to combine with it as much as possible the improvement 
of the individual. The ruffian who killed Mr. Mumford 
was hung within forty-eight hours. Upon Mr. Roscoe's 
principles, this was wrong ; for it certainly was not the 
way to reclaim the man : — We say, on the contrary, the 
object was to do any thing with the man which would 
render murders less frequent, and that the conversion of 
the man was a mere trifle compared to this. His death 
probably prevented the necessity of reclaiming a dozen 
murderers. That death will not, indeed, prevent all 
murders in that county ; but many who have seen it, 
and many who have heard of it, will swallow their re- 
venge from the dread of being hanged. Mr. Roscoe is 
very severe upon our style ; but poor dear Mr. Roscoe 
should remember that men have different tastes, and 
different methods of going to work. We feel these mat- 
ters as deeply as he does. But why so cross upon this 
or any other subject f 



202 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



AMERICA.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1824.] 



There is a set of miserable persons in 
England, who are dreadfully afraid of America 
and every thing American — whose great de- 
light is to see that country ridiculed and 
vilified — and who appear to imagine that all 
the abuses which exist in this country acquire 
additional vigour and chance of duration from 
every book of travels which pours forth its 
venom and falsehood on the United States. 
We shall from time to time call the attention 
of the public to this subject, not from any 
party spirit, but because we love truth, and 
praise excellence wherever we find it ; and 
because we think the example of America 
will in many instances tend to open the eyes 
of Englishmen to their true interests. 

The economy of America is a great and im- 
portant object for our imitation. The salary 
of Mr. Bagot, our late ambassador, was, we 
believe, rather higher than that of the Presi- 
dent of the United States. The vice-president 
receives rather less than the second clerk of 
the House of Commons ; and all salaries, civil 
and military, are upon the same scale ; and 
yet no country is better served than America! 
Mr. Hume has at last persuaded the English 
people to look a little into their accounts, and 
to see how sadly they are plundered. But 
we ought to suspend our contempt for Ame- 
rica, and consider whether we have not a 
very momentous lesson to learn from this 
wise and cautious people on the subject of 
economy. 

A lesson upon the importance of religious 
toleration, we are determined, it would seem, 
710/ to learn, — either from America, or from 
any other quarter of the globe. The High 
Sheriff of New York, last year, was a Jew. It 
was with the utmost iSifficulty that a bill was 
carried this year to allow the first Duke of 
England to cany a gold stick before the king 
— because he was a Catholic ! — and yet we 
think ourselves entitled to indulge in imperti- 
nent sneers at America, — as if civilization did 
not depend more upon making wise laws for 
the promotion of human happiness, than in 
having good inns, and post-horses, and civil 
waiters. The circumstances of the Dissenters' 
marriage bill are such as would excite the 
contempt of a Choctaw or Cherokee, if he 
could be brought to understand them. A cer- 
tain class of Dissenters beg they may not be 
compelled to say that they marry in the name 
of the Trinity, because they do not believe in 



* 1. Travels through Part of the United States and 
Canada, in 1818 and 1819. By John M. Duncan, A. B. 
Glasgow, 1823. 

2. Letters from, JVorth America, written during a Tour 
in the United States and Canada. By AD.4M Hodgson. 
London, 1824. 

3. An Excursion through the United States and Canada, 
during the years 1822-3. By an English Gentleman. 
London, 1824. 



the Trinity. Never mind, say the corruption- 
ists, you must go on saying you marry in the 
name of the Trinity, whether you believe in 
it or not. We know that such a protestation 
from you will be false: but, unless you make 
it, your Avives shall be concubines, and your 
children illegitimate. Is it possible to con- 
ceive a greater or more useless tyranny than 
this? 

" In the religious freedom which America 
enjoys, I see a more unquestioned superiority.- 
In Britain we enjoy toleration, but here they 
enjoy liberty. If government has a right to 
grant toleration to any particular set of reli- 
gious opinions, it has also a right to take it 
away; and such a right with regard to opinions 
exclusively religious I would deny in all cases, 
because totally inconsistent with the nature of 
religion, in the proper meaning of the word,, 
and equally irreconcilable Avith civil liberty, 
rightly so called. God has given to each of 
us his inspired word, and a rational mind to 
which that word is addressed. He has also 
made knoAvn to us, that each for himself must 
ansAver at his tribunal for his principles and 
conduct. What man, then, or body of men, 
has a right to tell me, 'You do not think aright 
on religious subjects, but we will tolerate your 
error?' The answer is a most obvious one, 
' Who gave you authority to dictate ? — or what 
exclusive claim have you to infallibility ?' If 
my sentiments do not lead me into conduct 
inconsistent with the welfare of my fellow- 
creatures, the question as to their accuracy or 
fallacy is one between God and my OAvn con- 
science ; and, though a fair subject for argu- 
ment, is none for compulsion. 

" The Inquisition undertook to regulate as- 
tronomical science, and kings and parliaments 
have with equal propriety presumed to legis- 
late upon questions of theology. The world 
has outgroAvn the former, and it will one day 
be ashamed that it has been so long of out- 
growing the latter. The founders of the 
American republic saw the absurdity of em- 
ploying the attorney-general to refute deism 
and infidelity, or of attempting to influence 
opinion on abstract subjects by penal enact- 
ment ; they saw also the injustice of taxing 
the whole to support the religious opinions of 
the feAv, and have set an example Avhich older 
governments will one day or other be com- 
pelled to follow. 

" In America the question is not. What is 
his creed? — but, what is hjs conduct? Jews 
have all the priA'ileges of Christians ; Episco- 
palians, Presbyterians, and Independents, meet 
on common ground. No religious test is re- 
quired to qualify for public office, except in 
some cases a mere verbal assent to the truth 
of the Christian religion ; and in every court 
throughout the country, it is optional AA^hether 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



203 



you give your affirmation or yotir oath." — 
Duncan's Travels, II. 328—330. 

In fact, it is hardly possible for any nation 
to show a greater superiority over another 
than the Americans, in this particular, have 
done over this country. They have fairly and 
completely, and probably for ever, extinguished 
that spirit of religious persecution which has 
been the employment and the curse of man- 
kind for four or five centuries ; not only that 
persecution which imprisons and scourges 
for religious opinions, but the tyranny of in- 
capacitation, which, by disqualifying from 
civil offices, and cutting a man off from the 
lawful objects of ambition, endeavours to 
strangle religious freedom in silence, and to 
enjoy all the advantages, Avithout the blood, 
and noise, and fire of persecution. What 
passes in the mind of one mean blockhead is 
the general history of all persecution. "This 
man pretends to know better than me — I can- 
not subdue him by argument ; but I will take 
care he shall never be mayor or alderman of 
the town in which he lives; I will never con- 
sent to the repeal of the test act or to Catholic 
emancipation ; I will teach the fellow to differ 
from me in religious opinions !" So says the 
Episcopalian to the Catholic — and so the 
Catholic says to the Protestant. But the 
wisdom of America keeps them all down — 
secures to them all their just rights — gives to 
each of them their separate pews, and bells, 
and steeples — makes them all aldermen in 
their turns — and quietly extinguishes the fa- 
gots which each is preparing for the combus- 
tion of the other. Nor is this indifference to 
religious subjects in the American people, but 
pure civilization — a thorough comprehension 
of what is best calculated to secure the public 
happiness and peace — and a determination 
that this happiness and peace shall not be 
violated by the insolence of any human being, 
in the garb, and under the sanction, of reli- 
gion. In this particular, the Americans are at 
the head of all the nations of the world : and 
at the same time they are, especially in the 
Eastern and Midland States, so far from being 
indifferent on subjects of religion, that they 
may be most justly characterized as a very 
religious people : but they are devout without 
being unjust (the great problem in religion) ; 
an higher proof of civilization than painted 
tea-cups, water-proof leather, or broadcloth at 
two guineas a yard. 

America is exempted, by its very newness 
as a nation, from many of the evils of the old 
governments of Europe. It has no mischiev- 
ous remains of feudal institutions, and no 
violations of political economy sanctioned by 
time, and older than the age of reason. If a 
man finds a partridge upon his ground eating 
his corn, in any part of Kentucky or Indiana, 
he may kill it, even if his father is not a doc- 
tor of divinity. The Americans do not exclude 
their own citizens from any branch of com- 
merce which they leave open to all the rest of 
the world. 

"One of them said, that he was well ac- 
quainted v.'ith a British subject, residing at 
N?a-ark, Upper Canada, who annually smug- 



gl d from 500 to 1000 chests of tea into that 
province from the United States. He men- 
tioned the name of this man, who he said was 
growing very ftch in consequence ; and he 
stated the manner in which the fraud was 
managed. Now, as all the tea ought to be 
brought from England, it is of course very 
expensive; and therefore the Canadian tea 
dealers, after buying one or two chests at 
Montreal or elsewhere, which have the cus- 
tom-house mark upon them, fill them up ever 
afterwards with tea brought from the United 
States. It is calculated that near 10,000 chests 
are annually consumed in the Canadas, of 
which not more than 2000 or 3000 come from 
Europe. Indeed, when I had myself entered 
Canada, I was told that of every fifteen pounds 
of tea sold there thirteen were smuggled. The 
profit upon smuggling this article is from 50 
to 100 per cent., and with an extensive and 
wild frontier like Canada, cannot be prevented. 
Indeed it every year increases, and is brought 
to a more perfect system. ■ But I suppose that 
the English government, which is the perfec- 
tion of wisdom, will never allow the Canadian 
merchants to trade direct to China, in order 
that (from pure charity) the whole profit of 
the tea trade may be given up to the United 
States." — Excursion, pp. 394, 395. 

"You will readily conceive, that it is with 
no small mortification that I hear these Ame- 
rican merchants talk of sending their shins to 
London and Liverpool, to take in goods or 
specie, with which to purchase tea for the 
supply of European ports, almost within sight 
of our own shores. They often taunt me, 
asking me what our government can possibly 
mean by prohibiting us from engaging in a 
profitable trade, which is open to them and to 
all the world? or where can be our boasted 
liberties, while we tamel}'^ submit to the infrac- 
tion of our natural rights, to supply a mono- 
poly as absurd as it is unjust, and to humour 
the caprice of a company who exclude their 
fellow-subjects from a branch of commerce 
which they do not pursue themselves, but 
leave to the enterprise»of foreigners, or com- 
mercial rivals ? On such occasions I can 
only reply, that both our governments and 
people are growing wiser ; and that if the 
charter of the East India Company be renew- 
ed, Avhen it next expires, I will allow them to 
infer, that the people of England have little 
influence in the administration of their own 
affairs." — Hodgson's Letters, II. 128, 129. 

Though America is a confederation of re- 
publics, they are in many cases much more 
amalgamated than the various parts of Great 
Britain. If a citizen of the United States can 
make a shoe, he is at liberty to make a shoe 
any Avhere between Lake Ontario and New 
Orleans, — he may sole on the Mississippi — 
heel on the Missouri — measure Mr. Birkbeck 
on the little Wabash, or take (which our best 
politicians do not find an easy matter) the 
length of Munroe's foot on the banks of the 
Potomac. But wo to the cobbler, who, having 
made Hessian boots for the aldermen of NeAV- 
castle, should venture to invest Avith these co- 
riaceous integuments the leg of a liege subject 
at York. A yellow ant in a nest of red ants — 



204 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



a butcher's dog in a fox-kennel — a mouse in a 
bee-hive, — all feel the efTects of untimely in- 
trusion ; — but far preferable their fate to that 
of the misguided artisan, who, misled by six- 
penny histories of England, and conceiving 
his country to have been united at the Hept- 
archy, goes forth from his native town to stitch 
freely within the sea-girt limits of Albion. 
Him the mayor, him the alderman, him the 
recorder, him the quarter sessions would wor- 
ry. Him ihe justices before trial would long 
to get into the treadmill ;* and would much 
lament that, by a recent act, they could not do 
so, even with the intruding tradesman's con- 
sent ; but the moment he was tried, they would 
push him in with redoubled energy, and leave 
him to tread himself into a conviction of the 

.Jfc' barbarous institutions of his corporation- 

^■^ divided country. 

Too much praise cannot be given to the 
Americans for their great attention to the sub- 
ject of education. All the public lands are 
surveyed according to the direction of Con- 
gress. They are divided into townships of 
•six miles square, by lines running with the 
cardinal points, and consequently crossing 
each other at right angles. Every township 
is divided into 36 sections, each a mile square, 
and containing 640 acres. One section in 
each township is reserved, and given in per- 
petuity for the benefit of common schools. In 
addition to this, the states of Tennessee and 
Ohio have received grants for the support of 
colleges and academies. The appropriation 
generally in the new states for seminaries of 
the higher orders, amounts to one-fifth of those 
for common schools. It appears from Sey- 
bert's Statistical Annals, that the land in the 
states and territories on the east side of the 
JUississippi, in which appropriations have 
Deen made, amounts to 237,300 acres ; and 
according to the ratio above mentioned, the 
aggregate on the east side of the Mississippi 
is 7,900,000. The same system of*appropria- 
tion applied to the west, will make, for schools 
and colleges, 6,600,000 ; and the total appropria- 
tion for literary purposes, in the new states 
and territoi'ies, 14,.500,000 acres, which, at two 

* This puts us in mind of our friend Mr. Headlam, 
who, we hear, has wriUen an answer to our Observa- 
tions on the Treadmill, before Trial. It would have been 
a very easy thin? for us to have hung Mr. Headlam up as a 
spectacle to the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland, 
■and Ireland, the principality of Wales, and the town of 
Berwick-on-Tweed ; but we have no wish to make a 
worthy and respectable man ridiculous. For these rea- 
sons we have not even looked at his pamphlet, and we 
decline entering into a controversy upon a point, where, 
among men of sense and humanity (who have not heat- 
ed themselves in the dispute), there cannot possibly be 
any difference of opinion. All members of both houses 
of Parliament were unanimous in their condemnation 
of the odious and nonsensical practice of working pri- 
soners in the treadmill before trial. It had not one single 
advocate. Mr. Headlam and the magistrates of the 
North Riding, in their eagerness to save a relic of their 
prison system, forgot themselves so far as to petition to 
be entrusted with the power of putting prisoners to work 
before trial, with their own consent— the legislature was, 
"We will not trust you,"— the severest practical rebuke 
ever received by any public body. We will leave it to 
others to determine whether it was deserved. We have 
no doubt the great body of magistrates meant well .They 
must have meant well— but they have been sadly misled, 
and have thrown odium on the subordinate administra- 
tion of justice, which it is for from deserving on other 
occasions, in their hands. This strange piece of nonsense 
is, however, now well eniei.—Requiescat in pace! 



dollars per acre, would be 29,000,000 dollars. 
These facts are very properly quoted by Mr. 
Hodgson ; and it is impossible to speak too 
highly of their value and importance. They 
quite put into the back ground every thing 
which has been done in the Old World for the 
improvement of the lower orders, and confer 
deservedly upon the Americans the character 
of a wise, a reflecting, and a virtuous people. 

It is rather surprising that such a people, 
spreading rapidly over so vast a portion of 
the earth, and cultivating all the liberal and 
useful arts so successfull}-, should be so ex- 
tremely sensitive and touchy as the Ameri- 
cans are said to be. We really thought at 
one time they would have fitted out an arma- 
ment against the Edinburgh and Quarterly 
Reviews, and burnt down Mr. Murray's and 
Mr. Constable's shops, as we did the American 
Capitol. We, however, remember no other 
anti-American crime of which we were guilty, 
than a preference of Shakspeare and Milton 
over Joel Barlow and Timothy Dwight. That 
opinion we must still take the liberty of retain- 
ing. There is nothing in Dwight comparable 
to the finest passages of Paradise Lost, nor is 
Mr. Barlow ever humorous or pathetic, as the 
great bard of the English stage is humorous 
and pathetic. We have always been strenu- 
ous* advocates for, and admirers of, America 
— not taking our ideas from the overweening 
vanity of the weaker part of the Americans 
themselves, but from what we have observed 
of their real energy and wisdom. It is very 
natural that we Scotch, who live in a little, 
shabby, scraggy corner of a remote island, 
with a climate which cannot ripen an apple, 
should be jealous of the aggressive pleasantry 
of more favoured people ; but that Americans, 
who have done so much for themselves, and 
received so much from nature, should be flung 
into such convulsions by English reviews and 
magazines, is really a sad specimen of Colum- 
bian juvenility. We hardly dare to quote the 
following account of an American route, for 
fear of having our motives misrepresented, — 
and strongly suspect that there are but few 
Americans who could be brought to admit that 
a Philadelphia or Boston concern of this na- 
ture is not quite equal to the most brilliant 
assemblies of London or, Paris. 

"A tea party is a serious thing in this coun- 
try ; and some of those at which I have been 
present, in New York and elsewhere, have been 
on a very large scale. In the modern houses 
the two principal apartments are on the first 
floor, and communicated by large folding 
doors, M-hich on gala days throw wide their 
ample portals, converting the two apartments 
into one. At the largest party which I have 



* Ancient women, whether in or out of breeches, will 
of course imagine that we are the enemies of the insti- 
tutions of ourcountry, because we are the admireifs of 
the institutions of America : but circumstances differ. 
American institutions are too new, English institutions 
are ready made to our hands. If we were to build the 
house afresh, we might perhaps avail ourselves of the 
improvements of a new plan ; but we have no sort of 
wish to pull down an excellent house, strong, warm, and 
comfortable, because, upon second trial, we might bft 
able to alter and amend it, — a principle which would 
perpetuate demolition and construction. Our plan, 
where circumstances are tolerable, is to sit down and 
enjoy ourselves. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



20& 



seen, there were about thirty young ladies 
present, and more than as many gentlemen. 
Every sofa, chaii', and footstool, were occupied 
by the ladies, and little enough room some of 
them appeared to have after all. The gentle- 
men were obliged to be content with walking 
up and down, talking now with one lady, now 
with another. Tea was brought m by a cou- 
ple of blacks, carrying large trays, one covered 
with cups, the other with cake. Slowly making 
the round, and retiring at intervals for addi- 
tional supplies, the ladies were gradually gone 
over ; and after much patience the gentlemen 
began to enjoy the beverage ' which cheers 
but not inebriates ;' still walking about, or 
leaning against the wall, with the cup and 
saucer in their hand. 

" As soon as the first course was over, the 
hospitable trays again entered, bearing a chaos 
of preserves — peaches, pineapples, ginger, 
oranges, citrons, pears, &c. in tempting dis- 
play. A few of the young gentlemen now 
accompanied the revolution of the trays, and 
sedulously attended to the pleasure of the 
ladies. The party was so numerous that the 
period between the commencement and the 
termination of the round was sufficient to jus- 
tify a new solicitation : and so the ceremony 
continued, with very little intermission, during 
the whole evening. Wine succeeded the pre- 
serves, and dried fruit followed the wine ; 
Avhich, in its turn, was supported by sand- 
wiches in name of supper, and a forlorn hope 
of confectionary and frost work. I pitied the 
poor blacks, who, like Tantalus, had such a 
profusion of dainties the whole evening at 
their finger ends, without the possibility of 
partaking of them. A little music and dancing 
gave variety to the scene ; which to some of 
us was a source of considerable satisfaction ; 
for when a number of ladies were on the floor, 
those who cared not for the dance had the 
pleasure of getting a seat. About eleven 
o'clock I did myself the honour of escorting a 
lady home, and was well pleased to have an 
excuse for escaping." — Duncan's Travels, II. 
279, 280. 

The coaches must be given up ; so must 
the roads, and so must the inns. They are of 
course what these accommodations are in all 
new countries ; and much like what English 
great-grandfathers talk about as existing in 
this country at the first period of their recol- 
lection. The great inconvenience of Ameri- 
can inns, however, in the eyes of an English- 
man, is one which more sociable travellers 
must feel less acutely — we mean the impossi- 
bility of being alone, of having a room sepa- 
rate from the rest of the company. There is 
nothing Avhich an Englishman enjoys more 
than the pleasure of sulkiness, — of not being 
forced to hear a word from any body wMch 
may occasion to him the necessity of replying. 
It is not so much that Mr. Bull disdains to 
talk, as that Mr. Bull has nothing to say. His 
forefathers have been out of spirits for six or 
seven hundred years, and, seeing nothing bat 
fog and vapour, he is out of spirits too ; and 
when there is no selling or buying, or no busi- 
ness to settle, he prefers being alone and look- 
ing at the fire. If any gentleman was in dis- 



. tress, he would willingly lend an helping hand ; 
but he thinks it no part of neighbourhood to 
talk to a person because he happens to be near 
him. In short, with many excellent qualities, 
it must be acknowledged that the English are 
the most disagreeable of all the nations of 
Europe, — more surly and morose, with less 
disposition to please, to exert themselves for 
the good of society, to make small sacrifices, 
and to put themselves out of their way. They 
are content with Magna Charta and trial by 
jury: and think they are not bound to excef 
the rest of the world in small behaviour, if 
they are superior to them in great institutions. 

We are terribly afraid that some Americans 
spit upon the floor, even when that floor is 
covered by good carpets. Now, all claims to 
civilization are suspended till this secretion is 
otherwise disposed of. No English gentleman 
has spit upon the floor since the Heptarchy. 

The curiosity for which the Americans are 
so much laughed at, is not only venial, but 
laudable. Where men live in woods and 
forests, as is the case, of course, in remote 
American settlements, it is the duty of every 
man to gratify the inhabitants by telling them 
his name, place, age, office, virtues, crimes, 
children, fortune, and remarks : and with fel- 
low-travellers, it seems to be almost a matter 
of necessity to do so. When men ride toge- 
ther for 300 or 400 miles through the woods 
and prairies, it is of the greatest importance 
that they should be able to guess at subjects 
most agreeable to each other, and to multiply 
their common topics. Without knowing who 
)^our companion is, it is difficult to know both 
what to say and what to avoid. You may talk 
of honour and virtue to an attorney, or con- 
tend with a Virginia planter that men of a fair 
colour have no right to buy and sell men of a 
dusky colour. The following is a livel}^ de- 
scription of the rights of interrogation, as un- 
derstood and practised in America. 

" As for the inquisitiveneis of the Americans, 
I do not think it has been at all exaggerated. — 
They certainly are, as they profess to be, a 
very inquiring people ; and if we may some- 
times be disposed to dispute the claims of their 
love of knowing to the character of a liberal 
curiosity, we must at least admit that they 
make a most liberal use of every means in 
their power to gratify it. I have seldom, how- 
ever, had an}' difficulty in repressing their 
home questions, if I wished it, and without 
oflending them ; but I more frequently amused 
myself by putting them on the rack; civilly, 
and apparently unconsciously, eluded their in- 
quiries for a time, and then awakening their 
gratitude by such a discovery of myself as I 
might choose to make. Sometimes a man 
would place himself at my side in the wilder- 
ness, and ride for a mile or two without the 
smallest communication between us, except 
a slight nod of the head. He would then, per- 
haps, make some grave remark on the wea- 
ther, and if I assented, in a monosyllable, he 
would stick to my side for another mile or 
two, when he would commence his attack. 
' I reckon, stranger, you do not belong to these 
parts]' — 'No, sir; I am not of Alabama.' — 
'I guess you are from the north 1' — 'No, sir, 
S 



206 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



I am not from the north.' — ' I guess you found 
the roads mighty muddy, and the creeks swim- 
ming. You are come a long waj', I guess ]' — 
' No, not so very far ; we have travelled a few 
hundred miles since we turned our faces west- 
ward.' — 'I guess you have seen Mr. , or 

General V (mentioning the names of 

some well-known individuals in the middle 
and southern states, who were to serve as 
guide-posts to detect our route) ; but, ' I have 
not the pleasure of knowing any of them,' or, 
' I have the pleasure of knowing all,' equally 
defeated his purpose, but not his hopes. ' I 
reckon, stranger, you have had a good crop 
of cotton this year?' — 'I am told, sir, the 
crops have been unusually abundant in Caro- 
lina and Georgia.' — ' You grow tobacco, then, 
I guess r (to track me to Virginia). 'No; I 
do not grow tobacco.' Here a modest in- 
quirer would give up in despair, and trust to 
the chapter of accidents to develope my name 
and history ; but I generally rewarded his mo- 
desty, and excited his gratitude, by telling him 
I would torment him no longer. 

" The courage of a thorough-bred Yankee* 
would rise with his difficulties ; and after a 
decent interval, he would resume : ' I hope 
no oflence, sir ; but you know we Yankees 
lose nothing for want of asking. I guess, 
stranger, you are from the old country!' — 
' Well, my friend, you have guessed right at 
last, and I am sure you deserve something for 
your perseverance; and now I suppose it will 
save us both trouble if I proceed to the second 
part of the story, and tell you where I am go- 
ing. I am going to New Orleans.' This is 
really no exaggerated picture : dialogues, not 
indeed in these very words, but to this effect, 
occurred continually; and some of them more 
minute and extended than I can venture upon 
m a letter. I ought, however, to say, that 
many questions lose much of their familiarity 
when travelling in the wilderness. ' Where 
are you froml' and 'whither are you bound 1' 
do not appear impertinent interrogations at 
sea ; and often in the western wilds I found 
myself making inquiries which I should have 
thought very free and easy at home." — Hodg- 
son's Letters, II. 32 — 35. 

In all new and distant settlements the forms 
of law must, of course, be very limited. No 
justice's warrant is current in the Dismal 
Swamp ; constables are exceedingly puzzled 
in the neighbourhood of the Mississippi ; and 
there is no treadmill, either before or after 
trial, on the Little Wabash. The Consequence 
of this is, that the settlers take the law into 
their own hands, and give notice to a justice- 
proof delinquent to quit the territory, — if this 
notice is disobeyed, they assemble and whip 
the culpi'it, and this failing, on the second visit 
they cut ofl' his ears. In short, Captain Kock 
has his descendants in America. Mankind 
cannot live together without some approxima- 
tion to justice ; and if the actual government 
will not govern wel), or cannot govern well, 
is too wicked or too weak to do so — then men 
prefer Rock to anarchy. The following is the 



* " In America, the term Yankee is applied to the na- 
tives of New England only, and is generally used with 
an air of pleasantry. 



best account we have seen of this system of 
irregular justice. 

" After leaving Carlyle, I took the Shawnee- 
town road, that branches off to the S. E., and 
passed the Walnut Hills, and Moore's Prairie. 
These two places had a year or two before 
been infested by a notorious gang of robber-s 
and forgers, who had fixed themselves in these 
wild parts in order to avoid justice. As the 
country became more settled, these despera- 
does became more and more troublesome. The 
inhabitants, therefore, took that method of get- 
ting rid of them that had been adopted not 
many years ago in Hopkinson and Henderson 
counties, Kentucky, and which is absolutely 
necessary in new and thinly settled districts, 
where it is almost impossible to punish a 
criminal according to legal forms. 

" On such occasions, therefore, all the quiet 
and industrious men of a district form them- 
selves into companies, under the name of ' Regu- 
lators.' They appoint officers, put themselves 
under their orders, and bind themselves to 
assist and stand by each other. The first step 
they then take is to send notice to any notori- 
ous vagabonds, desiring them to quit the state 
in a certain number of days, under the penalty 
of receiving a domiciliary visit. Should the 
person who receives the notice refuse to com- 
ply, they suddenly assemble, and, when unex- 
pected, go in the night-time to the rogue's 
house, take him out, tie him to a tree, and 
give him a severe whipping, every one of the 
party striking him a certain number of times. 

" This discipline is generally sufficient to 
drive off the culprit ; but should he continue 
obstinate, and refuse to avail himself of an- 
other warning, the Regulators pay him a se- 
cond visit, inflict a still severer whipping, with 
the addition probably of cutting off both his 
ears. No culprit has ever been known to re- 
main after a second visit. For instance, an 
old man, the father of a family, all of whom 
he educated as robbers, fixed himself at 
Moore's Prairie, and committed numerous 
thefts, &c. &c. He was hard enough to re- 
main after the first visit, when both he and 
his sons received a whipping. At the second 
visit the Regulators punished him very severe- 
ly, and cut off his ears. This drove him oft", 
together with his whole gang, and travellers 
can now pass in perfect safety where it was 
once dangerous to travel alone. 

" There is also a company of Regulators 
near Vincennes, who have broken up a noto- 
rious gang of coiners and thieves who had 
fixed themselves near that place. These ras- 
cals, before they were driven oft', had parties 
settled at difterent distances in the woods, and 
thus held communication and passed horses 
and stolen goods from one to another, from 
the Ohio to Lake Erie, and from thence into 
Canada or the New England States. Thus it 
was next to impossible to detect the robbers, 
or to recover the stolen property. 

'• This practice of Regulating seems very 
strange to an European. I have talked with 
some of the chief men of the Regulators, who 
all lamented the necessity of such a system. 
They very sensibly remarked, that when the 
country became more thickly settled, there 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



207 



would no longer be any necessity for such 
proceedings, and that they should all be de- 
lighted at being able to obtain justice in a 
more formal manner. I forgot to mention, 
that the rascals punished have sometimes pro- 
secuted the Regulators for an assault. The 
juries, however, knowing the bad character 
of the prosecutors, would give but trifling 
damages, which, divided among so many, 
amounted to next to nothing for each indivi- 
dual." — Excursion, pp. 233 — 236. 

This same traveller mentions his having 
met at table three or four American ex-kings — 
presidents who had served their time, and had 
retired into private life ; he observes also upon 
the effect of a democratical government in pre- 
venting mobs. Mobs are created by opposi- 
tion to the wishes of the people : — but when 
the wishes of the people are consulted so com- 
pletely as they are consulted in America — all 
motives for the agency of mobs are done 
away. 

"It is, indeed, entirely a government of 
opinion. Whatever the people wish is done. 
If they want any alteration of laws, tariffs, 
&c., they inform their representatives, and if 
there be a majority that wish it, the alteration 
is made at once. In most European countries 
there is a portion of the population denomi- 
nated the mob, who, not being acquainted with 
real liberty, give themselves up to occasional 
fits of licentiousness. But in the United States 
there is no mob, for every man feels himself 
free. At the time of Burr's conspiracy, Mr. 
Jefferson said, that there was little to be ap- 
prehended from it, as every man felt himself a 
part of the general sovereignty. The event 
proved the truth of this assertion ; and Burr, 
who in any other countrj^ would have been 
hanged, drawn, and quartered, is at present 
leading an obscure life in the city of New 
York, despised by every one." — Excursion, 
p. 70. 

It is a real blessing for America to be ex- 
empted from that vast burthen of taxes, the 
consequences of a long series of foolish, just 
and necessary wars, carried on to please kings 
and queens, or the waiting maids and waiting 
lords and gentlemen, who have always go- 
verned kings and queens in the old world. 
The Americans owe this good to the newness 
of their government ; and though there are few 
classical associations, or historical recollec- 
tions in the United States, this barrenness is 
well purchased by the absence of all the feudal 
nonsense, inveterate abuses, and prolligate 
debts of an old country. 

" The good effects of a free government are 
visible throughout the whole country. There 
are no tithes, no poor-rates, no excise, no 
heavy internal taxes, no commercial monopo- 
lies. An American can make candles if he 
have tallow, can distil brandy if he have grapes 
or peaches, and can make beer if he have malt 
and hops, without asking leave of any one, 
and much less with any fear of incurring pun- 
ishment. How would a farmer's wife there 
be astonished, if told that it was contrary to 
law for her to make soap out of the potass ob- 
tained on the farm, and of the grease she her- 



self had saved ! When an American has made 
these articles, he may build his little vessel, 
and take them without hinderance to any part 
of the world ; for there is no rich company of 
merchants that can say to him, ' You shall not 
trade to India ; and you shall not buy a pound 
of tea of the Chinese ; as, by so doing, you 
would infringe upon our privileges.' In con- 
sequence of this freedom, all the seas are co- 
vered with their vessels, and the people at 
home are active and independent. I never 
saw a beggar in any part of the United States ; 
nor was I ever a^ked for charity but once — 
and that was by an Irishman." — Excursion, ^"p. 
70, 71. 

America is so differently situated from the 
old governments of Europe, that the United 
States afford no political precedents that are 
exactly applicable to our old governments. 
There is no idle and discontented population. 
When they have peopled themselves up to the 
Mississippi, they cross to the Missouri, and 
will go on until they are stopped by the West- 
ern Ocean ; and then, when there are a num- 
ber of persons who have nothing to do, and 
nothing to gain, no hope for lawful industry 
and great interest in promoting changes, we 
may consider their situation as somewhat 
similar to our own, and their example as touch- 
ing us more nearly. The changes in the con- 
stitution of the particular states seem to be 
very frequent, very radical, and to us very 
alarming ; — they seem, however, to be thought 
very little of in that country, and to be very 
little heard of in Europe. Mr. Duncan, in the 
following passage, speaks of them with Euro- 
pean feelings. 

" The other great obstacle to the prosperity 
of the American nation, universal suffrage,* 
will not exhibit the full extent of its evil ten- 
dency for a long time to come ; and it is pos- 
sible that ere that time some antidote may be 
discovered, to prevent or alleviate the mischief 
which we might naturally expect from it. It 
does, however, seem ominous of evil, that so 
little ceremon)^ is at present used with the 
constitutions of the various states. The peo- 
ple of Connecticut, not contented with having 
prospered abundantly under their old system, 
have lately assembled a convention, composed 
of delegates from all parts of the country, in 
which the former order of things has been con- 
demned entirely, and a completely new con- 
stitution manufactured; which, among other 
things, provides for the same process being 
again gone through, as soon as the profanum 
vulgus takes it into his head to desire it.f A 
sorry legacy the British Constitution would 
be to us, if it were at the mercy of a meeting 
of delegates, to be summoned whenever a ma- 
jority of the people took a fancy for a new 
one ; and I am afraid, that if the Americans 
continue to cherish a fondness for such repairs, 
the Highlandman's pistol, with its new stock. 



* In the greater number of the States, every white 
person, 21 years of age, who has paid taxes for one year, 
is a voter; in others, some additional qualifications are 
required, but they are not such as materially to limit the 
privilege. 

t The people of the State of New York have subse- 
quently taken a similar fancy to clout the cauldron. 
(1822.) 



308 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



lock, and barrel, will bear a close resemblance 
to what is ultimately produced." — Duncan's 
Travels, II. 335, 336. 

In the Excursion there is a list of the Ame- 
rican navy, which, in conjunction with the 
navy of France, will one day or another, we 
fear, settle the Catholic question in a way not 
quite agreeable to the Earl of Liverpool for the 
time being, nor very creditable to the wisdom 
of those ancestors of whom we hear, and from 
whom we suffer so much. The regulations of 
the American navy seem to be .admirable. 
The states are making great exertions to in- 
crease this navy; and since the capture of so 
many English ships, it has become the fa- 
vourite science of the people at large. Their 
flotillas on the lakes completely defeated ours 
during the last war. 

Fanaticism of every description seems to 
rage and flourish in America, which has no 
establishment, in about the same degree which 
it does here under the nose of an established 
church ; — they have their prophets and pro- 
phetesses, their preaching encampments, fe- 
male preachers, and every variety of noise, 
folly, and nonsense, like ourselves. Among 
the most singular of these fanatics, are the 
Harmonites. Rapp, their founder, was a dis- 
senter from the Lutheran church, and there- 
fore, of course, the Lutheran clergy of Stut- 
gard (near to which he lived) began to put Mr. 
Rapp in white sheets, to prove him guilty of 
theft, parricide, treason, and all the usual crimes 
of which men dissenting from established 
churches are so often guilty, — and delicate 
hints were given respecting fagots ! Stutgard 
abounds with underwood and clergy ; and — 
away went Mr. Rapp to the United States, and, 
with a great multitude of followers, settled 
about twenty-four miles from our countryman, 
Mr. Birkbeck. His people have here built a 
large town, and planted a vineyard, where they 
make very agreeable wine. They carry on 
also a very extensive system of husbandry, 
and are the masters of many flocks and herds. 
They have a distillen-, brewery, tannery, make 
hats, shoes, cotton and woollen cloth, and 
every thing necessary to the comfort of life. 
Every one belongs to some particular trade. 
But in bad weather, when there is danger of 
losing their crops, Rapp blows a horn, and 
calls them all together. Over every trade 
there is a head man, who receives the money 
and gives a receipt, signed by Rapp, to v,diom 
all the money collected is transmitted. When 
any of these workmen wants a hat or a coat, 
Rapp signs him an order for the garment, for 
which he goes to the store, and is fitted. They 
have one large store where these manufac- 
tures are deposited. This store is much re- 
sorted to by the neighbourhood, on account of 
the goodness and cheapness of the articles. 
They have built an excellent house for their 
founder, Rapp, — as it might have been pre- 
dicted they would have done. The Harmonites 
profess equality, community of goods, and ce- 
libacy; for the men and women (let Mr. Mal- 
thus hear this) live separately, and are not 
allowed the slightest intercourse. In order to 
keep up their numbers, they have once or 



twice sent over for a supply of Germans, as 
they admit no Americans, of any intercourse 
with whom they are very jealous. Harmonites 
dress and live plainly. It is a part of their 
creed that they should do so. Rapp, however, 
and the head men have no such particular 
creed for theinselves , and indulge in wine, 
beer, grocery, and other irreligious diet. Rapp 
is both governor and priest, — preaches to them 
in church, and directs all their proceedings in 
their working hours. In short, Rapp seems to 
have made use of the religious propensities of 
mankind, to persuade one or two thousand 
fools to dedicate their lives to his service ; and 
if they do not get tired, and fling their prophet 
into a horse-pond, they avIU in all probability 
disperse as soon as he dies. 

Unitarians are increasing very fast in the 
United States, not being kept down by charges 
from bishops and archdeacons, their natural 
enemies. 

The author of the Excursion remarks upon 
the total absence of all games in America. No 
cricket, foot-ball, nor leap-frog — all seems solid 
and profitable. 

"One thing that I could not help remarking 
with regard to the Americans in general, is the 
total want of all those games and sports that 
obtained for our country the appellation of 
♦ Merry England.' Although children usually 
transmit stories and sports from one genera- 
tion to another, and although many of our nur- 
sery games and tales are supposed to have 
been imported into England in the vessels of 
Hengist and Horsa, yet our brethren in the 
United States seem entirely to have forgotten 
the childish amusements of our common an- 
cestors. In America I never saw even the 
schoolboys playing at any game whatsoever. 
Cricket, foot-ball, quoits, &c., appear to be 
utterly unknown ; and -I believe that if an 
American were to see grown-up men playing 
at cricket, he would express as much astonish- 
ment as the Italians did when some English- 
men played at this finest of all games, in the 
Cascina at Florence. Indeed, that jo5'ous 
spirit which, in our country, animates not only 
childhood, but also maturer age, can rarely or 
never be seen among the inhabitants of the 
United States." — Excursimi, pp. 502, 503. 

These are a few of the leading and promi- 
nent circiimstances respecting America, men- 
tioned in the various works before us: of 
which works we can recommend the Letters 
of Mr. Hudson, and the Excursion into Cana- 
da, as sensible, agreeable books, written in a 
very fair spirit; 

America seems, on the whole, to be a coun- 
try possessing vast advantages, and little in- 
conveniences ; they have a cheap government, 
and bad roads; they pay no tithes, and have 
stage-coaches without springs. They have no 
poor laws and no monopolies — but their inns 
are inconvenient, and travellers are teased 
with questions. They have no collections in 
the fine arts ; but they have no lord-chancellor, 
and they can go to law without absolute ruin. 
They cannot make Latin verses, but they ex- 
pend immense sums in the education of the 
poor. In all this the balance is prodigiously 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



209 



in their favour: but then comes the great dis- 
grace and danger of America — the existence 
of slavery, which, if not timously corrected, 
will one day entail (and ought to entail) a 
bloody servile war upon the Americans — 
which will separate America into slave states 
and states disclaiming slavery, and which re- 
mains at present as the foulest blot in the mo- 
ral character of that people. An high-spirited 
nation, who cannot endure the slightest act of 
foreign aggression, and who revolt at the very 
shadow of domestic tyranny — beat with cart- 
whips, and bind with chains, and murder for 
the merest trifles, wretched human beings who 
are of a more duslry colour than themselves ; 



and have recently admitted into their Union a 
new state, with the express permission of in- 
grafting this atrocious wickedness into their 
constitution ! No one can admire the simple 
wisdom and manly firmness of the Americans 
more than we do, or more despise the pitiful 
propensity which exists among government 
runners to vent their small spite at their cha- 
racter; but on the subject of slavery, the con- 
duct of America is. and has been, most repre- 
hensible. It is impossible to speak of it with 
too much indignation and contempt ; but for 
it, we should look forward with unqualified, 
pleasure to such a land of freedom, and such- 
a magnificent spectacle of human happiness. 



BENTHAM ON FALLACIES/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1825.] 



Thehe are a vast number of absurd and mis- 
chievous fallacies, which pass readily in the 
world for sense and virtue, while in truth they 
tend only to fortify error and encourage crime. 
Mr. Bentham has enumerated the most con- 
spicuous of these in the book before us. 

Whether it is necessary there should be a 
middleman between the cultivator and pos- 
sessor, learned economists have doubted ; but 
neither gods, men, nor booksellers can doubt 
the necessity of a middleman between Mr. 
Bentham and the public. Mr. Benthafn is 
long ; Mr. Bentham is occasionally involved 
and obscure; Mr. Bentham invents new and 
alarming expressions ; Mr. Bentham loves di- 
vision and subdivision — and he loves method 
itself, more than its consequences. Those 
only, therefore, who know his originality, his 
knowledge, his vigour, and his boldness, will 
recur to the works themselves. The great 
mass of readers will not purchase improve- 
ment at so dear a rate ; but will choose rather to 
become acquainted with Mr. Bentham through 
the medium of reviews — after that eminent 
philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shaved, 
and forced into clean linen. One great use of 
a review, indeed, is to make men wise in ten 
pages, who have no appetite for an hundred 
pages ; to condense nourishment, to work with 
pulp and essence, and to guard the stomach 
from idle burden and unmeaning bulk. For 
half a page, sometimes for a whole page, Mr. 
Bentham writes with a power which few can 
equal; and by selecting and omitting, an admi- 
rable style may be formed from the text. 
Using this liberty, we shall endeavour to give 
an account of Mr. Bentham's doctrines, for the 
most part in his own words. Wherever any 
expression is particularly happy, let it be con- 
sidered to be Mr. Bentham's: — the dulness we 
take to ourselves. 

Our Wise Ancestors — the Wisdom of our Jinces- 
tors — the Wisdom of Ages — Venerable Antiquity — 

* TTie Book of Fallacies: from Unfinished Papers of 
Jeremy Bentham. By a Friend. London, J. and H. L. 
Hunt. 1824. 

27 



Wisdom of Old Times. — This mischievous and 
absurd fallacy springs from the grossest per- 
version of the meaning of words. Experience 
is certainly the mother of wisdom, and the old 
have, of course, a greater experience than the 
young; but the question is, who are the old? 
and who are the young ] Of individuals living 
at the same period, the oldest has, of course, 
the greatest experience ; but among generations 
of men the reverse of this is true. Those who 
come first (our ancestors), are the young peo- 
ple, and have the least experience. We have 
added to their experience the experience of 
manv centuries ; and, therefore, as far as expe- 
rience goes, are wiser, and more capable of 
forming an opinion than they were. The real 
feeling should be, not can we be so presump- 
tuous as to put our opinions in opposition to 
those of our ancestors ? but can such young, ig- 
norant, inexperienced persons as our ancestors 
necessarily were, be expected to have under- 
stood a subject as well as those who hai'e seen 
so much more, lived so much longer, and 
enjoyed the experience of so many centuries ? 
All this cant, then, about our ancestors is 
merely an abuse of words, by transferring 
phrases true of contemporary men to succeed- 
ing ages. Whereas (as we have before ob- 
served) of living men the oldest has, ceeteris 
paribus, the most experience ; of generations, 
the oldest has, ccetcris paribus, the least expe- 
rience. Our ancestors, up to the Conquest, 
were children in arms; chubby boys in the 
time of Edward the First ; striplings under 
Elizabeth; men in the reign of Queen Anne; 
and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed 
ancients, who have treasured up, and are pre- 
pared to profit by, all the experience which 
human life can supply. We are not disputing 
with our ancestors the palm of talent, in which 
they may or may not be our superiors, but the 
palm of experience, in which it is utterly im- 
possible they can be our superiors. And yet, 
whenever the chancellor comes forward to pro- 
tect some abuse, or to oppose some plan which 
has the increase of human happiness for its 
s2 



210 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



object, his first appeal is always to the wisdom 
of our ancestors ; and he himself, and many 
noble lords who vote with him, are, to this 
hour, persuaded that all alterations and amend- 
ments on their devices are an unblushing con- 
troversy between youthful temerity and mature 
experience ! — and so, in truth, they are — only 
that much-loved magistrate mistakes the young 
for the old, and the old for the young — and is 
guilty of that very sin against experience which 
he attributes to the lovers of innovation. 

We cannot of course be supposed to main- 
tain that our ancestors wanted wisdom, or that 
they were necessarily mistaken in their insti- 
tutions, because their means of information 
were more limited than ours. But we do con- 
fidently maintain that when we find it expe- 
dient to change any thing which our ancestors 
have enacted, we are the experienced persons, 
and not they. The quantity of talent is always 
varying in any great nation. To say that we 
are more or less able than our ancestors, is an 
assertion that requires to be explained. All 
the able men of all ages, who have ever lived 
in England, probably possessed, if taken alto- 
gether, more intellect than all the able men now 
in England can boast of. But if authority must 
be resorted to rather than reason, the question is, 
What was the wisdom of that single age which 
enacted the law, compared with the wisdom of 
the age which proposes to alter it 1 What are 
the eminent men of one and the other period 1 
If you say that our ancestors were wiser than us, 
mention your date and year. If the splendour of 
names is equal, are the circumstances the same ? 
If the circumstances are the same, we have a su- 
periority of experience, of which the difference 
between the two periods is the measure. It is 
necessary to insist upon this ; for upon sacks of 
wool, and on benches forensic, sit grave men, 
and agricolous persons in the Commons, crying 
out "Ancestors, Ancestors ! hodie non! Saxons, 
Danes, save us ! Fiddlefrig, help us ! Howe), 
Ethel wolf, protect us." — Any cover for nonsense 
— any veil for trash — any pretext for repelling 
the innovations of conscience and of duty! 

" So long as they keep to vague generalities — 
so long as the two objects of comparison are 
each of them taken in the lump — wise ances- 
tors in one lump, ignorant and foolish mob of 
modern times in the other — the weakness of 
the fallacy may escape detection. But let them 
assign for the period of superior wisdom any 
determinate period whatsoever, not only will 
the groundlessness of the notion be apparent 
(class being compared with class in that period 
and the present one), but, unless the antecedent 
period be, comparatively speaking, a very 
modern one, so wide will be the disparity, and 
to such an amount in favour of modern times, 
that, in comparison of the lowest class of the 
people in modern times (always supposing 
them proficients in. the art of reading, and their 
proficiency employed in the reading of news- 
papers), the very highest and best informed 
class of these wise ancestors will turn out to 
be grossly ignorant. 

" Take, for example, any year in the reign 
of Henry the Eighth, from 1509 to 1546. At 
that time the House of Lords would probably 
have been- in possession of by far the larger 



proportion of what little instruction the age 
afforded: in the House of Lords, among the 
laity, it might even then be a question whe- 
ther, without exception, their lordships were 
all of them able so much as to read. But 
even supposii^g them all in the fullest posses- 
sion of that useful art, political science being 
the science in question, what instruction on 
the subject could they meet with at that time 
of dayl 

" On no one branch of legislation was any 
book extant from which, with regard to the cir- 
cumstances of the then present times, any useful 
instruction could be derived: distributive law, 
penal law, international law, political economy, 
so far from existing as sciences, had scarcely ob- 
tained a name : in all those departments, under 
the head of quid faciendum, a mere blank : the 
whole literature of the age consisted of a mea- 
ger chronicle or two, containing short memo- 
randums of the usual occurrences of war and 
peace, battles, sieges, executions, revels, deaths, 
births, processions, ceremonies, and other ex- 
ternal events ; but with scarce a speech or an 
incident that could enter into the composition 
of any such work as a history of the human 
mind — with scarce an attempt at investigation 
into causes, characters, or the state of the 
people at large. Even when at last, little by 
little, a scrap or two of political instruction 
came to be obtainable, the proportion of error 
and mischievous doctrine mixed up with it was 
so great, that whether a blank unfilled might 
not have been less prejudicial than a blank 
thus filled, may reasonably be matter of doubt. 
" If we come down to the reign of James 
the First, we shall find that Solomon of his 
time eminently eloquent as well as learned, 
not only among crov/ned but among uncrown- 
ed heads, marking out for prohibition and pu- 
nishment the practices of devils and witches, 
and without any the slightest objection on the 
part of the great characters of that day in 
their high situations, consigning men to death 
and torment for the misfortune of not being so 
well acquainted as he was with the composi- 
tion of the Godhead. 

" Under the name of exorcism, the Catholic 
liturgy contains a form of procedure for driving 
out devils ; — even with the help of this instru- 
ment, the operation cannot be performed with 
the desired success, but by an operator quali- 
fied by holy orders for the working of this as 
well as so many other wonders. In our days 
and in our country the same object is attained, 
and beyond comparison more effectually, by 
so cheap an instrument as a common news- 
paper : before this talisman, not only devils 
but ghosts, vampires, witches, and all their 
kindred tribes, are driven out of the land, ne- 
ver to return again ! The touch of the holy 
water is not so intolerable to them as the bare 
smell of printej-s' ink." — (pp. 74 — 77.) 

Fallacy of irrevocable Laws. — A law, says 
Mr. Bentham, (no matter to what effect,) is 
proposed to a legislative assembly, who are 
called upon to reject it, upon the single ground, 
that by those who in some former period ex- 
ercised the same power, a regulation was made, 
having for its object to preclude for ever, or 
to the end of an unexpired period, all succeed- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



2U 



ittg legislators from enacting a law to any 
such effect as that now proposed. 

Now it appears quite evident that, at every 
period of time, every legislature must be en- 
dowed with all those powers which the exi- 
gency of the times may require : and any at- 
tempt to infringe on this power is inadmissible 
and absurd. The sovereign power, at any one 
period, can only form a blind guess at the 
measures which may be necessary for any 
future period : but by this principle of immu- 
table laws, the government is transferred from 
those who are necessarily the best judges of 
what they want, to others who can know little 
or nothing about the matter. The thirteenth 
century decides for the fourteenth. The four- 
teenth makes laws for the fifteenth. The 
fifteenth hermetically seals up the sixteenth, 
■which tyrannizes over the seventeenth, which 
again tells the eighteenth how it is to act, un- 
der circumstances which cannot be foreseen, 
and how it is to conduct itself in exigencies 
which no human wit can anticipate. 

" Men who have a century more of expe- 
rience to ground their judgments on, surrender 
their intellect to men who had a century less 
experience, and who, unless that deficiency 
constitutes a claim, have no claim to pre- 
ference. If the prior gentlemen were, in re- 
spect of intellectual qualification, ever so much 
superior to the subsequent generation — if it 
understood so much better than the subsequent 
generation itself the interest of that subsequent 
generation — could it have been in an equal 
degree anxious to promote that interest, and 
consequently equally attentive to those facts 
with which, though in order to form a judg- 
ment it ought to have been, it is impossible 
that it should have been acquainted'? In a 
word, will its love for that subsequent gene- 
ration be quite so great as that same genera- 
tion's love for itself] 

" Not even here, after a moment's deliberate 
reflection, will the assertion be in the affirma- 
tive. And yet it is their prodigious anxiety 
for the welfare of their posterity that produces 
the propensity of these sages to tie up the 
hands of this same posterity for evermore — to 
act as guardians to its perpetual and incurable 
weakness, and take its conduct for ever out 
of its own hands. 

"If it be right that the conduct of the I9th 
century should be determined not by its own 
judgment, but by that of the 18th, it will be 
equally right that the conduct of the 20th cen- 
tury should be determined, not by its own 
judgment, but by that of the 19th. And if the 
same principle were still pursued, what at 
length would be the consequence 1 — that in 
process of time the practice of legislation 
would be at an end. The conduct and fate of 
all men would be determined by those who 
neither knew nor cared any thing about the 
matter ; and the aggregate body of the living 
would remain for ever in subjection to an in- 
exorable tyranny, exercised as it were by the 
aggregate body of the dead." — (pp. 84 — 86.) 

The despotism, as Mr. Benthani well ob- 
serves, of Nero or Caligula, would be more 



tolerable than an irrevocabk law. The despot, 
through fear or favour, or in a lucid interval, 
might relent; but how are the Parliament, 
who made the Scotch Union, for example, to 
be awakened from that dust in which they re- 
pose — the jobber and the patriot, the speaker 
and the doorkeeper, the silent voters and the 
men of rich allusions — Cannings and cultiva- 
tors, Barings and Beggars — making irrevoca- 
ble laws for men who toss their remains about 
with spades, and use the relics of these legis- 
lators to give breadth to brocoli, and to aid the 
vernal eruption of asparagus 1 

If the law is good, it will support itself; if 
bad, it should not be supported by the irrevo- 
cable theory, which is never resorted to but as 
the veil of abuses. All living men must pos- 
sess the supreme power over their own happi- 
ness at every particular period. To suppose 
that there is any thing which a whole nation 
cannot do, which they deem to be essential to 
their happiness, and that they cannot do it, 
because another generation, long ago dead and 
gone, said it must not be done, is mere non- 
sense. While you are captain of the vessel, 
do what you please ; but the moment you quit 
the ship, I become as omnipotent as you. You 
may leave me as much advice as you please, 
but you cannot leave me commands ,- though, 
in fact, this is the only meaning which can be 
applied to what are called irrevocable laws. 
It appeared to the legislature for the time being 
to be of immense importance to make such 
and such a law. Great good was gained, or 
great evil avoided by enacting it. Pause be- 
fore you alter an institution Avhich has been 
deemed to be of so much importance. This 
is prudence and common sense ; the rest is 
the exaggeration of fools, or the artifice of 
knaves, who eat up fools. What endless non- 
sense has been talked of our navigation laws ! 
What wealth has been sacrificed to either be- 
fore they were repealed ! How impossible it 
appeared to Noodledom to repeal them ! They 
were considered of the irrevocable class — a 
kind of law over which the dead only were 
omnipotent, and the living had no power. 
Frost, it is true, cannot be put off" by act of 
Parliament, nor can spring be accelerated by 
any majority of both houses. It is, however, 
quite a mistake to suppose that any alteration 
of any of the articles of union is as much out 
of the jurisdiction of Parliament as these 
meteorological changes. In every year, and 
every day of that year, living men have a 
right to make their own laws, and manage 
their own affairs ; to break through the tyranny 
of the ante-spirants — the people who breathed 
before them, — and to do what they please for 
themselves. Such supreme power cannot, 
indeed, be well exercised by the people at 
large ; it must be exercised therefore by the 
delegates, or Parliament whom the people 
choose; and such Parliament, disregarding 
the superstitious reverence for irrevocable laws, 
can have no other criterion of wrong and right 
than that of public utility. 

When a law is considered as immutable, 
and the immutable law happens at the same 
time to be loo foolish and mischievous to be 
endured, instead of being repealed, it is clan- 



212 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



destinely evaded, or openly violated ; and thus 
the authority of all law is weakened. 

Where a nation has been ancestorially 
bound by foolish and improvident treaties, 
ample notice must be given of their termina- 
tion. Where the state has made ill-advised 
grants, or rash bai"gains with individuals, it is 
necessary to grant proper compensation. The 
most difficult case, certainly, is that of the 
\inion of nations, where a smaller number of 
the weaker nation is admitted into the larger 
senate of the greater nation, and will be over- 
powered if the question comes to a vote ; but 
the lesser nation must run this risk: it is not 
probable that any violation of articles will take 
place, till they are absolutely called for by ex- 
treme necessity. But let the danger be what 
it may, no danger is so great, no supposition 
so foolish, as to consider any human law as 
irrevocable. The shifting attitude of human 
affairs would often render such a condition an 
intolerable evil to all parties. The absurd 
jealousy of our countrymen at the union se- 
cured heritable jurisdiction .to the owners ; 
nine-and-thirty years afterwai'ds ihey were 
abolished, in the very teeth of the act of union, 
and to the evident promotion of the public 
good. 

Continuity of a Law hy Oath. — The sove- 
reign of England at his coronation takes an 
oath to maintain the laws of God, the true 
profession of the gospel, and the Protestant 
religion as established by la^v, and to preserve 
to the bishops and clergy of this realm the 
rights and privileges which b}' law appertain 
to them, and to preserve inviolate the doctrine, 
discipline, worship, and government of the 
church. It has been suggested that by this 
oath the king stands precluded from granting 
those indulgences to the Irish Catholics, 
which are included in the bill for their eman- 
cipation. The true meaning of these pro- 
visions is of course to be decided, if doubtful, 
by the same legislative authority which enacted 
them. But a different notion, it seems, is now 
afloat. The king for the time being (we are 
putting an imaginary case) thinks, as an indi- 
vidual, that he is not maintaining the doctrine, 
discipline, and rights of the Church of Eng- 
land, if he grants any extension of civil rights 
to those who are not members of that church ; 
that he is violating his oath by so doing. This 
oath, then, according to this reasoning, is the 
great palladium of the church. As long as it 
remains inviolate the church is safe. How, 
then, can any monarch who has taken it ever 
consent to repeal it 1 How can he, consistent- 
ly Avith his oath for the preservation of the 
privileges of the church, contribute his part 
to throw down so strong a bulwark as he 
deems this oath to bel The oath, then, can- 
not be altered. It must remain under all cir- 
cumstances of society the same. The king, 
who has taken it, is bound to continue it, and 
to refuse his sanction to any bill for its future 
alteration; because it prevents him, and, he 
must needs think, will prevent others from 
granting dangerous immunities to the enemies 
of the church. 

Here, then, is an irrevocable law — a piece 
of absurd tyranny exercised by the rulers of 



Queen Anne's time upon the government of 
1825 — a certain art of potting and preserving 
a kingdom, in one shape, attitude and flavour — 
and in this way it is that an institution appears 
like old Ladies' Sweetmeats and made Wines 
— Apricot Jam 1822 — Currant Wine 1819 — 
Court of Chancery 1427 — Penal Laws against 
Catholics 1676. The difference is, that the an- 
cient woman is a better judge of mouldy com- 
modities than the illiberal part of his majesty's 
ministers. The potting lady goes sniffing 
about and admitting light and air to prevent 
the progress of decay; while to him of the 
woolsack, all seems doubly dear in proportioa 
as it is antiquated, worthless, and unusable^ 
It ought not to be in the power of the sovereign 
to tie up his own hands, much less the hands 
of his successors. If the sovereign is to op- 
pose his own opinion to that of the two other 
branches of the legislature, and himself tO' 
decide what he considers to be for the benefit 
of the Protestant church, and what not, a king 
who has spent his whole life in the frivolous 
occupation of a court, may, by perversion of 
understanding, conceive measures most salu- 
tary to the churoh to be most pernicious ; and 
persevering obstinately in his own error, may 
frustrate the wisdom of his Parliament, and 
perpetuate the most inconceivable folly! If 
Henry VIII. had argued in this manner, we 
should have had no reformation. If George 
III. had always argued in this manner, the Ca- 
tholic code would never have been relaxed. 
And thus, a king, however incapable of form- 
ing an opinion upon serious subjects, has 
nothing to do but to pronounce the word conr' 
science, and the whole power of the country is 
at his feet. 

Can there be greater absurdity than to say 
that a man is acting contrary to his conscience 
who surrenders his opinion, upon any subject, 
to those who must understand the subject bet- 
ter than himself? I think my ward has a 
claim to the estate ; but the best lawyers tell 
me he has none. I think my son capable of 
undergoing the fatigues of a military life ; but 
the best physicians say he is much too weak. 
My Parliament say this measure will do the- 
church no harm ; but I think it very pernicious 
to the church. Am I acting contrary to my 
conscience because I apply much higher in- 
tellectual powers than my own to the investi- 
gation and protection of these high interests ? 

"According to the form in which it is con- 
ceived, any such engagement is in effect either 
a check or a license : — a license under the ap- 
pearance of a check, and for that very reason 
but the more efficiently operative. 

"Chains to the man in power 1 Yes: — but 
only such as he figures with on the stage : to 
the spectators as imposing, to himself as light 
as possible. Modelled by the wearer to suit 
his own purposes, they serve to rattle, but not 
to restrain. 

" Suppose a king of Great Britain and Ire- 
land to have expressed his fixed determination, 
in the event of any proposed law being ten- 
dered to him for his assent, to refuse such 
assent, and this not on the persuasion that the 
law would not be 'for the utility of the sub- 
jects,' but that by his coronation oath he stands 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



313 



precluded from so doing : — the course proper 
to be taken by Parliament, the course pointed 
out by principle and precedent, would be, a 
vote of abdication : — a vote declaring the king 
to have abdicated his royal authority, and that, 
as in case of death or incurable mental de- 
rangement, now is the time for the person next 
in succession to take his place. 

" In the celebrated case in which a vote to 
this effect was actually passed, the declaration 
of abdication was in lawyers' language a fic- 
tion — in plain truth a falsehood — and that 
falsehood a mockery ; not a particle of his 
poA^er was it the wish of James to abdicate, to 
part with ; but to increase it to a maximum was 
the manifest object of all his efforts. But in 
the case here supposed, with respect to a part, 
and that a principal jJart of the royal authority, 
the will and purpose to abdicate are actually 
declared : and this, being such a part, without 
which the remainder cannot, ' to the utility of 
the subjects,' be exercised, the remainder must 
■of necessity be, on their part, and for their 
sake, added."— (pp. 110, 111.) 

Self-trUmpeter's fallacy. — Mr. Bentham ex- 
plains the self-trumpeter's fallacy as follows. 

" There are certain men in office who, in 
discharge of their functions, arrogate to them- 
selves a degree of probity, which is to exclude 
all imputations and all inquiry. Their asser- 
tions are to be deemed equivalent to proof; 
their virtues are guarantees for the faithful 
discharge of their duties ; and the most implicit 
confidence is to be reposed in them on all oc- 
casions. If you expose any abuse, propose 
any reform, call for securities, inquiry, or mea- 
sures to promote publicity, they set up a cry 
of surprise, amounting almost to indignation, 
as if their integrity were questioned, or their 
honour wounded. With all this, they dexte- 
rously mix up intimations, that the most exalted 
patriotism, honour, and perhaps religion, are 
the only sources of all their actions." — (p. 120.) 

Of course every man will try what he can 
efiect by these means ; but (as Mr. Bentham 
observes) if there be any one maxim in politics 
more certain than another, it is that no possi- 
ble degree of virtue in the governor can render 
it expedient for the governed to dispense with 
-good laws and good institutions. Madame de 
Stael (to her disgrace) said to the Emperor of 
Russia, " Sire, your character is a constitution 
for your country, and your conscience its 
guarantee." His reply was, "Quand cela 
serait, je ne serais jamais qu'un accident 
heureux;" and this we think one of the truest 
and most brilliant replies ever made by mo- 
narch. 

Laudatory Personalities. — "The object of lau- 
datory personalities is to effect the rejection 
of a measure on account of the alleged good 
"Character of those who oppose it; and the 
argument advanced is, ' The measure is ren- 
■dered unnecessary by the virtue of those who 
are in power — their opposition is sufficient 
authority for the rejection of the measure. The 
measure proposed implies a distrust of the 
members of his majesty's government ; but so 
great is their integrity, so complete their disin- 



terestedness, so uniformly do they prefer the 
public advantage to their own, that such a 
measure is altogether unnecessary. Their 
disapproval is sufficient to warrant an opposi- 
tion ; precautions can only be requisite where 
danger is apprehended ; here, the high charac- 
ter of the individuals in question is a sufficient 
guarantee against any ground of alarm.' " — 
(pp. 123, 124.) 

The panegyric goes on increasing with the 
dignity of the lauded person. All are honour- 
able and delightful men. The person who 
opens the door of the office is a person of ap- 
proved fidelity; the junior clerk is a model of 
assiduity ; all the clerks are models — seven 
years' models, eight years' models, nine years' 
models and upwards. The first clerk is a pa- 
ragon — and ministers the very perfection of 
probity and intelligence ; anfl as for the highest 
magistrate of the state, no adulation is equal to 
describe the extent of his various merits ! It 
is too condescending, perhaps, to refute such 
folly as this. But we would just observe that 
if the propriety of the measure in question be 
established by direct arguments, these must be 
at least as conclusive against the character of 
those who oppose it as their character can be 
against the measure. 

The effect of such an argument is, to give 
men of good or reputed good character the 
power of putting a negative on any question 
— not agreeable to their inclinations. 

" In every public trust, the legislator should, 
for the purpose of prevention, suppose the 
trustee disposed to break the trust in every 
imaginable way in which it would be possible 
for him to reap, from the breach of it, any per- 
sonal advantage. This is the principle on 
which public institutions ought to be formed; 
and when it is applied to all men indiscrimi- 
nately, it is injurious to none. The practical 
inference is, to oppose to such possible (and 
what will always be probabFe) breaches of 
trust every bar that can be opposed, consist- 
ently w'ith the power requisite for the efficient 
and due discharge of the trust. Indeed, these 
arguments, drawn from the supposed virtues 
of men in power, are opposed to the first prin- 
ciples on which all laws proceed. 

" Such allegations of individual virtue are 
never supported by specific proof, are scarce 
ever susceptible of specific disproof; and spe- 
cific disproof, if offered, could not be admitted 
in either house of Parliament. If attempted 
elsewhere, the punishment would fall, not on 
the unworthy trustee, but on him by whom the 
unworthiness had been proved." — (pp. 125, 
126.) 

Fallacies of pretended Danger. — Imputation of 
bad design — of bad character — of bad motives 
— of inconsistency — of suspicious connections. 

The object of this class of fallacies is to 
draw aside attention from the measure to the 
man, and this in such a manner, that, for some 
real or supposed defect in the author of the 
measure, a corresponding defect shall be im- 
puted to the measure itself. Thus " the author 
of the measure entertains a bad design : there- 
fore the measure is bad. His character is bad. 



214 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



therefore the measure is bad ; his motive is 
bad, I will vote against the measure. On for- 
mer occasions, this same person who proposed 
the measure was its enemy, therefore the mea- 
sure is bad. He is on a footing of intimacy 
with this or that dangerous man, or has been 
seen in his company, or is suspected of enter- 
taining some of his opinions, therefore the 
measure is bad. He bears a name that at a 
former period was borne by a set of men now 
no more, by whom bad principles were enter- 
tained — therefore the measure is bad !" 

Now, if the measure be really inexpedient, 
why not at once show it to be so I If the 
measure is good, is it bad because a bad man 
is its author? If bad, is it good because a 
good man has produced it 1 What are these 
arguments, but to say to the assembly who are 
to be the judges of any measure, that their 
imbecility is too great to allow them to judge 
of the measure by its own merits, and that 
they must have recourse to distant and feebler 
probabilities for that purpose ? 

" In proportion to the degree of efficiency 
with which a man suffers these instruments 
of deception to operate upon his mind, he 
enables bad men to exercise over him a sort 
of power, the thought of which ought to cover 
him with shame. Allow this argument the 
effect of a conclusive one, you put it into the 
power of any man to draw you at pleasure 
from the support of every measure, which in 
your own eyes is good, to force you to give 
your support to any and every measure which 
in your own eyes is bad. Is it good? — the 
bad man embraces it, and, by the supposition, 
you reject it. Is it bad? — he vituperates it, 
and that suffices for driving you into its em- 
brace. You split upon the rocks, because he 
has avoided them ; you miss the harbour, 
because he has steered into it? Give your- 
self up to any such blind antipathy, you are 
no less in the power of your adversaries, 
than if, by a correspondently irrational sym- 
pathy and obsequiousness, you put yourself 
into the power of your friends." — (pp. 132, 
133.) 

"Besides, nothing but laborious applica- 
tion, and a clear and comprehensive intellect, 
can enable a man, on any given subject, to 
employ successfully relevant arguments drawn 
from the subject itself. To employ person- 
alities, neither labour nor intellect is required. 
In this sort of contest, the most idle and the 
most ignorant are quite on a par with, if not 
superior to, the most industrious and the most 
highly gifted individuals. Nothing can be 
more convenient for those who would speak 
without the trouble of thinking. The 'same 
ideas are brought forward over and over 
again, and all that is required is to vary the 
turn of expression. Close and relevant argu- 
ments have very linle hold on the passions, 
and serve rather to quell than to inflame 
them ; while in personalities there is always 
something stimulant, whether on fhe part of 
him who praises or him who blames. Praise 
forms a kind of connection between the party 
praising and the party praised, and vitupera- 
tion gives an air of courage and independence 
to the par.ty.who blames. 



"Ignorance and indolence, friendship and' 
enmity, concurring and conflicting interest, 
servility and independence, all conspire to 
give personalities the ascendency they so un- 
happily maintain. The more we lie under the 
influence of our own passions, the more wc 
rely on others being affected in a similar 
degree. A man who can repel these injuries 
with dignity, may often convert them into tri- 
umph : ' Strike me, but hear,' says he, and the 
fury of his antagonist redounds to his own 
discomfiture." — (pp. 141, 142.) 

No Innovation ! — To say that all new things 
are bad, is to say that all old things were bad 
in their commencement: for of all the old 
things ever seen or heard of, there is not one 
that was not once new. Whatever is now 
establishment was once innovation. The first.' 
inventor of pews and parish clerks was nc. 
doubt considered as a Jacobin in his day. 
Judges, juries, criers of the court, are all the- 
inventions of ardent spirits, who filled the' 
world with alarm, and were considered as the 
great precursors of ruin and dissolution. No 
inoculation, no turnpikes, no reading, no writ- 
ing, no popery ! The fool sayeth in his heart, 
and crieth with his mouth, "I will have nothing 
new !" 

Fallacy of Distrust. — " Whafs at the Bot- 
tom?" — This fallacy begins with a virtual 
admission of the propriety of the measure 
considered in itself, and thus demonstrates its 
own futility, and cuts up from under itself the 
ground which it endeavours to make. A mea- 
sure is to be rejected for something that, by 
bare possibility, may be found amiss in some 
other measure ! This is vicarious reproba- 
tion ; upon this principle Herod instituted his 
massacre. It is the argument of a driveller 
to other drivellers, who says. We are not able 
to decide upon the evil when it arises — our 
only safe way is to act upon the general ap- 
prehension of evil. 

Official Malefactor^ s Screen. — "Attack us — you 
attack Government." 

If this notion is acceded to, every one who 
derives at present any advantage from misrule 
has it in fee-simple ; and all abuses, present 
and future, are without remedy. So long as 
there is any thing amiss in conducting the 
business of government, so long as it can be 
made better, there can be no other mode of 
bringing it nearer to perfection, than the indi- 
cation of such imperfections as at the time 
being exist. 

" But so far is it from being true that a 
man's aversion or contempt for the hands by 
which the powers of government, or even for 
the system under which they are exercised, is 
a proof of his aversion or contempt towards 
government itself, that, even in proportion to 
the strength of that aversion or contempt, it is 
a proof of the opposite affection. What, in 
consequence of such contempt or aversion, 
he wishes for, is, not that there be no hands at 
all to exercise these powers, but that the hands 
may be better regulated; — not that those 
powers should not be exercised at all, but that 
they should be better exercised ; — not that, in 
the exercise of them, no rules at all should be 



WORKS OF TllE REV. SYDNEY SMITH 



215 



pursued, but that the rules by which they are 
exercised should be a better set of rules. 

"All government is a trust; every branch 
of government is a trust; and immemorially 
acknowledged so to be : it is only by the mag- 
nitude of the scale that public differ from pri- 
vate trusts. I complain of the conduct of a 
person in the character of guardian, as domes- 
tic guardian, having the care of a minor or 
insane person. In so doing, do I say that 
guardianship is a bad institution 1 Does it 
enter into the head of any one to suspect me 
of so doing 1 I complain of an individual in 
the character of a commercial agent, or as- 
signee of the effects of an insolvent. In so 
doing, do I say that commercial agency is a 
bad thing 1 that the practice of vesting in the 
hands of trustees or assignees the effects of 
an insolvent, for the purpose of their being 
divided among his creditors, is a bad practice 1 
Does any such conceit ever enter into the head 
of man, as that of suspecting me of so doing?" 
—(pp. 162, 163.) 

There are no complaints against govern- 
ment in Turkey — no motions in Parliament, 
no Morning Chronicles, and no Edinburgh 
Reviews : yet, of all countries in the world, it 
is that in which revolts and revolutions are 
the most frequent. 

It is so far from true, that no good govern- 
ment can exist consistently with such dis- 
closure, that no good government can exist 
without it. It is quite obvious, to all who are 
capable of reflection, that by no other means 
than by lowering the governors in the estima- 
tion of the people, can there be hope or chance 
of beneficial change. To infer from this wise 
endeavour to lessen the existing rulers in the 
estimation of the people, a wish of dissolving 
the government, is either artifice or error. 
The physician who intentionally weakens the 
patient by bleeding him has no intention he 
should perish. 

The greater the quantity of respect a man 
receives, independently of good conduct, the 
less good is his behaviour likely to be. It is 
the interest, therefore, of the public, in the 
case of each, to see that the respect paid to 
him should, as completely as possible, depend 
upon the goodness of his behaviour in the 
execution of his trust. But it is, on the con- 
trary, the interest of the trustee, that the re- 
spect, the money, or any other advantage he 
receives in virtue of his office, should be as 
great, as secure, and as independent of conduct 
as possible. Soldiers expect to be shot at; 
public men must expect to be attacked, and 
sometimes unjustly. It keeps up the habit of 
considering their conduct as exposed to scru- 
tiny ; on the part of the people at large, it 
keeps alive the expectation of witnessing 
such attacks, and the habit of looking out for 
them. The friends and supporters of govern- 
ment have always greater facility in keeping 
and raising it up, than its adversaries have 
for lowering it. 

Acctisation-scarer's Device. — "Infamy must at- 
tach somewhere." 

This fallacy consists in representing the 
character of a calumniator as necessarily and 
justly attaching upon him who, having made a 



charge of misconduct against any .persons 
possessed of political power or influence, fails 
of producing evidence sufficient for their con- 
viction. 

" If taken as a general proposition, applying 
to all public accusations, nothing can be more 
mischievous as well as fallacious. Supposing 
the charge unfounded, the delivery of it may 
have been accompanied with malu Jides (con- 
sciousness of its injustice), with temerity only, 
or it may have been perfectly blameless. It is 
in the first case alone that infamy can with 
propriety attach upon him who brings it for- 
ward. A charge really groundless may have 
been honestlj' believed to be well founded, i.e. 
believed with a sort of provisional credence, 
sufficient for the purpose of engaging a man 
to do his part towards the bringing about an 
investigation, but without sufficient reasons. 
But a charge may be perfectly groundless 
without attaching the smallest particle of 
blame upon him who brmgs it forward. Sup- 
pose him to have heard from one or more, 
presenting themselves to him in the character 
of percipient witnesses, a story which, either 
in toto, or perhaps only in circumstances, though 
in circumstances of the most material import- 
ance, should prove false and mendacious — 
how is the person who hears this, and acts 
accordingly, to blame 1 What sagacity can 
enable a man previously to legal investigation, 
a man who has no power that can enable him 
to insure correctness or completeness on the 
part of this extrajudicial testimony, to guard 
against deception in such a easel" — (pp. 
185, 186.) 

Fallacy of false Consolution. — " What is the 
matter with you? — What would you have? 
Look at the people there, and there; think how 
much better off you are than they are. Your 
prosperity and liberty are objects of their envy ; 
your institutions models of their imitation." 

It is not the desire to look to the bright side 
that is blamed : but when a particular suffer- 
ing, produced by an assigned cause, has been 
pointed out, the object of many apologists is 
to turn the eyes of inquirers and judges into 
any other quarter in preference. If a man's 
tenants were to come with a general encomium 
on the prosperity of the country, instead of a 
specified sum, would it be accepted 1 In a 
court of justice, in an action for damages, did 
ever any such device occur as that of pleading 
assets in the hands of a third person 1 There 
is, in fact, no country so poor and so wretched 
in every element of prosperity, in which mat- 
ter for this argument might not be found. 
Were the prosperity of the country tenfold as 
great as at present, the absurdity of the argtt- 
ment would not in the least degree be lessened. 
Why should the smallest evil be endured, 
which can be cured; because others suffer pa- 
tiently under greater evils ? Should the small- 
est improvement attainable be neglected, be- 
cause others remain contented in a state of 
still greater inferiority 1 

"Seriously and pointedly in the character 
of a bar to any measure of relief, no, nor to 
the most trivial improvement, can it ever be 
employed. Suppose a bill brought in for con- 



216 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



rerting an impassable road any where into a 
passable one, would any man stand up to op- 
pose it, who could find nothing better to urge 
against it than the multitude and goodness of 
the roads we have already 1 No : when in the 
character of a serious bar to the measure in 
hand, be that measure what it may, an argu- 
ment so palpably inapplicable is employed, it 
can only be for the purpose of creating a di- 
version; — of turning aside the minds of men 
from the subject really in hand, to a picture, 
which, by its beauty,' it is hoped, may engross 
the attention of the assembly, and make them 
forget for the moment for what purpose they 
came there." — (pp. 196, 197.) 

The Quietisf, or no Complaint. — " A new law 
or measure being proposed in the character of 
a remedy for some incontestable abuse or evil, 
an objection is frequently started to the follow- 
ing efi'ect: — 'The measure is unnecessary. 
Nobody complains of disorder in that shape, 
in which it is the aim of your measure to pro- 
pose a remedy to it. But even when no cause 
of complaint has been found to exist, especi- 
ally under governments which admit of com- 
plaints, men have in general not been slow to 
complain ; much less where any just cause of 
complaint has existed.' The argument amounts 
to this : — Nobody complains, therefore nobody 
suffers. It amounts to a veto on all measures 
of precaution or prevention, and goes to es- 
tablish a maxim in legislation directly opposed 
to the most ordinary prudence of common life ; 
— it enjoins us to build no parapets to a bridge 
till the number of accidents has raised an uni- 
versal clamour." — (pp. 190, 191.) 

Procrastinators Argument. — " Wait a little, 
this is not the time." 

This is the common argument of men, who, 
being in reality hostile to a measure, are 
ashamed or afraid of appearing to be so. To- 
day is the plea — eternal exclusion commonly 
the object. It is the same sort of quirk as a 
plea of abatement in law — which is never em- 
ployed but on the side of a dishonest defendant, 
whose hope it is to obtain an ultimate triumph, 
by overwhelming his adversary with despair, 
impoverishment, and lassitude. Which is 
the proper est day to do good ■? which is the pro- 
perest day to remove a nuisance 1 we answer, 
the very first day a man can be found to propose 
the removal of it ; and whoever opposes the 
removal of it on that day will (if he dare) op- 
pose it on every other. There is in the minds 
of many feeble friends to virtue and improve- 
ment, an imaginary period for the removal of 
evils, which it would certainly be worth while 
to wait for, if there was the smallest chance of 
its ever arriving — a period of unexampled 
peace and prosperity, when a patriotic king 
and an enlightened mob united their ardent 
efforts for the amelioration of human affairs ; 
when the oppressor is as delighted to give up 
the oppression, as the oppressed is to be libera- 
ted from it ; when the difficulty and unpopu- 
larity would be to continue the evil, not to 
abolish it ! These are the periods when fair- 
weather philosophers are willing to venture 
out, and hazard a little for the general good. 
But the history of human nature is so contrary 
to all this, that almost all improvements are 



made after the bitterest resistance, and in the 
midst of tumults and civil violence — the worst 
period at which they can be made, compared 
to which any period is eligible, and should be 
seized hold of by the friends of salutary re- 
form. 

Snail's Pace argument. — " One thing at a 
time ! Not too fast ! Slow and sure ! — ^Import- 
ance of the business — extreme difficulty of the 
business — danger of innovation — need of cau- 
tion and circumspection — impossibility of fore- 
seeing all consequences — danger of precipita- 
tion — every thing should be gradual — one thing 
at a time — this is not the time — great occupa- 
tion at present — wait for more leisure — peo- 
ple well satisfied — no petitions presented — no 
complaints heard — no such miSchief has yet 
taken place — stay till it has taken place! — 
Such is the prattle which the magpie in office, 
who, understanding nothing, yet understands 
that he must have something to say on every 
subject, shouts out among his auditors as a 
suceedaneum to thought." — (pp. 203, 204.) 

Vague Generalities. — Vague generalities com- 
prehend a numerous class of fallacies resorted 
to by those who, in preference to the determi- 
nate expressions which they might use, adopt 
others more vague and indeterminate. 

Take, for instance, the terms, government, 
laws, morals, religion. Everj' body will admit 
that there are in the world bad governments, 
bad laws, bad morals, and bad religions. The 
bare circumstance, therefore, of being engaged 
in exposing the defects of government, law, 
morals, and religion, does not of itself afford 
the slightest presumption that a writer is 
engaged in any thing blamable. If his at- 
tack is only directed against that which is 
bad in each, his efforts may be productive of 
good to any extent. This essential distinction, 
however, the defender of abuses uniformly 
takes care to keep out of sight ; and boldly im- 
putes to his antagonists an intention to sub- 
vert all government, law, morals, and religion. 
Propose any thing with a view to the improve- 
ment of the existing practice, in relation to 
law, government, and religion, he will treat you 
with an oration upon the necessity and utility 
of law, government, and religion. Among the 
several cloudy appellatives which have been 
commonly employed as cloaks for misgovem- 
ment, there is none more conspicuous in this 
atmosphere of illusion than the word order. 
As often as any measure is brought forward 
which has for its object to lessen the sacrifice 
made by the many to the few, social order is the 
phrase commonly opposed to its progress. 

" By a defalcation made from any part of 
the mass of factitious delay, vexation, and ex- 
pense, out of which, and in proportion to which, 
lawyers' profit is made to flow — by any defal- 
cation made from the mass of needless and 
worse than useless emolument to office, with 
or without service or pretence of service — by 
any addition endeavoured to be made to the 
quantity, or improvement in the quality of ser- 
vice rendered, or time bestowed in service ren- 
dered in return for such emolument — by every 
endeavour that has for its object the persuading 
the people to place their fate at the disposal of 
any other agents than those in whose hands 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



217 



breach of trust is certain, due fulfilment of it 
morally and physically impossible — social or- 
der is said totbe endangered, and threatened to 
be destroyed." — (p. 234.) 

In the same way establishment is a word in 
use to protect the bad parts of establishments, 
by charging those who wish to remove or alter 
them with a wish to subvert all good establish- 
ments. 

Mischievous fallacies also circulate from 
the convertible use of what Mr. B. is pleased to 
call dyslogistic and eulogistic terms. Thus a 
vast concern is expressed for the liberty of the 
press, and the utmost abhorrence for its licen- 
tiousness: but then, by the licentiousness of 
the press is meant every disclosure by which 
any abuse is brought to light and exposed to 
shame — by the liberty of the press is meant only 
publications from which no such inconvenience 
is to be apprehended ; and the fallacy consists 
in employing the sham approbation of liberty 
as a mask for the real opposition to all free 
discussion. To write a pamphlet so ill that 
nobody will read it ; to animadvert in terms 
so weak and insipid upon great evils, that no 
disgust is excited at the vice, and no appre- 
hension in the evil-doer, is a fair use of the 
liberty of the press, and is not only pardoned 
by the friends of government, but draws from 
them the most fervent eulogium. The licen- 
tiousness of the press consists in doing the 
thing boldly and well, in striking terror into 
the guilty, and in rousing the attention of the 
public to the defence of their highest interests. 
This is the licentiousness of the press held in 
the greatest horror by timid and corrupt men, 
and punished by semianimous,semicadaverous 
judges^ with a captivity of many years. In 
the same manner the dyslogistic and eulogistic 
fallacies are used in the case of reform. 

" Between all abuses whatsoever, there ex- 
ists that connection ; — ^between all persons 
■who see each of them any one abuse in which 
an advantage results to himself, there exists, 
in point of interest, that close and sufficiently 
understood connection, of which intimation 
has been given already. To no one abuse can 
correction be administered without endanger- 
ing the existence of every other. 

"If, then, with this inward determination 
not to- suffer, so far as depends upon himself, 
the adoption of any reform which he is able to 
prevent, it should seem to him necessary or 
advisable to put on, for a cover, the profession 
or appearance of a desire to contribute to such 
reform — in pursuance of the device or fallacy 
here in question, he will represent that which 
goes by the name of reform as distinguisha- 
ble into two species ; one of them a fit subject 
for approbation, the other for disapprobation. 
That which he thus professes to have marked 
for approbation, he will accordingly, for the 
expression of such approbation, characterize 
by some adjunct of the eulogistic cast, such as 
moderate, for example, or temperate, or prac- 
tical, or practicable. 

"To the other of these nominally distinct 
species, he will, at the same time, attach some 
adjunct of the dyslogistic cast, such as violent, 
intemperate, extravagant, outrageous, theoreti- 
cal, speculative, and so forth. 
28 



"Thus, then, in profession and to appearance, 
there are in his conception of the matter two 
distinct and opposite species of reform, to one 
of which his approbation, to the other his dis- 
approbation is attached. But the species to 
which his approbation is attached is an emptrj 
species — a species in which no individual is, 
or is intended to be, contained. 

"The species to which his disapprobation is 
attached is, on the contrary, a crowded species, 
a receptacle in which the whole contents of the 
genus — of the genus Reform are intended to be 
included."— (pp. 277, 278.) 

^nti-rational Fallacies. — When reason is in 
opposition to a man's interests, his study will 
naturally be to render the faculty itself, and 
whatever issues from it, an object of hatred 
and contempt. The sarcasm and other figures 
of speech employed on the occasion are di- 
rected not merely against reason but against 
thought, as if there were something in the 
faculty of thought that rendered the exercise 
of it incompatible with useful and successful 
practice. Sometimes a plan, which would not 
suit the official person's interest, is without 
more ado pronounced a speculative one ; and, 
by this observation, all need of rational and 
deliberate discussion is considered to be super- 
seded. The first effort of the corruptionist is 
to fix the epithet speculative upon any scheme 
which he thinks may cherish the spirit of 
reform. The expression is hailed with the 
greatest delight by bad and feeble men, and 
repeated with the most unwearied energy; and, 
to the word speculative, by way of reinforce- 
ment, are added, theoretical, visionary, chimerical, 
7-omantic, Utopian. 

" Sometimes a distinction is taken, and there- 
upon a concession made. The plan is good in 
theory, but it would be bad in practice, i. e. its 
being good in theory does not hinder its being 
bad in practice. 

"Sometimes, as if in consequence of a farther 
progress made in the art of irrationality, the 
plan is pronounced to be too good to be practica- 
ble; and its being so good as it is, is thus repre- 
sented as the very cause of its being bad in 
practice. 

" In short, such is the perfection at which 
this art is at length arrived, that the very cir- 
cumstance of a plan's being susceptible of the 
appellation of a plan, has been gravely stated 
as a circumstance sufficient to warrant its being 
rejected, if not with hatred, at any rarte with a 
sort of accompaniment, which, to the million, 
is commonly felt still more galling — with con- 
tempt."— (p. 296.) 

There is a propensity to push theory too far ; 
but what is the just inference 7 not that theo- 
retical propositions (i.e. all propositions of any 
considerable comprehension or extent) should, 
from such their extent, be considered to be false 
in toto, but only that, in the particular case, 
inquiry should be made whether, supposing the 
proposition to be in the character of a rule 
generally true, an exception ought to be taken 
out of it. It might almost be imagined that 
there was something wicked or unwise in the 
exercise of thought; for everybody feels a 
necessity for disclaiming it, "I am not given 
T 



218 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



to speculation ; I am no friend to theories." 
Can a man disclaim theory, can he disclaim 
speculation, without disclaiming thought 1 

The description of persons by whom this 
fallacy is chiefly employed are those who, re- 
garding a plan as adverse to their interests, 
and not finding it on the ground of general 
utility exposed to any predominant objection, 
have recourse to this objection in the character 
of an instrument of contempt, in the view of 
preventing those from looking into it who might 
have been otherwise disposed. It is by the fear 
of seeing it practised that they are drawn to 
speak of it as impracticable. " Upon the face 
of it (exclaims some feeble or pensioned gen- 
tleman), it carries that air of plausibility, that, 
if you were not upon your guard, might engage 
you to bestow more or less of attention upon 
it; but were you to take the trouble, you would 
find that (as it is with all these plans which 
promise so much) practicability would at last 
be wanting to it. To save yourself from this 
trouble, the wisest course you can take is to 
put the plan aside, and to think no more about 
the matter." This is always accompanied with 
a peculiar grin of triumph. 

The whole of these fallacies may be gathered 
together in a little oration, which we will de- 
nominate the 

Noodle^s Oration. 

"What would our ancestors say to this, sir? 
How does this measure tally with their institu- 
tions ? How does it agree with their expe- 
rience ? Are we to put the wisdom of yesterday 
in competition with the wisdom of centuries 1 
(Hear, hear .') Is beardless youth to show no 
respect for the decisions of mature age ? (Loud 
cries of hear .' hear!) If this measure is right, 
•would it have escaped the wisdom of those 
Saxon progenitors to whom we are indebted 
for so many of our best political institutions ? 
Would the Dane have passed it over? Would 
the Norman have rejected it? Would such a 
notable discovery have been reserved for these 
modern and degenerate times ? Besides, sir, 
if the measure itself is good, I ask the honour- 
able gentleman if this is the time for carrying 
it into execution — whether, in fact, a more un- 
fortunate period could have been selected than 
that which he has chosen ? If this were an 
ordinary measure, I should not oppose it with 
so much vehemence; but, sir, it calls in ques- 
tion the wisdom of an irrevocable law — of a 
law passed at the memorable period of the 
Revolution. What right have we, sir, to break 
down this firm column, on which the great 
men of that day stamped a character of eter- 
nity ? Are not all authorities against this mea- 
sure, Pitt, Fox, Cicero, and the Attorney and 
Solicitor-General? The proposition is new, 
sir ; it is the first time it was ever heard in this 
house. I am not prepared, sir — this house is 
not prepared, to receive it. The measure im- 
plies a distrust of his majesty's government; 
their disapproval is sufficient to warrant oppo- 
sition. Precaution only is requisite where 
danger is apprehended. Here the high cha- 
racter of the individuals in question is a sulH- 
cient guarantee against any ground of alarm. 
Give not, then, your sanction to this measure ; 



for, whatever be its character, if you do give 
your sanction to it, the same man by whom 
this is proposed, will propose to you others to 
which it will be impossible to give your con- 
sent. I care very little, sir, for the ostensible 
measure ; but what is there behind ? What are 
the honourable gentleman's future schemes ? 
If we pass this bill, what fresh concessions 
may he not require? What farther degrada- 
tion is he planning for his country ? Talk of 
evil and inconvenience, sir! look to other 
countries — study other aggregations and socie- 
ties of men, and then see whether the laws of 
this country demand a remedy, or deserve a 
panegyric. Was the honourable gentleman 
(let me ask him) always of this way of think- 
ing ? Do I not remember when he was the 
advocate in this house of very opposite 
opinions ? I not only quarrel with his present' 
sentiments, sir, but I declare very frankly I do 
not like the party with which he acts. If his 
own motives were as pure as possible, ihey 
cannot but suffer contamination from those 
with whom he is politically associated. This 
measure maybe a boon to the constitution, but 
I will accept no favour to the constitution from 
such hands. (Loud cries of hear .' hear!) I pro- 
fess myself, sir, an honest and upright member 
of the British Parliament, and I am not afraid 
to profess myself an enemy to all change, and 
all innovation. I am satisfied with things as 
they are ; and it will be my pride and pleasure 
to hand down this country to my children as I 
received it from those who preceded me. The 
honourable gentleman pretends to justify the 
severity with which he has attacked the noble 
lord who presides in the Court of Chancery. 
But I say such attacks are pregnant with mis- 
chief to government itself. Oppose ministers, 
you oppose government : disgrace ministers, 
you disgrace government: bring ministers into 
contempt, you bring government into contempt; 
and anarchy and civil war are the conse- 
quences. Besides, sir, the measure is unne- 
cessary. Nobody complains of disorder in that 
shape in which it is the aim of your measure 
to propose a remedy to it. The business is 
one of the greatest importance ; there is need 
of the greatest caution and circumspection. 
Do not let us be precipitate, sir ; it is impossi- 
ble to foresee all consequences. Every thing 
should be gradual ; the example of a neighbour- 
ing nation should fill us with alarm ! The 
honourable gentleman has taxed me with illibe- 
rality, sir. I deny the charge. I hate innova- 
tion, but I love improvement. I am an enemy 
to the corruption of government, but I defend 
its influence. I dread reform, but I dread it 
only when it is intemperate. I consider the 
liberty of the press as the great palladium of 
the constitution ; but, at the same time, I hold 
the licentiousness of the press in the greatest 
abhorrence. Nobody is more conscious than 
I am of the splendid abilities of the honourable 
mover, but I tell him at once, his scheme is 
too good to be practicable. It savours of 
Utopia. It looks well in theory, but it won't do 
in practice. It will not do, I repeat, sir, in 
practice ; and so the advocates of the measure 
will find, if, unfortunately, it should find its way 
through Parliament. (Cheers.) The source of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



219 



that corruption to which the honourable mem- 
ber alludes, is in the minds of the people ; so 
rank and extensive is that corruption, that no 
political reform can have any effect in remov- 
ing it. Instead of reforming others — instead 
of reforming the state, the constitution, and 
every thing that is most excellent, let each man 
reform himself! let him look at home, he will 
find there enough to do, without looking abroad, 
and aiming at what is out of his power. (Loud 
cheers.) And now, sir, as it is frequently the 
custom in this house to end with a quotation, 
and as the gentleman who preceded me in the 
debate has anticipated me in my favourite 
quotation of the ' Strong pull and the long 
pull,' I shall end with the memorable words of 
the assembled Barons — Nolumus leges Jnglice 
mutari." 

" Upon the whole, the following are the 
characters which appertain in common to all 
the several arguments here distinguished by 
the name of fallacies : — 

" 1. Whatever be the measure in hand, they 
are, with relation to it, irrelevant. 

" 2. They are all of them such, that the ap- 
plication of these irrelevant arguments affords 
a presumption either of the weakness or total 
absence of relevant arguments on the side on 
which they are employed. 

"3. To any good purpose they are all of 
them unnecessary. 

" 4. They are all of them not only capable 
of being applied, but actually in the habit of 
being applied, and with advantage, to bad pur- 
poses, viz., to the obstruction and defeat of all 
such measures as have for their object the 



removal of the abuses or other imperfections 
still discernible in the frame and practice of 
the government. 

" 5. By means of their irrelevancy, they all 
of them consume and misapply time, thereby 
obstructing the course and retarding the pro- 
gress of all necessary and useful business. 

" 6. By that irritative quality which, in 
virtue of their irrelevancy, with the improbity 
or weakness of which it is indicative, they 
possess, all of them, in a degree more or less 
considerable, but in a more particular degree 
such of them as consist in personalities, they 
are productive of ill-humour, which in some 
instances has been productive of bloodshed, 
and is continually productive, as above, of 
waste of time and hinderance of business. 

" 7. On the part of those who, whether in 
spoken or written discourses, give utterance 
to them, they are indicative either of impro- 
bitjr or intellectual weakness, or of a contempt 
for the understanding of those on whose minds 
they are destined to operate. 

" 8. On the part of those on whom they 
operate, they are indicative of intellectual 
weakness ; and on the part of those in and by 
whom they are pretended to operate, they are 
indicative of improbity, viz., in the shape of 
insincerity. 

" The practical conclusion is, that in pro- 
portion as the acceptance, and thence the 
utterance, of them can be prevented, the un- 
derstanding of the public will be strengthened, 
the morals of the public will be purified, and 
the practice of government improved." — (pp. 
.359, 360.) 



waterton; 



[Edinbukgh Review, 1826.J 



Mr. Watertoit is a Roman Catholic gen- 
tleman of Yorkshire, of good fortune, who, 
instead of passing his life at balls and assem- 
blies, has preferred living with Indians and 
monkeys in the forests of Guiana. He ap- 
pears in early life to have been seized with an 
txnconquerable aversion to Piccadilly, and to 
that train of meteorological questions and 
answers, which forms the great staple of 
polite English conversation. From a dislike 
to the regular form of a journal, he throws 
his travels into detached pieces, which he, 
rather affectedly, calls Wanderings — and of 
which we shall proceed to give some account. 

His first Wandering was in the year 1812, 
through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, 
a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South 
America. The sun exhausted him by day, the 



♦ Wanderings in South America, the J^arth-West nf the 
United States, and the Antilles, in the years 1812, 1816, 
1820, and 1824 ; with Original Instructinns for the perfect 
Preservation of Birds, ^c. for Cabinets of JVatural 
History. By Charles Waterton, Esq. London. 
MawDian. 410. 1825. 



musquitoes bit him by night ; but on went Mr. 
Charles Waterton ! 

The first thing which strikes us in this ex- 
traordinary chronicle, is the genuine zeal and 
inexhaustible delight with which all the bar- 
barous countries he visits are described. He 
seems to love the forests, the tigers, a'hd the 
apes ; — to be rejoiced that he is the only man 
there ; that he has left his species far away ; 
and is at last in the midst of his blessed 
baboons ! He writes with a considerable 
degree of force and vigour; and contrives to 
infuse into his reader that admiration of the 
great works, and undisturbed scenes of na- 
ture, which animates his style, and has influ- 
enced his life and practice. There is some- 
thing, too, to be highly respected and praised 
in the conduct of a country gentleman, who, 
instead of exhausting life in the chase, has 
dedicated a considerable portion of it to the 
pursuit of knowledge. There are so many 
temptations to complete idleness in the life of 
a country gentleman, so many examples of it, 
and so much, loss to the community from it. 



220 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



that every exception from the practice is de- 
^. serving of great praise. Some country gen- 
^ tlemen must remain to do the business of their 
counties ; but, in general, there are many 
more than are wanted; and, generally speak- 
ing also, they are a class who should be 
stimulated to greater exertions. Sir Joseph 
Banks, a squire of large fortune in Lincoln- 
shire, might have given up his existence to 
double-barrelled guns and persecutions of 
poachers — and all the benefits derived from 
his wealth, industry, and personal exertion in 
the cause of science would have been lost to 
the community. 

Mr. Waterton complains, that the trees of 
Guiana are not more than six yards in circum- 
ference — a magnitude in trees which it is not 
easy for a Scotch imagination to reach. 
Among these, pre-eminent in height rises the 
mora — upon whose top branches, when naked 
by age, or dried by accident, is perched the 
toucan, too high for the gun of the fowler ; — 
around this are the green heart, famous for 
hardness; the tough hackea; the ducalabali, 
surpassing mahogany ; the ebony and letter- 
wood, exceeding the most beautiful woods of 
the Old World ; the locust-tree, yielding copal ; 
and the hayawa and olou-trees, furnishing 
sweet-smelling resin. Upon the top of the 
mora grows the fig-tree. The bush-rope 
joins tree and tree, so as to render the forest 
impervious, as, descending from on high, it 
takes root as soon as its extremity touches the 
ground, and appears like shrouds and stays 
supporting the mainmast of a line-of-batlle 
ship. 

Demerara yields to no countrj' in the world 
in her birds. The mud is flaming with the 
scarlet curlew. At sunset, the pelicans return 
from the sea to the courada trees. Among 
the flowers are the humming-birds. The 
columbine, gallinaceous, and passerine tribes 
people the fruit-trees. At the close of day, 
the vampires, or winged bats, suck the blood 
of the traveller, and cool him by the flap of 
their wings. Nor has nature forgotten to 
amuse herself here in the composition of 
snakes: — the camoudi has been killed from 
thirty to forty feet long ; he does not act by 
venom, but by size and convolution. The 
Spaniards aflSrm that he grows to the length 
of eighty feet, and that he will swallow a bull ; 
but Spaniards love the superlative. There is 
a whipsnake of a beautiful green. The labarri 
snake of a dirty brown, who kills you in a few 
minutes. Every lovely colour under heaven 
is lavished upon the counachouchi, the most 
venomous of reptiles, and known by the name 
of the bush-master. Man and beast, says Mr. 
Waterton, fly before him, and allow him to 
pursue an undisputed path. 

We consider the following description of the 
various sounds in these wild regions as very 
striking, and done with very considerable 
powers of style. 

" He whose eye can distinguish the various 
beauties of uncultivated nature, and whose 
ear is not shut to the wild sounds in the 
woods, will be delighted in passing up the 
river Demerara. Every now and then, the 
maam or tiaamou sends forth one long and 



plaintive whistle from the depth of the forest, 
and then stops ; whilst the yelping of the 
toucan, and the shrill voice of the bird called 
pi-pi-yo, are heard during the interval. The 
campanero never fails to attract the attention 
of the passenger : at a distance of nearly three 
miles you may hear this snow-white bird 
tolling every four or five minutes, like the 
distant convent bell. From six to nine in the 
morning, the forests resound with the mingled 
cries and strains of the feathered race ; after 
this they gradually die away. From eleven to 
three, all nature is hushed as in a midnight 
silence, and scarce a note is heard, saving 
that of the campanero and the pi-pi-yo ; it is 
then that, oppressed by the solar heat, the 
birds retire to the thickest shade, and wait for 
the refreshing cool of evening. 

" At sundown the vampires, bats, and goat- 
suckers, dart from their lonely retreat, and 
skim along the trees on the river's bank. The 
different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear 
with their hoarse and hollow-sounding croak- 
ing, while the owls and goatsuckers lament 
and mourn all night long. 

" About two hours before daybreak you will 
hear the red monke)' moaning as though in 
deep distress ; the houtou, a solitary bird, and 
only found in the thickest recesses of the 
forest, distinctly articulates, ' houtou, houtou,' 
in a low and plaintive tone, an hour before 
sunrise ; the maam whistles about the same 
hour; the hannaquoi, pataca, and maroudi 
announce his near approach to the eastern 
horizon, and the parrots and paroquets confirm 
his arrival there." — (pp. 13 — 16.) 

Our good Quixote of Demerara is a little 
too fond of apostrophizing : — " Traveller ! dost 
thou think 1 Reader! dost thou imagine?" 
Mr. Waterton should remember, that the 
whole merit of these violent deviations from 
common style depends upon their rarity, and 
that nothing does, for ten pages together, but 
the indicative mood. This fault gives an air 
of affectation to the writing of Mr. Waterton, 
which we believe to be foreign from his cha- 
racter and nature. We do not wish to deprive 
him of these indulgences altogether ; but 
merely to put him upon an allowance, and 
upon such an allowance as will give to these 
figures of speech the advantage of surprise 
and relief. 

This gentleman's delight and exultation al- 
ways appear to increase as he loses sight of 
European inventions, and comes to something 
purely Indian. Speaking of an Indian tribe, 
he says, — 

" They had only one gun, and it appeared 
rusty and neglected ; but their poisoned wea- ' 
pons were in fine order. Their blow-pipes 
hung from the roof of the hut, carefully sus- 
pended by a silk grass cord; and on taking a 
nearer view of them, no dust seemed to have 
collected there, nor had the spider spun the 
smallest web on them ; which showed that they 
were in constant use. The quivers were close 
by them, with the jaw-bone of the fish pirai 
tied by a string to their brim, and a small 
wicker-basket of wild cotton, which hung • 
down to the centre ; they were nearly full of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



221 



poisoned arrows. It was with difficulty these 
Indians could be persuaded to part with any of 
the Wourali poison, though a good price was 
offered for it: they gave us to understand that 
it was powder and shot to them, and very diffi- 
cult to be procured." — (pp. 34, 35.) 

A wicker-basket of wild cotton, full of poi- 
soned arrows, for shooting fish ! This is In- 
dian with a vengeance. We fairly admit that, 
in the contemplation of such utensils, every 
trait of civilized life is completely and effectu- 
ally banished. 

One of the strange and fanciful objects of 
Mr. Waterton's journey was, to obtain a better 
knowledge of the composition and nature of the 
Wourali poison, the ingredient with which the 
Indians poison their arrows. In the wilds of 
Essequibo, far away from any European set- 
tlements, there is a tribe of Indians known by 
the name of Macoushi. The Wourali poison is 
used by all the South American savages, be- 
twixt the Amazon and the Oroonoque ; but the 
Macoushi Indians manufacture it with the 
greatest skill, and of the greatest strength. A 
vine grows in the forest called Wourali ; and 
from this vine, together with a good deal of 
nonsense and absurdity, the poison is prepared. 
When a native of Macoushia goes in quest of 
feathered game, he seldom carries his bow and 
arrows. It is the blow-pipe he then uses. The 
reed grows to an amazing length, as the part 
the Indians use is from 10 to 11 feet long, and 
no tapering can be perceived, one end being as 
thick as another; nor is there the slightest ap- 
pearance of a knot or joint. The end which is 
applied to ^he mouth is tied round with a small 
silk grass cord. The arrow is from nine to 
ten inches long; it is made out of the leaf of 
a palm-tree, and pointed as sharp as a needle : 
about an inch of the pointed end is poisoned : | 
the other end is burnt to make it still harder ; 
and wild cotton is put round it for an inch and 
a half. The quiver holds from 500 to 600 ar- 
rows, is from 12 to 14 inches long, and in 
shape like a dice-box. With a quiver of these 
poisoned arrows over his shoulder, and his 
blow-pipe in his hand, the Indian stalks into 
the forest in quest of his feathered game. 

"These generally sit high up in the tall and 
tufted trees, but still are not out of the Indian's 
reach ; for his blow-pipe, at its greatest eleva- 
tion, will send an arrow three hundred feet. 
Silent as midnight he steals under them, and so 
cautiously does he tread the ground, that the 
fallen leaves rustle not beneath his feet. His 
ears are open to the least sound, while his 
eye, keen as that of the lynx, is employed in 
finding out the game in the thickest shade. 
Often he imitates their cry, and decoys them 
from tree to tree, till they are within range of 
his tube. Then taking a poisoned arrow from 
his quiver, he puts it in the blow-pipe, and col- 
lects his breath for the fatal puff. 

" About two feet from the end through which 
he blows, there are fastened two teeth of the 
acouri, and these serve him for a sight. Silent 
and swift the arrow flies, and seldom fails to 
pierce the object at which it is sent. Some- 
times the wounded bird remains in the same 
tree where it was shot, but in three minutes 
falls down at the Indian's feet. Should he take 



wing, his flight is of short duration, and the 
Indian following in the direction he has gone, 
is sure to find him dead. 

" It is natural to imagine that, when a slight 
wound only is inflicted, the game will make its 
escape. Far otherwise ; the Wourali poison 
instantaneously mixes with blood or water, so 
that if you wet your finger, and dash it along 
the poisoned arrow in the quickest manner 
possible, you are sure to carry off" some of the 
poison. 

"Though three minutes generally elapse be- 
fore the convulsions come on in the wounded 
bird, still a stupor evidently takes place sooner, 
and this stupor manifests itself by an apparent 
unwillingness in the bird to move. This was 
very visible in a dying fowl." (pp. 60 — 62.) 

The flesh of the game is not in the slightest 
degree injured by the poison ; nor does it ap- 
pear to be corrupted sooner than that killed by 
the gun or knife. For the larger animals, an 
arrow with a poisoned spike is used. 

" Thus armed with deadly poison, and hun- 
gry as the hyena, he ranges through the forest 
in quest of the wild beasts' track. No hound 
can act a surer part. Without clothes to fetter 
him, or shoes to bind his feet, he observes the 
footsteps of the game, where an European eye 
could not discern the smallest vestige. He 
pursues it through all its turns and windings, 
with astonishing perseverance, and success 
generally crowns his efforts. The animal, after 
receiving the poisoned arrow, seldom retreats 
two hundred paces before it drops. 

"In passing over land from the Essequibo to 
the Demerara we fell in with a herd of wild 
hogs. Though encumbered with baggage, and 
fatigued with a hard day's walk, an Indian got 
his bow ready, and let fly a poisoned arrow at 
one of them. It entered the cheek-bone, and 
broke off. The wild hog was found quite dead 
about one hundred and seventy paces from the 
place where he had been shot. He afforded us 
an excellent and wholesome supper." — (p. 65.) 
Being a Wourali poison fancier, Mr. Water- 
ton has recorded several instances of the power 
of his favourite drug. A sloth poisoned by it 
went gently to sleep, and died! a large ox, 
weighing one thousand pounds, was shot with 
three arrows ; the poison took effect in four 
minutes, and in twenty-five minutes he was 
dead. The death seems to be very gentle ; and 
resembles more a quiet apoplexy, brought on by 
hearing a long story, than any other kind of 
death. If an Indian happens to be wounded 
with one of these arrows, he considers it as cer- 
tain death. We have reason to congratulate our- 
selves, that our method of terminating disputes 
is by sword and pistol, and not by these medi- 
cated pins ; which, we presume, will become 
the weapons of gentlemen in the new republics 
of South America. 

The second journey of Mr. Waterton, in the 
year 1816, was to Pernambuco, in the southern 
hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil, and from 
thence he proceeds to Cayenne. His plan was 
to have ascended the Amazon from Para, and 
get into the Rio Negro, and from thence to have 
returned towards the source of the Essequibo, 
in order to examine the Crystal Mountains, and 
to look once more for Lake Parima, or the 
t2 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



White Sea; but on arriving at Cayenne, he 
found that to beat up the Amazon would be long 
and tedious ; he left Cayenne, therefore, in an 
American ship for Paramaribo, went through 
the interior to Coryntin, stopped a few days at 
New Amsterdam, and proceeded to Demerara. 

" Leave behind you" (he says to the traveller) 
"your high-seasoned dishes, your wines, and 
your delicacies; carry nothing but what is 
necessary for your own comfort, and the object 
in view, and depend upon the skill of an Indian, 
or your own, for fish and game. A sheet, about 
twelve feet long, ten wide, painted, and with 
loop-holes on each side, will be of great ser- 
vice : in a few minutes you can suspend it be- 
twixt two trees in the shape of a roof. Under 
this, in your hammock, you may defy the pelt- 
ing shower, and sleep heedless of the dews of 
night. A hat, a shirt, and a light pair of 
trowsers, will be all the raiment you require. 
Custom will soon teach you to tread lightly and 
barefoot on the little inequalities of the ground, 
and show you how to pass on, unwounded, 
amid the mantling briars." — (pp. 112, 113.) 

Snakes are certainly an annoyance ; but 
the snake, though high-spirited, is not quarrel- 
some; he considers his fangs to be given for 
defence, and not for annoyance, and never in- 
flicts a wound but to defend existence. If you 
tread upon him, he puts you to death for your 
clumsiness, merely because he does not under- 
stand what your clumsiness means ; and cer- 
tainly a snake, who feels fourteen or fifteen 
stone stamping upon his tail, has little time for 
reflection, and may be allowed to be poisonous 
and peevish. American tigers generally run 
away — from which several respectable gentle- 
men in Parliament inferred, in the American 
war, that American soldiers would run away 
also! 

The description of the birds is very animated 
and interesting ; but how far does the gentle 
reader imagine the campanero may be heard, 
whose size is that of a jay ? Perhaps 300 yards. 
Poor innocent, ignorant reader! unconscious 
of what nature has done in the forests of Cay- 
enne, and measuring the force of tropical into- 
nation by the sounds of a Scotch duck ! The 
campanero may be heard three miles ! — this 
single little bird being more powerful than the 
belfry of a cathedral, ringing for a new dean — 
just appointed on account of shabby politics, 
small understanding, and good family ! 

"The fifth species is the celebrated campa- 
nero of the Spaniards, called dara by the In- 
dians, and bell-bird by the English. He is about 
the size of the jay. His plumage is white as 
snow. On his forehead rises a spiral tube 
nearly three inches long. It is jet black, dotted 
all over with small white feathers. It has a 
communication with the palate, and when 
filled with air, looks like a spire ; when empty, 
it becomes pendulous. His note is loud and 
clear, like the sound of a bell, and may be heard 
at the distance of three miles. In the midst of 
these extensive wilds, generally on the dried 
top of an aged mora, almost out of gun reach, 
you will see the campanero. No sound or song 
from any of the winged inhabitants of the forest, 



not even the clearly pronounced ' Whip-poor- 
Will,' from the goatsucker, causes such as- 
tonishment as the toll of the campanero. 

" With many of the feathered race he pays 
the common tribute of a morning and an even- 
ing song; and even when the meridian sun has 
shut in silence the mouths of almost the whole 
of animated nature, the campanero still cheers 
the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause 
for a minute, then another toll, and then a 
pause, again, and then a toll, and again a 
pause." — (pp. 117, 118.) 

It is impossible to contradict a gentleman 
who has been in the forests of Cayenne ; but 
we are determined, as soon as a campanero is 
brought to England, to make him toll in a pub- 
lic place, and have the distance measured. 
The toucan has an enormous bill, makes a 
noise like a puppy dog, and lays his eggs in 
hollow trees. How astonishing are the freaks 
and fancies of nature! To what purpose, we 
say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne, 
with a bill a yard long, making a noise like a 
puppy dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees 1 
The toucans, to be sure, might retort, to what 
purpose were gentlemen in Bond street createdl 
To what purpose were certain foolish, prating 
members of Parliament created 1 — pestering the 
House of Commons with their ignorance and 
folly, and impeding the business of the country 1 
There is no end of such questions. So we will 
not enter into the metaphysics of the toucan. 
The houtou ranks high in beauty ; his whole 
body is green, his wings and tail blue ; his 
crown is of black and blue; he makes no nest, 
but rears his young in the sand. 

" The cassique, in size, is larger than the 
starling ; he courts the society of man, but dis- 
dains to live by his labours. When nature 
calls for support, he repairs to the neighbour- 
ing forest, and there partakes of the store of 
fruits and seeds, which she has produced in 
abundance for her aerial tribes. When his 
repast is over, he returns to man, and pays the 
little tribute which he owes him for his protec- 
tion ; he takes his station on a tree close to his 
house ; and there, for hours together, pours 
forth a succession of imitative notes. His I 
own song is sweet, but very short. If a toucan | 
be yelping in the neighbourhood, he drops it, 
and imitates him. Then he will amuse his 
protector with the cries of the diflferent species 
of the woodpecker; and when the sheep bleat, 
he will distinctly answer them. Then comes 
his own song again, and if a puppy dog or a 
guinea fowl interrupt him, he takes them off 
admirably, and by his different gestures during 
the time, you would conclude that he enjoys 
the sport. 

"The cassique is gregarious, and imitates 
any sound he hears with such exactness that 
he goes by no other name than that of mock- 
ing-bird amongst the colonists." — (pp. 127, 
128.) 

There is no end to the extraordinary noises 
of the forest of Cayenne. The woodpecker, in 
striking against the tree with his bill, makes a 
sound so loud, that Mr. Waterton says it re- 
minds you more of a wood-cutter than a bird. 
While "lying in your hammock, you hear the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



223 



goatsucker lamenting like one in deep distress 
— a stranger would take it for a Weir murdered 
by Thurtell. 

"Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow, begin 
with a high loud note, and pronounce, ' ha, ha, 
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,' each note lower and lower, 
till the last is scarcely heard, pausing a mo- 
ment or two betwixt every note, and you will 
have some idea of the moaning of the largest 
goatsucker in Demerara." — (p. 141.) 

One species of the goatsucker cries, " Who 
are you i! who are you 1" Another exclaims, 
"Work away, work away." A third, " Willy 
come go, Willy come go." A fourth, " Whip 
poor Will, whip poor Will." It is very flatter- 
ing to us that they should all speak English! — 
though we cannot much commend the elegance 
of their selections. The Indians never destroy 
these birds, believing them to be the servants 
of Jumbo, the African devil. 

Great travellers are very fond of triumphing 
' over civilized life ; and Mr. Waterton does not 
omit the opportunity of remarking, that nobody 
ever stopt him in the forests of Cayenne to ask 
him for his license, or to inquire if he had an 
hundred a year, or to take away his gun, or to 
dispute the limits of a manor, or to threaten 
him with a tropical justice of the peace. We 
hope, however, that in this point we are on the 
eve of improvement. Mr. Peel, who is a man 
of high character and principles, may depend 
upon it that the time is come for his interfer- 
ence, and that it will be a loss of reputation to 
him not to interfere. If any one else can and 
will carry an alteration through Parliament, 
there is no occasion that the hand of govern- 
ment should appear; but some hand must, ap- 
pear. The common people are becoming fero- 
cious, and the perdricide criminals are more 
numerous than the violators of all the branches 
of the Decalogue. 

" The king of the vultures is very handsome, 
and seems to be the only bird which claims 
regal honours from a surrounding tribe. It is 
a fact beyond all dispute, that when the scent 
of carrion has drawn together hundreds of the 
common vultures, they all retire from the car- 
cass as soon as the king of the vultures makes 
his appearance. When his majesty has satis- 
fied the cravings of his royal stomach with the 
choicest bits from the most stinking and cor- 
rupted parts, he generally retires to a neigh- 
bouring tree, and then the common vultures 
return in crowds to gobble down his leavings. 
The Indians, as well as the whites, have ob- 
served this ; for when one of them, who has 
learned a little English, sees the king, and 
wishes you to have a proper notion of the bird, 
he says, 'There is the governor of the carrion 
crows.' 

"Now, the Indians have never heard of a 
personage in Demerara higher than that of go- 
vernor; and the colonists, through a common 
mistake, call the vultures carrion crows. 
Hence the Indian, in order to express the do- 
minion of this bird over the common vultures, 
tells you he is governor of the carrion crows. 
The Spaniards have also observed it, for, 
through all the Spanish Main, he is called Rey 
-de Zamuros, king of the vultures." — (p. 146.) 



This, we think, explains satisfactorily the 
origin of kingly government. As men have 
" learnt from the dog the physic of the field," 
they may probably have learnt from the vulture 
those high lessons of policy upon which, in 
Europe, we suppose the whole happiness of 
society, and the very existence of the human 
race, to depend. 

Just before his third journey, Mr. Waterton 
takes leave of Sir Joseph Banks, and speaks 
of him with aflectionate regret. " I saw," (says 
Mr. W.) "with sorrow, that death was going to 
rob us of him. We talked of stuffing quad- 
rupeds ; I agreed that the lips and nose ought 
to be cut off, and stuffed with wax." This is 
the way great naturalists take an eternal fare- 
well of each other! Upon stuffing animals, 
however, we have a word to say. Mr. Water- 
ton has placed at the head of his book the pic- 
ture of what he is pleased to consider a nonde- 
script species of monkey. In this exhibition 
our author is surely abusing his stuffing talents, 
and laughing at the public. It is clearly the 
head of a master in chancery — whom we have 
often seen backing in the House of Commons 
after he has delivered his message. It is fool- 
ish thus to trifle with science aud natural his- 
tory. Mr. Waterton gives an interesting ac- 
count of the sloth, an animal of which he 
appears to be fond, and whose habits he has 
studied with peculiar attention. 

"Some years ago I kept a sloth in my room 
for several months. I often took him out of 
the house and placed him upon the ground, in 
order to have an opportunity of observing his 
motions. If the ground were rough, he would 
pull himself forwards, by means of his fore 
legs, at a pretty good pace ; and he invariably 
shaped his course towards the nearest tree. 
But if I put him upon a smooth and well-trod- 
den part of the road, he appeared to be in 
trouble and distress : his favourite abode was 
the back of a chair; and after getting all his 
legs in a line upon the topmost part of it, he 
would hang there for hours together, and often, 
with a low and inward cry, would seem to in- 
vite me to take notice of him." — (p. 164.) 

The sloth, in its wild state, spends its life in 
trees, and never leaves them but from force or 
accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to 
the ground, the sloth to the tree ; but what is 
most extraordinary, he lives not upon the 
branches, but under them. He moves sus- 
pended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and 
passes his life in suspense — like a young 
clergyman di^antly related to a bishop. Strings 
of ants may be observed, says our good travel- 
ler, a mile long, each carrying in its mouth a 
green leaf the size of a sixpence ! he does not 
say whether this is a loyal procession, like 
Oak-apple Day, or for what purpose these 
leaves are carried ; but it appears, while they 
are carrying the leaves, that three sorts of ant- 
bears are busy in eating them. The habits of 
the largest of these three animals are curious, 
and to us new. We recommend the account 
to the attention of the reader. 

He is chiefly found in the inmost recesses 
of the forest, and seems partial to the low and 
swampy parts near creeks, where the Troely 



224 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tree grows. There he goes up and down in 
quest of ants, of which there is never the least 
scarcity; so that he soon obtains a sufficient 
supply of food, with very little trouble. He 
cannot travel fast ; man is superior to him in 
speed. Without swiftness to enable him to 
escape from his enemies, without teeth, the 
possession of which would assist him in self- 
defence, and without the power of burrowing 
in the ground, by which he might conceal him- 
self from his pursuers, he still is capable of 
ranging through these wilds in perfect safety ; 
nor does he fear the fatal pressure of the ser- 
pent's fold, or the teeth of the famished jaguar. 
Nature has formed his fore legs wonderfully 
thick, and strong, and muscular, and armed 
his feet with three tremendous sharp and 
crooked claws. Whenever he seizes an ani- 
mal with these formidable weapons, he hugs 
it close to his body and keeps it there till it 
dies through pressure, or through want of food. 
Nor does the ant-bear, in the mean time, suffer 
much from loss of aliment, as it is a well- 
known fact, that he can go longer without food 
than perhaps any other animal, except the land 
tortoise. His skin is of a texture that perfectly 
resists the bite of a dog ; his hinder parts are 
protected by thick and shaggy hair, wltile his 
' immense tail is large enough to cover his 
• whole body. 

" The Indians have a great dread of coming 
in contact with the ant-bear; and, after dis- 
abling him in the chase, never think of approach- 
ing him till he be quite dead." — (pp. 171, 172.) 

The vampire measures about 26 inches from 
wing to wing. There are two species, large 
and small. The large suck men, and the 
smaller, birds. Mr. W. saw some fowls which 
had been sucked the night before, and they 
were scarcely able to walk. 

"Some years ago I went to the river Pauma- 
ron with a Scotch gentleman, by name Tarbet. 
We hung our hammocks m the thatched loft 
of a planter's house. Next morning I heard 
this gentleman muttering in his hammock, and 
now and then letting fall an imprecation or 
two, just about the time he ought to have been 
saying his morning prayers. 'What is the 
matter, sirl' said I, softly ; 'is any thing amiss?' 
— 'What's the matter T answered he, surlily ; 
'why, the vampires have been sucking me to 
death.' As soon as there was light enough, I 
went to his hammock, and saw it much stained 
with blood. 'There,' said he, thrusting his 
foot out of the hammock, ' see how these in- 
fernal imps have been drawing my life's blood.' 
On examining his foot. I found the vampire 
had tapped his great toe : there was a wound 
somewhat less than that made by a leech; the 
blood was still oozing from it ; I conjectured 
he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces 
of blood. Whilst examining it, I think I put 
him into a worse humour, by remarking, that 
an European surgeon would not have been so 
generous as to have blooded him without mak- 
ing a charge. He looked up in my face, but 
did not say a word : I saw he was of opinion 
that I had better have spared this piece of ill- 
timed levity."— (pp. 176, 177.) 

The story which follows this account is 



vulgar, unworthy of Mr. Waterton, and should, 
have been omitted. 

Every animal has its enemies. The land 
tortoise has two enemies, man, and the boa- 
constrictor. The natural defence of the tor- 
toise is to draw himself up in his shell, and to 
remain quiet. In this state, the tiger, how- 
ever famished, can do nothing with him, for 
the shell is too strong for the stroke of his paw. 
Man, however, takes him home and roasts 
him — and the boa-constrictor swallows him 
whole, shell and all, and consumes him slowly 
in the interior, as the Court of Chancery does 
a great estate. 

The danger seems to be much less with 
snakes and wild beasts, if you conduct your- 
self like a gentleman, and are not abruptly in- 
tru.sive. If j^ou will pass on gently, you may 
Avalk unhurt within a yard of the Labairi 
snake, who would put you to death if you 
rushed upon him. The taguan knocks you 
down with a blow of his paw, if suddenly in- 
terrupted, but will run away, if you will give 
him time to do so. In short, most animals 
look upon man as a very ugly customer ; and, 
unless sorely pressed for food, or from fear 
of their own safety, are not fond of attacking 
him. Mr. Waterton, though much given to sen- 
timent, made a Labairi snake bite itself, but no 
bad consequences ensued — nor would any bad 
consequences ensue, if a court-martial were 
to order a sinful soldier to give himself a 
thousand lashes. It is barely possible that 
the snake had some faint idea of whom and 
what he was biting. 

Insects are the curse of tropical climates. 
The bete rouge lays the foundation of a tre- 
mendous ulcer. In a moment you are covered 
with ticks. Chigoes bury themselves in your 
flesh, and hatch a colony of young chigoes in 
a few hours. They will not live together, but 
every chigoe sets up a separate ulcer, and has 
his own private portion of pus. Flies get en- 
try into your mouth, into your eyes, into your 
nose ; you eat flies, drink flies, and breathe 
flies. Lizards, cockroaches, and snakes, get 
into the bed ; ants eat up the books ; scor- 
pions sting you on the foot. Every thing 
bites, stings, or bruises; every second of your 
existence you are wounded by some piece of 
animal life that nobody has ever seen before, 
except Swammerdam and Meriam. An insect 
with eleven legs is swimming in your teacup, 
a nondescript with nine wings is struggling in 
the small beer, or a caterpillar with several 
dozen eyes in his belly is hastening over the, 
bread and butter ! All nature is alive, and 
seems to be gathering all her entomological 
hosts to eat you up, as you are standing, out 
of your coat, Avaistcoat, and breeches. Such 
are the tropics. All this reconciles us to our, 
dews, fogs, vapour, and drizzle — to our apo- 
thecaries rushing about with gargles and 
tinctures — to our old, British, constitutional 
coughs, sore throats, and swelled faces. 

We come now to the counterpart of St. 
George and the Dragon. Every one knows 
that the large snake of tropical climates 
throws himself upon his prey, twists the folds 
of his body round the victim, presses him to 
death, and then eats him. Mr. Waterton wanted 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



226. 



a large snake for the sake of his skin ; and 
it occurred to him that the success of this sort 
of combat depended upon who began first, and 
that if he could contrive to fiing himself upon 
the snake, he was just as likely to send the 
snake to the British Museum, as the snake, if 
allowed the advantage of prior occupation, 
was to eat him up. The opportunities which 
Yorkshire squires have of combating witli the 
boa constrictor are so few, that Mr. Waterton 
must be allowed to tell his own story in his 
own manner. 

" We went slowly on in silence, without 
moving our arms or heads, in order to pre- 
vent all alarm as much as possible, lest the 
snake should glide off, or attack us in self- 
defence. I carried the lance perpendicularly 
before me, with the point about a foot from 
the ground. The snake had not moved ; and 
on getting up to him, I struck him with the 
lance on the near side, just behind the neck, 
and pinned him to the ground. That moment 
the negro next to me seized the lance and held 
it firm in its place, while I dashed head fore- 
most into the den to grapple with the snake, 
and to get hold of his tail before he could do 
any mischief. 

" On pinning him to the ground with the 
lance, he gave a tremendous loud hiss, and 
the little dog ran away, howling as he went. 
We had a sharp fray in the den, the rotten 
sticks flying on all sides, and each party 
struggling for superiority. I called out to the 
second negro to throw himself upon me, as I 
found I was not heavy enough. He did so, 
and the additional weight was of great service. 
I had now got firm hold of his tail ; and after 
a violent struggle or two, he gave in, finding 
himself overpowered. This was the moment 
to secure him. So, while the first negro con- 
tinued to hold the lance firm to the ground, 
and the other was helping me, I contrived to 
unloose my braces, and with them tied up the 
snake's mouth. 

"The snake, now finding himself in an un- 
pleasant situation, tried to better himself, and set 
resolutely to work, but we overpowered him. 
We contrived to make him twist himself round 
the shaft of the lance, and then prepared to 
convey him out of the forest. I stood at his 
head, and held it firm under my arm ; one ne- 
gro supported the belly, and the other the tail. 
In this order we began to move slowly towards 
home, and reached it after resting ten times : 
for the snake was too heavy for us to support 
him without stopping to recruit our strength. 
As we proceeded onwards with him, he fought 
hard for freedom, but it was all in vain." — 
(pp. 202—204.) 

One of these combats we should have 
thought sufiicient for glory, and for the inte- 
rest of the British Museum. But Hercules 
killed two snakes, and Mr. Waterton would 
not be content with less. 

" There was a path where timber had for- 
merly been dragged along. Here I observed 
a young coulacanara, ten feet long, slowly 
moving onwards ; I saw he was not thick 
enough to break my arm, in case he got twist- 
ed round it. There was not a moment to be 
lost. I laid hold of his tail with the left hand, 
29 



one knee being on the ground ; with the right 
I took off my hat, and held it as you would 
hold a shield for defence. 

" The snake instantly turned, and came on 
at me, with his head about a yard from the 
ground, as if to ask me what business I had 
to take liberties with his tail. I let him come, 
hissing and open-mouthed, within two feet of 
my face, and then, with all the force I was 
master of, I drove my fist, shielded by my hat, 
full in his jaws. He was stunned and con- 
founded by the blow, and ere he could recover 
himself, I had seized his throat with both 
hands, in such a position that he could not 
bite me ; I then allowed him to coil himself 
round my body, and marched oft^ with him as 
my lawful prize. He pressed me hard, but not 
alarmingly so." — (pp. 206, 207.) 

When the body of the large snake began to 
smell, the vultures immediately arrived. The 
king of the vultures first gorged himself, and 
then retired to a large tree, while his subjects 
consumed the remainder. It does not appear 
that there was any favouritism. When the 
king was full, all the mob vultures ate alike ; 
neither could Mr. Waterton perceive that there 
was any division into Catholic and Protestant 
vultures, or that the majority of the flock 
thought it essentially vulturish to exclude one- 
third of their numbers from the blood and en- 
trails. The vulture, it is remarkable, never 
eats live animals. He seems to abhor every 
thing which has not the relish of putrescence 
and flavour of death. The following is a cha- 
racteristic specimen of the little inconveni- 
ences to which travellers are liable, who sleep 
on the feather beds of the forest. To see a rat 
in a room in Europe insures a night of horror. 
Every thing is by comparison. 

" About midnight, as I was lying awake, and 
in great pain, I heard the Indian say, ' Massa, 
massa, you no hear tiger 1' I listened atten- 
tively, and heard the softly sounding tread of 
his feet as he approached us. The moon had 
gone down ; but every now and then we could 
get a glance of him by the light of our fire; he 
was the jaguar, for I could see the spots on 
his body. Had I wished to have fired at him, 
I was not able to take a sure aim, for I was in 
such pain that I could not turn myself in my 
hammock. The Indian would have fired, but 
I would not allow him to do so, as I wanted to 
see a little more of our new visitor ; for it is 
not every day or night that the traveller is 
favoured with an undisturbed sight of the 
jaguar in his own forests. 

" Whenever the fire got low, the jaguar 
came a little nearer, and when the Indian re- 
newed it, he retired abruptly; sometimes he 
would come within twenty yards, and then we 
had a view of him, sitting on his hind legs 
like a dog; sometimes he moved slowly to 
and fro, and at other times we could hear him 
mend his pace, as if impatient. At last the 
Indian, not relishing the idea of having such 
company in the neighbourhood, could contain 
himself no longer, and set up a most tremen- 
dous yell. The jaguar bounded off like a race- 
horse, and returned no more ; it appeared by 
the print of his feet next morning that he was . 
a full-grown jaguar." — (pp. 212, 213.) 



22e 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



We have seen Mr. Waterton fling himself 
upon a snake ; we shall now mount him upon 
a crocodile, undertaking that this shall be the 
last of his feats exhibited to the reader. He 
had baited for a cayman or crocodile, the hook 
was swallowed, and the object was to pull the 
animal up and to secure him. " If you pull 
him up," say the Indians, " as soon as he sees 
you on the brink of the river, he will run at 
you and destroy you." "Never mind," says 
our traveller, " pull away, and leave the rest 
to me." And accordingly he places himself 
upon the shore with the mast of the canoe in 
his hand, ready to force it down the throat of the 
crocodile as soon as he makes his appearance. 

" By the time the cayman was within two 
yards of me, I saw he was in a state of fear 
and perturbation; I instantly dropped the 
mast, sprung up, and jumped on his back, turn- 
ing half round as I vaulted, so that I gained 
my seat with my face in a right position. I 
immediately seized his fore legs, and, by main 
force, twisted them on his back ; thus they 
served me for a bridle. 

"He now seemed to have recovered from 
his surprise, and probably fancying himself in 
hostile company, he began to plunge furiously, 
and lashed the sand with his long and power- 
ful tail. I was out of reach of the strokes of 
it, by being near his head. He continued to 
plunge and strike, and make my seat very un- 
comfortable. It must have been a fine sight 
for an unoccupied spectator. 

" The people roared out in triumph, and were 
so vociferous, that it was some time before they 
heard me tell them to pull me and my beast of 
burden farther in land. I was apprehensive the 
rope might break, and then there would have 
been every chance of going down to the regions 
under water with the cayman. That would 
have been more perilous than Arion's marine 
morning ride : — 

' Delphini insidens, vada caerula sulcat Arion.' 

"The people now dragged us above forty 
yards on the sand ; it was the first and last 
time I was ever on a cayman's back. Should 
it be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I 
would answer — I hunted some years with Lord 
Darlington's fox hounds."— (pp. 231, 232.) 

The Yorkshire gentlemen have long been 
famous for their equestrian skill ; but Mr. Wa- 
terton is the first among them of whom it 
could be said, that he has a fine hand upon a 
crocodile. This accursed animal, so ridden 
by Mr. Waterton, is the scourge and terror of 
all the large rivers in South America near the 
line. Their boldness is such, that a cayman 
has sometimes come out of the Oroonoque, at 
Angustura, near the public walks where the 
people were assembled, seized a full-grown 
man, as big as Sir William Curtis after din- 
ner, and hurried him into the bed of the river 
for his food. The governor of Angusfura 
witnessed this circumstance himself. 

Our Eboracic traveller had now been nearly 
eleven months in the desert, and not in vain. 
Shall we express our doubts, or shall we con- 
fidently state at once the immense wealth he 
had acquired ! — a prodigious variety of in- 
sects, two hundred and thirty birds, ten land- 
tortoises, five armadillos, two large serpents. 



a sloth, an ant-bear, and a cayman. At Liver- 
pool, the custom-house otficers, men ignorant 
of Linnaeus, got hold of his collection, detained 
it six weeks, and, in spite of remonstrances to 
the treasury, he was forced to pay very high 
duties. This is really perfectly absurd ; that 
a man of science cannot bring a pickled ar- 
madillo, for a collection of natural history, 
without paying a tax for it. This surely must 
have happened in the dark days of Nicolas. 
We cannot doubt but that such paltry exac- 
tions have been swept away, by the manly 
and liberal policy of Robinson and Huskisson. 
That a great people should compel an indivi- 
dual to make them a payment before he can 
be permitted to land a stuff'ed snake upon their 
shores, is, of all the paltry custom-house rob- 
beries we ever heard of, the most mean and 
contemptible — but Major reruni ordo nascitur. 

The fourth journey of Mr. Waterton is to 
the United States. It is pleasantly written; 
but our author does not appear as much at 
home among men as among beasts. Shootingyi 
stuffing, and pursuing are his occupations.' 
He is lost in places where there are no bushes/" 
snakes, nor Indians — but he is full of good and 
amiable feeling wherever he goes. We can- 
not avoid introducing the following passage: — 

" The steamboat from Quebec to Montreal 
had above five hundred Irish emigrants on 
board. They were going ' they hardly knew ' 
whither,' far away from dear Ireland. It made • 
one's heart ache to see them all huddled to- i 
gether, without any expectation of ever revisit- I 
ing their native soil. We feared that the sor- ■ 
row of leaving home for ever, the miserable' ' 
accommodations on board the ship which had ' 
brought them away, and the tossing of the 
angry ocean, in a long and dreary voyage, 
would have rendered them callous to good be- 
haviour. But it was quite otherwise. They 
conducted themselves with great propriety. 
Every American on board seemed to feel for 
them. And then*' they were so full of wretch- 
edness. Need and oppression stared within 
their eyes. Upon their backs hung ragged 
misery. The world was not their friend.' 
'Poor, dear Ireland,' exclaimed an aged fe- 
male, as I was talking to her, 'I shall never 
see it any more !' " — (pp. 259, 260.) 

And thus it is in every region of the earth \ 
There is no country where an Englishman can 
set his foot, that he does not meet these mise- 
rable victims of English cruelty and oppres- 
sion — banished from their country by the stu- 
pidity, bigotry, and meanness of the English 
people, who trample on their liberty and con- 
science, because each man is afraid, in an- 
other reign, of being out of favour, and losing 
his share in the spoil. 

We are always glad to see America praised 
(slavery excepted). And yet there is still, we 
fear, a party in this country, who are glad to 
pay their court to the timid and the feeble, by 
sneering at this great spectacle of human hap- 
piness. We never think of it without con- 
sidering it as a great lesson to the people of 
England, to look into their own affairs, to 
watch and to suspect their rulers, and not to 
be defrauded of happiness and money by pom- 
pous names, and false pretences. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



22Y 



"Our western brother is in possession of a 
'Coiintry replete with every thing that can con- 
tribute to the happiness and comfort of man- 
kind. His code of laws, purified by experi-^ 
ence and common sense, has fully answered' 
the expectations of the public. By acting up 
to the true spirit of this code, he has reaped 
immense advantages from it. His advance- 
ment, as a nation, has been rapid beyond all 
calculation; and, young as he is, it may be 
remarked, without any impropriety, that he is 
now actually reading a salutary lesson to the 
rest of the civilized world." — (p. 273.) 

Now, what shall we say, after all, of Mr. 
Waterlon ] That he has spent a great part of 
his life in wandering in the wild scenes he de- 
scribes, and that he describes them with enter- 
taining zeal and real feeling. His stories draw 
largely sometimes on our faith; but a man 



who lives in the woods of Cayenne must do 
many odd things, and see many odd things- 
things utterly unknown to the dwellers in 
Hackney and Highgate. We do not want to 
rein up Mr. Waterton too tightly — because we 
are convinced he goes best with his head free. 
But a little less of apostrophe, and some faint 
suspicion of his own powers of humour, 
would improve this gentleman's style. As it 
is, he has a considerable talent at describing. 
He abounds with good feeling; and has writ- 
ten a very entertaining book, which hurries 
the reader out of his European parlour, into 
the heart of tropical forests, and gives, over 
the rules and the cultivation of the civilized 
parts of the earth, a momentary superiority to 
the freedom of the savage, and the wild beau- 
ties of nature. We honestly recommend the 
book to our readers : it is well worth the perusal. 



MAN TRAPS AND SPRING GUNS.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1821.] 



Most of our readers will remember, that we 
very lately published an article upon the use 
of steel traps and spring guns ; and, in the 
•course of discussion, had occasion to animad- 
vert upon the report of Mr. Justice Best's 
judgment, in the case of Ilott and Wilkes, as 
reported in Chetwynd's Edition of Burn's Jus- 
tice, published in the spring of the present year. 
In the Morning Chronicle, of the 4th of June, 
1821, Mr. Justice Best is reported to have made 
the following observations in the King's 
Bench : — 

" Mr. Justice Best said, Mr. Chetwynd's book 
having been mentioned by my learned brother 
Bayley, I must take this opportunity, not with- 
out some pain, of adverting to what I am re- 
ported, in his work, to have said in the case 
of Ilott V. Wilkes, and of correcting a most 
gross misrepresentation. I am reported to 
have concurred with the other judges, and to 
have delivered my judgment at considerable 
length, and then to have said, ' This case has 
been discussed at the bar, as if these engines 
were exclusively resorted to for the protection 
of game; but I consider them as lawfully ap- 
plicable to the protection of every species of 
property against unlawful trespassers.' This 
is not what I stated ; but the part which I wish 
more particularly to deny, as ever having said, 
or even conceived, is this — ' But if even they 
might not lawfully be used for the protection 
of game, I, for one, should be extremely glad 
to adopt such means, if they were found suffi- 
cient for that purpose.' I confess I am sur- 
prised that this learned person should sup- 
pose, from the note of any one, that any per- 
son who ever sat in a court of justice as a 



* Re-ports of Cases argued and determined in the Conrt 
of King's Bench, in Hilary Term, GOth Geo. III. 1820.— 
By Richard V. Barnewall, of Lincoln's Inn, Esq.,Bar- 
riBter-at-law, and Edward H. Alderson, of the Inner 
Temple, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. Vol. III. Part II. 
London, 1820. 



judge could talk such wicked nonsense as I 
am made to talk; and I am surprised that he Jjj. 
should venture to give the authority he does ' 
for what he has published ; for I find, that the 
reference he gives in the appendix to his book 
is 3 Barn, and Aid. 304, where there is a cor- 
rect report of that case, and where it will be 
found that every word uttered by me is directly 
contrary to what I am supposed, by Mr. Chet- 
wynd's statement of the case, to have said. I 
don't trouble the court with reading the whole 
of what I did say on that occasion, but I will 
just say that I said—' My brother Bayley has 
illustrated this case by the question which he 
asked, namely, Can you indict a man for put- 
ting spring guns in his enclosed fieldl I think 
the question put by Lord Chief Justice Gibbs, 
in the case of Dean v. Clayton, in the Com- 
mon Pleas, a still better illustration, viz. Can 
you justify entering into enclosed lands to take 
away guns so setl If both these questions 
must be answered in the negative, it cannot be 
unlawful to set spring guns in an enclosed 
field, at a distance from any road, giving such 
notice that they are set as to render it in the 
highest degree probable that all persons in the 
neighbourhood must know that they are so set. 
Humanity requires that the fullest notice pos- 
sible should be given ; and the law of England 
will not sanction what is inconsistent with hu- 
manity.' A popular work has quoted this re- 
port from Mr. Chetwynd's work, but has omit- 
ted this important line (which omission re- 
minds one of the progress of a thing, the name 
of which one does not choose to mention), 
'that I had concurred in what had fallen from 
the other judges ; and omitting that line, they 
state, that one had said, ' It is my opinion, that 
with notice, or without notice, this might be 
done.' Now, concurring with the other judgec, 
it is impossible I should say that. It is right 
that this should be corrected; not that I enter- 



228 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tain any angry feeling, for too much time has 
elapsed since then for any anger to remain on 
my mind; but all I claim, with respect to the 
observations made in that work, severe as they 
are (and I, for one, feel that I shoitld deserve 
no mercy if I should ever entertain such doc- 
trines), is, that I may not be misrepresented. 
It is not necessary for me, in this place, to say, 
that no man entertains more horror of the doc- 
trine than I am supposed to have laid down than 
I do, that the life of man is to be treated lightly 
and indifferently, in comparison with the pre- 
servation of game, and the amusement of sport- 
ing ; that the laws of humanity are to be vio- 
lated for the sake merely of preserving the 
amusement of game. I am sure no man can 
justly impute to me such wicked doctrines. 
It is unnecessary for me to say, that I enter- 
tain no such sentiments ; and therefore I hope 
I shall be excused, not on account of my own 
feelings, but as far as the public are interested 
in the character of a judge, in saying, that no 
person should blame a judge for what has been 
unjustly put into his mouth." 

His lordship's speech is reported in the New 
Times of the same date, as follows : — 

" Mr. Justice Best said, 'My brother Baylej' 
has quoted Mr. Chetwynd's edition of Burn : I 
am surprised that the learned author of that 
work should have made me talk such mis- 
chievous nonsense, as he has given to the 
public, m a report of my judgment, in the case 
of Ilott and Wilkes. I am still more surprised, 
that he should have suffered this judgment to 
remain uncorrected, after he had seen a true 
report of the case in Barnewall and Alderson, 
to which report he has referred in his appen- 
dix.' Mr. Chetwynd's report has the follow- 
ing passage : — ' Mr. Justice Best concurr ;d 
with the other judges.' His lordship cl^i- 
cluded as follows : — ' This case has been dis- 
cussed at the bar, as if these inquiries were 
exclusively resorted to for the protection of 
game; but I considered them as lawfully ap- 
plicable to the protection of every species of 
property against unlawful trespassers. But 
if even they might not lawfully be used for the 
protection of game, I for o?ie should be extremely 
glad to adopt such measures, if they were found 
sufficient for that purpose.'' 

" A popular periodical work contains the 
passage just cited, with the omission of the 
words ' concurred with the other judges.' Of 
this omission I have reason to complain, be- 
cause, if it had been inserted, the writer of the 
article could not have said, ' It follows, that a 
man may put his fellow-creatures to death for 
any infringement of his property, for picking 
the sloes and blackberries off his hedges ; for 
breaking a few dead sticks out of them by 
night or by day, with resistance or without re- 
sistance, with learning or without learning.' 
The judges with whom Mr. Chetwynd makes 
me concur in opinion, all gave their judgment 
on the ground of due notice being given. I 
do not complain of the other observations con- 
tained in this work; they would have been 
deserved by me had I ever uttered such an 
opinion as the report of Mr. Chetwynd has 
Ftated me to have delivered. The whole of 
what I said will be found to be utterly incon- 



sistent with the statement, by those who will 
read the case in 'Barnewall and Alderson.' I 
will only trouble the court with the passage 
which will be found in the report of my judg- 
ment, in ' 3 Barnewall and Alderson, 319 :' 'It 
cannot be unlawful to set spring guns in an 
enclosed field, at a distance from any road,, 
giving such notice that they are set, as to ren- 
der it in the highest degree probable that all 
persons in the neighbourhood must know that 
they are so set. Humanity required that the 
fullest notice possible should be given ; and the 
law of England will not sanction what is in- 
consistent with humanity.' I have taken the 
first opportunity of saying this, because I think. 
it of importance to the public that such a mis- 
representation of the opinion of one of the 
judges should not be circulated without some 
notice." 

We subjoin the report of Messrs. Barnewall 
and Alderson, here alluded to, and allowed by 
Mr. Justice Best to be correct: — 

" Best, J. The act of the plaintiff could only 
occasion mere nominal damage to the wood of 
the defendant. The injury that the plaintiff's 
trespass has brought upon himself is extremely 
severe. In such a case, one cannot, without 
pain, decide against the action. But we must 
not allow our feelings to induce us to lose 
sight of the principles which are essential to 
the rights of property. The prevention of in- 
trusion upon property is one of these rights ; 
and every proprietor is alloM'ed to use the force 
that is absolutely necessary to vindicate it. If 
he uses more force than is absolutely necessary, 
he renders himself responsible for all the con- 
sequences of the excess. Thus, if a man 
comes on my land, I cannot lay hands on him 
to remove him, until I have desired him to go 
off. If he will not depart on request, I cannot 
proceed immediately to beat him, but must en- 
deavour to push him off. If he is too powerful 
for me, I cannot use a dangerous weapon, but 
must first call in aid other assistance. I am. I 
speaking of out-door property, and of cases in I 
which no felony is to be apprehended. It is ' 
evident, also, that this doctrine is only appli- 
cable to trespasses committed in the presence 
of the owner of the property trespassed on. 
When the owner and his servants are absent 
at the time of the trespass, it can only be re- 
pelled by the terror of spring guns, or other 
instruments of the same kind. There is, in 
such cases, no possibility of proportioning the 
resisting force to the obstinacy and violence 
of the trespasser, as the owner of the close 
may and is required to do where he is present. 
There is no distinction between the mode of 
defence of one species of out-door properly and 
another (except in cases where the taking or 
breaking into the property amounts to felony). 
If the owner of woods cannot set spring guns 
in his woods, the owner of an orchard, or of a 
field with potatoes or turnips, or any other 
crop usually the object of plunder, cannot set 
them in such field. How, then, are these kinds 
of property to be protected, at a distance from 
the residence of the owner, in the night, and 
in the absence of his servants T It has been 
said, that the law has provided remedies for 
any injuries to such things by action. But the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



229 



offender must be detected before he can be 
subjected to an action; and the expense of 
continual watching for this purpose would often 
exceed the value of the property to be protect- 
ed. If we look at the subject in this point of 
view, we may find, amongst poor tenants, who 
are prevented from paying their rents by the 
plunder of their crops, men who are more 
objects of our compassion than the wanton 
trespasser, who brings on himself the injury 
which he suffers. If an owner of a close can- 
not set spring guns, he cannot put glass bot- 
tles or spikes on the top of a wall, or even 
have a savage dog, to prevent persons from 
entering his yard. It has been said, in argu- 
ment, that you may see the glass bottles or 
spikes; and it is admitted, that if the exact 
spot where these guns are set was pointed out 
to the trespasser, he could not maintain any 
action for the injury he received from one of 
them. As to seeing the glass bottles or spikes, 
that must depend on the circumstance whether 
it be light or dark at the time of the trespass. 
But what difference does it make, whether the 
trespasser be told the gun is set in such a spot, 
or that there are guns in different parts of such 
a field, if he has no right to go on any part of 
that field 1 It is absurd to say you may set 
the guns, provided you tell the trespasser ex- 
actly where they are set, because then the set- 
ting them could answer no purpose. My bro- 
ther Bayley has illustrated this case, by the 
question which he asked, namely. Can you 
indict a man for putting spring guns in his 
enclosed field ] I think the question put by 
Lord C. J. Gibbs, in the case of the Common 
Pleas, a still better illustration, viz. : Can you 
justify entering into enclosed lands, to take 
away guns so set 1 If both these questions 
must be answered in the negative, it cannot be 
unlawful to set spring guns in an enclosed 
field, at a distance from any road, giving such 
notice that they are set as to render it in the 
highest degree probable that all persons in the 
neighbourhood must know that they are so set. 
Humanity requires that the fullest notice pos- 
sible should be given : and the law of England 
will not sanction what is inconsistent with hu- 
manity. It has been said in argument, that it 
is a principle of law, that you cannot do in- 
directly what you are not permitted to do di- 
rectly. This principle is not applicable to the 
case. You cannot shoot a man that comes on 
your land, because you may turn him off by 
means less hurtful to him ; and, therefore, if 
you saw him walking in your field, and were 
to invite him to proceed on his walk, knowing 
that he must tread on a wire, and so shoot 
himself with a spring gun, you would be liable 
to all the consequences that would follow. 
The invitation to him to pursue his walk is 
doing indirectly what, by drawing the trigger 
of a gun with your own hand, is done directly. 
But the case is just the reverse, if, instead of 
inviting him to walk on your land, you tell 
him to keep off, and warn him of what will 
follow if he does not. It is also said, that it is 
a maxim of law, that you must so use your 
own property as not to injure another's. This 
maxim I admit; but I deny its application to 
the case of a maa who comes to trespass on 



my property. It applies only to cases where 
a man has only a transient property, such as 
in the air or water that passes over his land, 
and which he must not corrupt by nuisance ; 
or where a man has a qualified property, as in 
land near another's ancient windows, or in 
land over which another has a right of way. 
In the first case, he must do nothing on his 
land to stop the light of the windows, or, in the 
second, to obstruct the way. This case has 
been argued, as if it appeared in it that the 
guns were set to preserve game ; but that is 
not so : they were set to prevent trespasses on 
the lands of the defendant. Without, however, 
saying in whom the property of game is vested, 
I say, that a man has a right to keep persons 
off his lands, in order to preserve the game. 
Much money is expended in the protection of 
game ; and it would be hard, if, in one night, 
when the keepers are absent, a gang of poach- 
ers might destroy what has been kept at so 
much cost. If you do not allow men of landed 
estates to preserve their game, you will not 
prevail on them to reside in the country. Their 
poor neighbours will thus lose their protection 
and kind offices ; and the government the sup- 
port that it derives from an independent, en- 
lightened, and unpaid magistracy." 

As Mr. Justice Best denies that he did say 
what a very respectable and grave law publi- 
cation reported him to have said, and as Mr. 
Chetwynd and his reporter have made no 
attempt to vindicate their report, of course our 
observations cease to be applicable. There is 
certainly nothing in the term report of Mr. 
Justice Best's speech which calls for any de- 
gree of moral criticism; — nothing but what a 
respectable and temperate judge might fairly 
have uttered. Had such been the report cited 
in Burn, it never would have drawn from us 
one syllable of reprehension. 

We beg leave, however, to observe, that we 
have never said that it was Mr. Justice Best's 
opinion, as reported in Chetwynd, that a man 
might be put to death without notice, but with- 
out warning ,- by which we meant a very dif- 
ferent thing. If notice was given on boards, 
that certain grounds were guarded by watch- 
men with fire-arms, the watchmen, feeling per- 
haps some little respect for human life, would 
probably call out to the man to stand and de- 
liver himself up : — " Stop, or I'll shoot you !" 
" Stand, or you are a dead man !" — or some 
such compunctious phrases as the law compels 
living machines to use. But the .trap can give 
no such warning — can present to the intruder 
no alternative of death or surrender. Now, 
these different modes of action in the dead or 
the living guard, is what we alluded to in the 
words ivithout warning. We meant to cha- 
racterize the ferocious, unrelenting nature of 
the means used — and the words are perfectly 
correct and applicable, after all the printed 
notices in the world. Notice is the communi- 
cation of something about to happen, after some 
little interval of time. Warning is the com- 
munication of some imminent danger. Nobody 
gives another notice that he will immediately 
shoot him through the head — or warns him 
that he will be a dead man in less than thirty 
years. This, and not the disingenuous pur- 
U 



230 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pose ascribed to us by Mr. Justice Best, is the 
explanation of the offending words. We are 
thoroughly aware that Mr. Justice Best was an 
advocate for notice, and never had the most 
distant intention of representing his opinion 
otherwise : and we really must say, that (if the 
report had been correct) there never was a 
judicial speech where there was so little ne- 
cessity for having recourse to the arts of mis- 
representation. We are convinced, however, 
that the report is not correct — and we are 
heartily glad it is not. There is in the Morn- 
ing Chronicle an improper and offensive 
phrase, which (now we know Mr. Justice 
Best's style better) we shall attribute to the 
reporters, and pass over without further notice. 
It would seem, from the complaint of the 
learned judge, that we had omitted something 
in the middle of the quotation from Chetwynd ; 
whereas we have quoted every word of the 
speech as Chetwynd has given it, and only 
began our quotation after the preliminary ob- 
servations, because we had not the most dis- 
tant idea of denying that Mr. Justice Best con- 
sidered ample notice as necessary to the le- 
gality of these proceedings. 

There are passages in the Morning Chronicle 
already quoted, and in the term report, which 
we must take the liberty of putting in juxtapo- 
sition to each other. 



Mr. Justice Best 
in the Morning 

Chronicle of the Mr. Justice Best in the Term Reports, 
ith of June, 1821. Barnewall and Mderson. 
It is not necessa- When the owner and his servants 
ry for me in this are absent at the time of the tres- 
place to say, that pass, it can only be repelled by the 
no man entertains terror of spring guns, or other in- 
more horror of the struments of the same kind. There 
doctrine I am sup- is, in such cases, no possibility of 
posed to have laid proportioning the resisting force to 
down than I do, the obstinacy and violence of the 
that the life of man trespasser, as the owner of the 
is to be treated close may, and is required to do, 
lightly and indif- when he is present.— 317. 
ferently, in compa- Without saying in whom the pro- 
rison with the pre- perty of game is vested, I say that 
servation of game a man has a right to keep persons 
and the amuse- off his lands, in order to preserve 
ment of sporting— the game. Much money is expend- 
that the laws of ed on the protection of game ; and 
humanity are to be it would be hard if, in one night, 
violated for the when the keepers are absent, a gang 
sake merely of pre- of poachers might destroy what has 
serving the amuse- been kept at so much cost.— 320. 
ment of game. I If an owner of a close cannot set 
am sure no man spring guns, he cannot put glass 
can justly impute bottles or spikes on the top of a 
to me such wicked wall. — 318. 

doctrines ; it is un- If both these questions must be 

necessary for me answered in the negative, it cannot 

to say I entertain be unlawful to set spring guns in an 

no such senti- enclosed field, at a distance from any 

ments. road ; giving such notice that they 

In Barnewall and are set, as to render it in the highest 

Alderson there is a degree probable that all persons in 

correct report of the neighbourhood must know they 

that case. — Morn, are so set. Humanity requires that 

Chron. the fullest notice possible should be 
given ; and the law of England will 
not sanction what is inconsistent 
with humanity. — Barnewall and Al- 
derson, 319. 

There is, perhaps, some little inconsistency 
in these opposite extracts; but we have not the 
smallest wish to insist upon it. We are tho- 
roughly and honestly convinced that Mr. Jus- 
tice Best's horror at the destruction of human 
life for the mere preservation of game is quite 
sincere. It is impossible, indeed, that any 
human being, of common good nature, could 



entertain a different feeling upon the subject, 
when it is earnestly pressed upon him; and 
though, perhaps, there may be judges upon the 
bench more remarkable for imperturbable 
apathy, we never heard Mr. Justice Best ac- 
cused of ill-nature. In condescending to notice 
our observations, in destroying the credit of 
Chetwynd's report, and in withdrawing the 
canopy of his name from the bad passions of 
country gentlemen ; he has conferred a real 
favour upon the public. 

Mr. Justice Best, however, must excuse us 
for saying, that we are not in the slightest 
degree convinced by his reasoning. We shall 
suppose a fifth judge to have delivered his , 
opinion in the case of Ilotl against Wilkes, and 
to have expressed himself in the following 
manner. But we must caution Mr. Chetwynd 
against introducing this fifth judge in his next 
edition of Burn's Justice ; and we assure him 
that he is only an imaginary personage. 

" My Brother Best justly observes, that pre- 
vention of intrusion upon private property is a jj 
right which every proprietor may act upon,. |] 
and use force to vindicate — the force absolutely 
necessary for such vindication. If any man 
intrude upon another's lands, the proprietor 
must first desire him to go off, then lay hands 
upon the intruder, then push him off; and if 
that will not do, call in aid or other assistance,, 
before he uses a dangerous weapon. If the 
proprietor uses more force than is absolutely 
necessary, he renders himself responsible for 
all the consequences of the excess. In this 
doctrine I cordially concur ; and admire (I am 
sure, with him) the sacred regard which our 
law everywhere exhibits for the life and safety 
of man — its tardiness and reluctance to pro- 
ceed to extreme violence ; but my learned 
brother then observes as follows : — ' It is evi- 
dent, also, that this doctrine is only applicable 
to trespasses committed in the presence of the 
owner of the property trespassed upon. When 
the owner and his servants are absent at the 
time of the trespass, it can only be repelled by 
the terror of spring guns, or other instruments 
of the same kind.' If Mr. Justice Best means, 
by the terror of the spring guns, the mere alarm 
that the notice excites — or the powder without 
the bullets — noise without danger — it is not 
worth while to raise an argument upon the 
point ; for, absent or present, notice or no no- 
tice, such means must always be lawful. But 
if my brother Best means that in the absence 
of the proprietor, the intruder may be killed by 
such instruments, after notice, this is a doctrine 
to which I never can assent; because it rests 
the life and security of the trespasser upon the 
accident of the proprietor's presence. In that 
presence there must be a most cautious and 
nicely graduated scale of admonition and harm- 
less compulsion ; the feelings and safety of the 
intruder are to be studiously consulted ; but if 
business or pleasure call the proprietor away, 
the intruder may be instantly shot dead by ma- 
chinery. Such a state of law, I must be per- 
mitted to say, is too incongruous for this or any 
other country. 

"If the alternative is the presence of the 
owner and his servants or such dreadful con- 
sequences as these, why are the owner or 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



231 



his servants allowed to be absent 1 If the ulti- 1 
mate object in preventing such intrusions is 
pleasure in sporting, it is better that pleasure 
should be rendered more expensive, than that 
the life of man should be rendered so preca- 
rious. But why is it impossible to proportion 
the resisting force to the obstinacy of the tres- 
passer in the absence of the proprietor ] Why 
may not an intruder be let gently down into 
five feet of liquid mud ? — why not caught in a 
box which shall detain him till the next morn- 
ing 1 — why not held in a toothless trap till the 
proprietor arrives ? — such traps as are sold in 
all the iron shops in this city 1 We are bound, 
according to my brother Best, to inquire if 
these means have been previously resorted to; 
for upon his own principle, greater violence 
must not be used, where less will suffice for the 
removal of the intruder. 

" There are crops, I admit, of essential im- 
portance to agriculture, which will not bear 
the expense of eternal vigilance; and if there 
are districts where such crops are exposed to 
such serious and disheartening depredation, 
that may be a good reason for additional seve- 
rity ; but then it must be the severity of the 
legislator, and not of the proprietor. If the le- 
gislature enacts fine and imprisonment as the 
punishment for stealing turnips, it is not to be 
endured that the proprietor should award to 
this crime the punishment of death. If the 
fault is not sufficiently prevented by the punish- 
ments already in existence, he must wait till 
the frequency and flagrancy of the offence 
attract the notice, and stimulate the penalties 
of those who make laws. He must not make 
laws (and those very bloody laws) for himself. 

" I do not say that the setter of the trap or 
gun allures the trespasser into it; but I say 
that the punishment he intends for the man 
who trespasses after notice, is death. He 
covers his spring gun with furze, and gives it 
the most natural appearance he can ; and in 
that gun he places the slugs by which he means 
to kill the trespasser. This killing of an un- 
challenged, unresisting person, I really cannot 
help considering to be as much murder as if 
the proprietor had shot the trespasser with his 
gun. Giving it all the attention in my power, 
I am utterly at a loss to distinguish between 
the two cases. Does it signify whose hand or 
whose foot pulls the string which moves the 
trigger? — the real murderer is he who pre- 
pares the instrument of death, and places it in 
a position that such hand or foot may touch it, 
for the purposes of destruction. My brother 
Holroyd says, the trespasser who has had a 
notice of guns being set in the wood is the real 
voluntary agent who pulls the trigger. But I 
most certainly think that he is not. He is the 
animal agent, but not the rational agent — he 
does not intend to put himself to death ; but he 
foolishly trusts in his chance of escaping, and 
is any thing but a voluntary agent in firing the 
. gun. If a trespasser were to rush into a wood, 
meaning to seek his own destruction — to hunt 
for the wire, and when found, to pull it, he 
would indeed be the agent, in the most philo- 
sophical sense of the word. But, after enter- 
ing the wood, he does all he can to avoid the 
gun — keeps clear of every suspicious place, 



and is baffled only by the superior cunning of 
him who planted the gun. How the firing of 
the gun thea can be called his act — his volun- 
tary act — I am at a loss to conceive. The 
practice has unfortunately become so common, 
that the first person convicted of such a mur- 
der, and acting under the delusion' of right, 
might be a fit object for royal mercy. Still, in 
my opinion, such an act must legally be con- 
sidered as murder. 

"It has been asked, if it be an indictable 
offence to set such guns in a man's own ground : 
but let me first put a much greater question — 
Is it murder to kill any man with such instru- 
ments 1 If it is, it must be indictable to set 
them. To place an instrument for the purpose 
of committing murder, and to surrender (as in 
such cases you must surrender) all control 
over its operation, is clearly an indictable 
offence. 

" All my brother judges have delivered their 
opinions as if these guns were often set for 
the purposes of terror, and not of destruction. 
To this I can only say, that the moment any 
man puts a bullet into his spring gun, he has 
some other purpose than that of terror; and' 
if he does not put a bullet there, he can never 
be the subject of argument in this court. 

" My Lord Chief Justice can see no distinc- 
tion between the case of tenter-hooks upon a 
wall, and the placing of spring guns, as far as 
the lawfulness of both is concerned. But the 
distinctions I take between the case of tenter- 
hooks upon a wall, and the setting of spring 
guns, are founded — 1st, in the magnitude of 
the evil inflicted; 2dly, in the great difference 
of the notice which the trespasser receives ; 
3dly, in the very different evidence of crimi- 
nal intention in the trespasser ; 4thly, in the 
greater value of the property invaded; 5thly, 
in the greater antiquity of the abuse. To cut 
the fingers, or to tear the hand, is of course a 
more pardonable injury than to kill. The 
trespasser, in the daytime, sees the spikes ; 
and by day or night, at all events, he sees or 
feels the wall. It is impossible he should not 
understand the nature of such a prohibition, 
or imagine that his path lies over this wall ; 
whereas the victim of the spring gun may 
have gone astray, may not be able to read, or 
may first cross the armed soil in the night 
time, when he cannot read ; — and so he is 
absolutely Avithout any notice at all. In the 
next place, the slaughtered man may be per- 
fectly innocent in his purpose, which the 
scaler of the walls cannot be. No man can 
get to the top of a garden wall without a crimi- 
nal purpose. A garden, by the common con- 
sent and feeling of mankind, contains more 
precious materials than a wood, or a field, and 
may seem to justify a greater jealousy and 
care. Lastly, and for these reasons, perhaps, 
the practice of putting spikes and glass bot- 
tles has prevailed for this century past ; and 
the right so to do has become, from time, and 
the absence of cases, (for the plaintiff, in such 
a case, must acknowledge himself a thief,) 
inveterate. But it is quite impossible, because 
in some trifling instances, and in much more 
pardonable circumstances, private vengeance 
has usurped upon the province of law, that I 



332 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



can, from such slight abuses, confer upon pri- 
vate vengeance the power of life and death. 
On the contrary, I think it my imperious duty 
to contend, that punishment for such offences 
as these is to be measured by the law, and not 
by the exaggerated notions which any indivi- 
dual may form of the importance of his own 
pleasures. It is my duty, instead of making 
one abuse a reason for another, to recall the 
law back to its perfect state, and to restrain as 
much as possible the invention and use of 
private punishments. Indeed, if this wild 
sort of justice is to be tolerated, I see no sort 
of use in the careful adaptation of punish- 
ments to crimes, in the humane labours of the 
lawgiver. Every lord of a manor is his own 
Lycurgus, or rather his own Draco, and the 
great purpose of civil life is defeated. Inter 
nova tormentorum genera machinasque exitiales, 
silent leges. 

" Whatever be the law, the question of hu- 
manity is a separate question. I shall not 
state all I think of that person, who, for the 
presei-vation of game, would doom the inno- 
cent — or the guilty intruder, to a sudden death. 
I will not, however (because I am silent re- 
specting individuals), join in any undeserved 
panegyric of the humanity of the English 
Jaw. I cannot say, at the same moment, that 
the law of England allows such machines to 
be set after public notice ; and that the law of 
England sanctions nothing but what is hu- 
mane. If the law sanctions such practices, it 
sanctions, in my opinion, what is to the last 
degree odious, unchristian, and inhumane. 

" The case of the dog or bull I admit to be 
an analogous case to this : and I say, if a man 
were to keep a dog of great ferocity and power, 
for the express purpose of guarding against 
trespass in woods or fields, and that dog was 
to kill a trespasser, it would be murder in the 
person placing him there for such a purpose. 
It is indifferent to me whether the trespasser 
is slain by animals or machines, intentionally 
brought there for that purpose : he ought not 
to be slain at all. It is murder to use such a 
punishment for such an offence. If a man 
puts a ferocious dog in his yard, to guard his 
houfie from burglary, and that dog strays into 
the neighbouring field and there worries the 
man, there wants, in this case, the murderous 
and malicious spirit. The dog was placed in 
the yard for the legal purpose of guarding the 
house against burglary ; for which crime, if 



caught in the act of perpetrating it, a man. 
may legally be put to death. There was no 
primary intention here of putting a mere tres- 
passer to death. So, if a man keep a ferocious 
bull, not for agricultural purposes, but for the 
express purpose of repelling trespassers, and 
that bull occasion the death of a trespasser, it 
is murder : the intentional injlictixm of death 
by any means for such sort of offences consti- 
tutes the murder .• a right to kill for such rea- 
sons cannot be acquired by the foolhardiness 
of the trespasser, nor by any sort of notice or 
publicity. If a man were to blow a trumpet 
all over the country, and say that he would 
shoot any man who asked him bow he did, 
would he acquire a right to do so by such no- 
tice ? Does mere publication of an unlawful 
intention make the action lawful which fol- 
lows ? If notice is the principle which con- 
secrates this mode of destroying human beings, 
I wish my brothers had been a little more 
clear, or a little more unanimous, as to what 
is meant by this notice. Must the notice be 
always actual, or is it sufficient that it is pro- 
bable ? May these guns act only against 
those who have read the notice, or against all 
who might have read the notice 1 The truth 
is, that the practice is so enormous, and the 
opinions of the most learned men so various, 
that a declaratory law upon the subject is im- 
periously required.* Common humanity re- 
quired it, after the extraordinary difference of 
opinion which occurred in the case of Dean 
and Clayton. 

" For these reasons, I am compelled to differ 
from my learned brothers. We have all, I am 
sure, the common object of doing justice in 
such cases as these ; we can have no possible 
motive for doing otherwise. Where such a 
superiority of talents and numbers is against 
me, I must of course be wrong ; but I think it 
better to publish my own errors, than to sub- 
scribe to opinions of the justice of which I 
am not convinced. To destroy a trespasser 
with such machines, I think would be mur- 
der ; to set such uncontrollable machines for 
the purpose of committing this murder, I think 
would be indictable ; and I am, therefore, of 
opinion, that he who suffers from such ma 
chines has a fair ground of action, in spite of 
any notice ; for it is not in the power of no- 
tice to make them lawful." 

* Tlik baa been dona 



1 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



333 



HAMILTON'S METHOD OF TEACHING LANGUAGES.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1826.] 



We have nothing whatever to do with Mr. 
Hamilton personally. He may be the wisest 
or the weakest of men ; most dexterous or most 
unsuccessful in the exhibition of his system ; 
modest and proper, or prurient and preposte- 
rous in its commendation ; — by none of these 
considerations is his system itself affected. 

The proprietor of Ching's Lozenges must 
necessarily have recourse to a newspaper, to 
rescue from oblivion the merit of his vermi- 
fuge medicines. In the same manner, the 
Amboyna tooth-powder must depend upon the 
Herald and the Morning Post. Unfortunately, 
the system of Mr. Hamilton has been intro- 
duced to the world by the same means, and has 
exposed itself to those suspicions which hover 
over splendid discoveries of genius, detailed 
in the daily papers, and sold in sealed boxes 
at an infinite diversity of prices — but with a 
perpetual inclusion of the stamp, and with an 
equitable discount for undelayed payment. 

It may have been necessary for Mr. Hamil- 
ton to have had recourse to these means of 
making known his discoveries, since he may 
not have had friends whose names and au- 
thority might have attracted the notice of the 
public ; but it is a misfortune to which his 
system has been subjected, and a difficulty 
which it has still to overcome. There is also 
a singular and somewhat ludicrous condition 
of giving warranted lessons ,- by which is meant, 
we presume, that the money is to be returned, 
if the progress is not made. We should be 
curious to know how poor Mr. Hamilton would 
protect himself from some swindling scholar, 
who, having really learnt all that the master 
professed to teach, should counterfeit the gross- 
est ignorance of the Gospel of St. John, and 
refuse to construe a single verse, or to pay a 
farthing 1 

Whether Mr. Hamilton's translations are 
good or bad, is not the question. The point to 
determine is, whether very close interlineal 
translations are helps in learning a language ] 
not whether Mr. Hamilton has executed these 
translations faithfully and judiciously. Whe- 
ther Mr. Hamilton is or is not the inventor of 
the system which bears his name, and what 
his claims to originality may be, are also ques- 
tions of very second-rate importance ; but they 
merit a few observations. That man is not 
the discoverer of any art who first says the 
thing ; but he who says it so long, and so loud. 



* 1, The Oospel of St. John, in Latin, adapted to the 
Hamiltonian System, by an Analytical and Interlineary 
Translation. Executed under the immediate Direction of 
James Hamilton. London, 1824. 

2. The Oospel of St. John, adapted to the Hamiltonian 
System, by an .Analytical and Interlineary 'I'ranslation 
from the Italian, with full Instructions for its Use, even 
by those who are wholly ignorant of the Langua/re. For 
the Use of Schools. By J,\mf.s Hamilton, Author of the 
Hamiltonian System. London, 1825. 
30 



and so clearly, that he compels mankind to 
hear him — the maawho is so deeply impressed 
with the importance of the discovery that he 
will take no denial, but, at the risk of fortune 
and fame, pushes through all opposition, and 
is determined that what he thinks he has dis- 
covered shall not perish for want of a fair 
trial. Other persons had noticed the effect of 
coal-gas in producing light ; but Winsor wor- 
ried the town with bad English for three win- 
ters before he could attract any serious atten- 
tion to his views. Many persons broke stone 
before Macadam, but Macadam felt the disco- 
very more strongly, stated it more clearly, per- 
severed in it with greater tenacity, wielded his 
hammer, in short, with greater force than other 
men, and finally succeeded in bringing his 
plan into general use. 

Literal translations are not only not used in 
our public schools, but are generally discoun- 
tenanced in them. A literal translation, or 
any translation of a school-book, is a contra- 
band article in English schools, which a 
school-master would instantly seize, as a cus- 
tom-house otticer would a barrel of gin. Mr. 
Hamilton, on the other hand, maintains, by 
books and lectures, that all boys ought to be 
allowed to work with literal translations, and 
that it is by far the best method of learning a 
language. If Mr. Hamilton's system is just, it 
is sad trifling to deny his claim to originality, 
by stating that Mr. Locke has said the same 
thing, or that others have said the same thing, 
a century earlier than Hamilton. They have 
all said it so feebly, that their observations 
have passed suh silentio ,■ and if Mr. Hamilton 
succeeds in being heard and followed, to him 
be the glory — because from him have pro- 
ceeded the utility and the advantage. 

The works upon this subject on this plan, 
published before the time of Mr. Hamilton, are 
Montanus's edition of the Bible, with Pignini's 
interlineary Latin version ; Lubin's New Tes- 
tament having the Greek interlined with Latin 
and German ; Abbe L'Olivet's Pensees de Ci- 
ceron ; and a French work by the Abb^ Ra- 
donvilliers, Paris, 1768 — and Locke upon Edu- 
cation. 

One of the first principles of Mr. Hamilton 
is, to introduce very strict literal, interlinear 
translations, as aids to lexicons and dictiona- 
ries, and to make so much use of them as that 
the dictionary or lexicon will be for a long 
time little required. We will suppose the lan- 
guage to be the Italian, and the book selected 
to be the Gospel of St. John. Of this Gospel 
Mr. Hamilton has published a key, of which 
the following is an extract : — 

„ , Nel principio era il Verbo, e il 

In the beginning was the Word, andtht 

Verbo era appresso Dio, e il Verbo era Dio. 

W(yrd was near to God, and the Word was God 

V 2 



S34 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



a 2 Questo era nel principio appresso Dio. 
This was in the beginning near to God. 

„„ Per mezzo di lui tutte le cose furon 
By means of him all the things were 
fatte: e senza di lui nulla fu fatto di 
made .• and witJvout of him nothing was made of 
cio, che e stato fatto. 
that, which is been juade. 

„ . In lui era la vita, e la vita era 
In him was the life, and the life was 
la luce degli uomini : 
the light of the men .- 

„ - E la luce splende tra le tenebre, 
And the light shines among the darknesses, 
e le tenebre hanno non ammessa la. 
and the darknesses have not admitted her. 

^^ g Vi fu un uomo mandato da Dio che 
There was a man sent by God, who 
nomava si Giovanni. 
did name himself John. 

,,„ Questo venne qual testimone, affin di 
This came like as witness, in order of 
rendere testimonianza alia luce, onde per 
to render testimony to the light, ivhence by 
mezzo di lui tutti credessero. 
means of him all might believe." 

In this way Mr. Hamilton contends (and ap- 
pears to us to contend justly), that the language 
may be acquired with much greater ease and 
despatch, than by the ancient method of begin- 
ning with grammar, and proceeding with the 
dictionary. We will presume at present, that 
the only object is to read, not to write, or speak 
Italian, and that the pupil instructs himself 
from the key without a master, and is not 
taught in a class. We wish to compare the 
plan of finding the English word in such a 
literal translation, to that of finding it in dic- 
tionaries — and the method of ending with 
grammar, or of taking the grammar at an 
advanced period of knowledge in th6 language, 
rather than at the beginning. Every one will 
admit, that of all the disgusting labours of life, 
the labour of lexicon and dictionary is the 
most intolerable. Nor is there a greater ob- 
ject of compassion than a fine boy, full of 
animal spirits, set down in a bright sunny day, 
with an heap of unknown words before him, 
to be turned into English, before supper, by 
the help of a ponderous dictionary alone. The 
object in looking into a dictionary can only be 
to exchange an unknown sound for one that is 
known. Now, it seems indisputable, that the 
sooner this exchange is made the better. The 
greater the number of such exchanges which 
can be made in a given time, the greater is the 
progress, the more abundant the copia verbo- 
rum obtained by the scholar. Would it not be 
of advantage if the dictionai y at once opened 
at the required page, and if a self-moving in- 
dex at once pointed to the requisite word 1 Is 
any advantage gained to the world by the time 
employed first in finding the letter P, and then 
in finding the three guiding letters P RI1 
This appears to us to be purg loss of time, 
justifiable only if it is inevitable ; and even 
after this is done, what an infinite multitude 
of difficulties are heaped at once upon the 
wretched beginner ! Instead of being reserved 
for his greater skill and maturity in the lan- 
guage, he must employ himself in discovering 



in which of many senses which his dictionary 
presents the word is to be used ; in .consider- 
ing the case of the substantive, and the syn- 
taxical arrangement in which it is to be placed, 
and the relation it bears to other words. The 
loss of time i?i the merely mechanical part of 
the old plan is immense. We doubt very 
much, if an average boy, between ten and 
fourteen, will look out or find more than sixty 
words in an hour ; we say nothing at present 
of the time employed in thinking of the mean- 
ing of each word when he has found it, but of 
the mere naked discovery of the word in the 
lexicon or dictionary. It must be remembered, 
we say an average boy — not what Master 
Evans, the show boy, can do, nor what Master 
Macarthj/', the boy who is whipt every day, can 
do, but some boy between Macarthy and 
Evans ; and not what this medium boy can 
do, while his mastigophorous superior is 
frowning over him ; but what he actually does, 
when left in the midst of noisy boys, and with 
a recollection, that, by sending to th? neigh- 
bouring shop, he can obtain any quantity of 
unripe gooseberries upon credit. Now, if this 
statement be true, and if there are 10,000 words 
in the Gospel of St. John, here are 160 hours 
employed in the mere digital process of turn- 
ing over leaves ! But, in much less time than 
this, any boy of average quickness might learn, 
by the Hamiltonian method, to construe the 
whole four Gospels, with the greatest accu- 
racy, and the most scrupulous correctness. 
The Interlineal translation of course spares 
the trouble and time of this mechanical la- 
bour. Immediately under the Italian word is 
placed the English word. The unknown 
sound therefore is instantly exchanged for one 
that is known. The labour here spared is of 
the most irksome nature; and it is spared at 
a time of life the most averse to such labour ; 
and so painful is this labour to many boys, 
that it forms an insuperable obstacle to their 
progress. They prefer to be tiogged, or to be 
sent to sea. It is useless to say of any medi- 
cine that it is valuable, if it is so nauseous 
that the patient flings it away. You must give 
me, not the best medicine you have in your 
shop, but the best you can get me to take. 

We have hitherto been occupied with find- 
ing the word ; we will now suppose, after run- 
ning a dirty finger down many columns, and 
after many sighs and groans, that the word is 
found. We presume the little fellow working 
in the true orthodox manner without any trans- 
lation ; he is in pursuit of the Greek word 
BaxAoi, and, after a long chase, seizes it as 
greedily as a bailiff possesses himself of a fu- 
gacious captain. But alas ! the vanity of 
human wishes ! — the never sufficiently to be 
pitied stripling has scarcely congratulated him- 
self upon his success, when he finds Bax^a to 
contain the following meanings in Hederick's 
Lexicon: — 1. Jacio; 2. Jaculor ; 3. Ferio ; 4. 
Figo ; 5. Saucio ; 6. Attingo ; 7. Projicio ; 8. i 
Emitto ; 9. Profundo; 10. Pono; 11. Immitto; I 
13. Trado; 13. Committo; 14. Condo ; 15. 
^difico ; 16. Verso; 17. Flecto.« Suppose the 
little rogue, not quite at home in the Latin , 
tongue, to be desirous of affixing English sig- ll 
nifications to these various words, he has then, ' 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



235 



at the moderate rate of six meanings to every 
Latin word, one hundred and two meanings to 
the word Buxxa>; or if he is content with the 
Latin, he has then only seventeen.* 

Words, in their origin, have a natural or 
primary sense. The accidental associations 
of the people w^ho use it, afterwards give to that 
word a great number of secondary meanings. 
In some words the primary meaning is very 
common, and the secondary meaning very 
rare. In other instances it is just the reverse ; 
and in very many the particular secondary 
meaning'is pointed out by some preposition 
which accompanies it, or some case by which 
it is accompanied. But an accurate translation 
points these things out gradually as it proceeds. 
The common and most probable meanings 
of the word Baxxco, or of any other word, are, 
in the Hamiltonian method, insensibly but 
surely fixed on the mind, which, by the lexi- 
con method, must be done by a tentative pro- 
cess, frequently ending in gross error, noticed 
with peevishness, punished with severity, con- 
suming a great deal of time, and for the most 
part only corrected, after all, by the accurate 
viva voce translation of the master — or, in other 
words, by the Hamiltonian method. 

The recurrence to a translation is treated in 
our schools as a species of imbecility and 
meanness ; just as if there was any other dig- 
nity here than utility, any other object in learn- 
ing languages, than to turn something you do 
not understand, into something you do under- 
stand, and as if that was not the best method 
which effected this object in the shortest and 
simplest manner. Hear upon this point the 
judicious Locke : — " But if such a man cannot 
be got, who speaks good Latin, and being able 
to instruct your son in all these parts of know- 
ledge, will undertake it by this method, the 
next best is to have him taught as near this 
way as may be — which is by taking some easy 
and pleasant book, such as .^sop's Fables, 
and writing the English translation (made as 
literal as it can be) in one line, and the Latin 
words which answer each of them just over it 
in another. These let him read every day over 
and over again, till he perfectly understands 
the Latin ; and then go on to another fable, till 
he be also perfect in that, not omitting what he 
is already perfect in, but sometimes reviewing 
that, to keep it in his memory ; and when he 
comes to write, let these be set him for copies, 
which, with the exercise of his hand, will also 
advance him in Latin. This being a more im- 
perfect way than by talking Latin unto him, 
the formation of the verbs first, and afterwards 
the declensions of the nouns and pronouns 
perfectly learned by heart, may facilitate his 
acquaintance with the genius and manner of 

* In addition to the other needless difficulties and mise- 
ries entailed upon children who are learning languages, 
their Greek Lexicons give a Latin instead of an English 
translation ; and a boy of twelve or thirteen years of 
age, whose attainments in Latin are of course but mode- 
rate, is expected to make it the vehicle of knowledge 
for other languages. This is setting the short-sighted 
and blear-eyed to lead the blind; and is one of those 
afflicting pieces of absurdity which escape animadver- 
sion, because they are, and have long been, of daily oc- 
currence. Mr. Jones has published an English and 
Greek Lexicon, which we recommend to the notice of all 
persons engaged in education, and not sacraraented 
against all improvement. 



the Latin tongue, which varies the significa- 
tion of verbs and nouns, not as the modem 
languages do, by particles prefixed, but by 
changing the last syllables. More than this of 
grammar I think he need not have till he can 
read himself ' Sanctii Minerva' — with Sciop- 
pius and Perigonius's notes." — Locke an Edu- 
cation, p. 74, folio. 

Another recommendation which we have not 
mentioned in the Hamiltonian system is, that it 
can be combined, and is constantly combined, 
with the system of Lancaster. The Key is pro- 
bably sufficient for those who have no access to 
classes and schools : but in an Hamiltonian 
school during the lesson, it is not left to the op- 
tion of the child to trust to the Key alone. The 
master stands in the middle, translates accurate- 
ly and literally the whole verse, and then asks 
the boys the English of separate words, or chal- 
lenges them to join the words together, as he 
has done. A perpetual attention and activity 
is thus kept up. The master, or a scholar 
(turned into a temporary Lancasterian master), 
acts as a living lexicon ; and, if the thing is 
well done, as a lively and animating lexicon. 
How is it possible to compare this with the 
solitary wretchedness of a poor lad of the desk 
and lexicon, suffocated with the nonsense of 
grammarians, overwhelmed with every species 
of difficulty disproportioned to his age, and 
driven by despair to peg top or marbles ■? 

"Taking these principles as a basis, the 
teacher forms his class of eight, ten, twenty or 
one hundred. The number is of little moment, 
it being as easy to teach a greater as a smaller 
one, and brings them at once to the language 
itself, by reciting, with a loud articulate voice, 
the first verse thus : — In in, principio in begin- 
ning, Verbum Word, erat was, et and, Verbum 
Word, erat was, apud at, Deiun God, et and, 
Verbum Word, erat was, Dens God. Having 
recited the verse once or twice himself, it is 
then recited precisely in the same manner by 
any person of the class whom he may judge 
most capable ; the person copying; his manner 
and intonations as much as possible. — When 
the verse has been thus recited, hy six or eight 
persons of the class, the teacher recites the 2d 
verse in the same manner, which is recited as 
the former by any members of the class ; and 
thus continues until he has recited from ten to 
twelve verses, which usually constitute the first 
lesson of one hour. — In three lessons, the first 
Chapter may be thus readily translated, the 
teacher gradually diminishing the number of 
repetitions of the same verse till the fourth 
lesson, when each member of the class trans- 
lates his verse in turn from the mouth of the 
teacher ; from which ^exioA. fifty, sixty, or even 
seventy, verses may be translated in the time 
of a lesson, or one hour. At the seventh lesson, 
it is invariably found that the class can trans- 
late without the assistance of the teacher, far- 
ther than for occasional correction, and for 
those words which they may not have met in 
the preceding chapters. But, to accomplish 
this, it is absolutely necessary that every mem- 
ber of the class know every tvord of all the pre- 
ceding lessons ; which is, however, an easy 
task, the words being always taught him in 
class, and the pupil besides being able to refer 



236 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



to the key whenever he is at a loss — the key 
translated in the very words which the teacher 
has used in the class, from which, as was be- 
fore remarked, he must never deviate. — In ien 
lessons, it will be found that the class can 
readily translate the whole of the Gospel of 
St John, which is called the first section of 
the course. — Should any delay, from any cause, 
prevent them, it is in my classes always for 
account of teacher, who gives the extra lesson 
or lessons always gratis. — It cannot be too 
deeply impressed on the mind of the pupil, that 
a perfect knowledge of every ivord of his first 
section is most important to the ease and com- 
fort of his future progress. — At the end of ten 
lessons, or fitst section, the custom of my es- 
tablishments is to give the pupil the Epitome 
Historias Sacrse, which is provided with a key 
in the same manner. — It was first used in our 
classes for the first and second sections ; we 
now teach it in one section of ten lessons, 
which we find easier than to teach it in two 
sections before the pupil has read the Testa- 
ment. — When he has read the Epitome, it will 
be then time to give him the theory of the 
verbs and other words which change their ter- 
minations. — He has already acquired a good 
practical knowledge of these things ; the theory 
becomes then very easy. — A grammar contain- 
ing the declensions and conjugations, and 
printed specially for my classes, is then put 
into the pupil's hands, (not to be got by heart, 
nothing is ever got by rote on this system,) 
but that he may comprehend more readily his 
teacher who lectures on grammar generally, 
but especially on the verbs. From this time, 
that is, from the beginning of the third section, 
the pupil studies the theory and construction 
of the language as well as its practice. For 
this purpose he reads the ancient authors, be- 
ginning with Caesar, which, together with the 
Seleda e Profanis, fills usefully the third and 
fourth sections. When these with the preced- 
ing books are well known, the pupil will find 
little difficulty in reading the authors usually 
read in schools. The fifth and sixth sections 
consist of Virgil and Horace, enough of which 
is read to enable the pupil to read them with 
facility, and to give him correct ideas of Pro- 
sody and Versification. Five or six months, 
with mutual attention on the part of the pupil 
and teacher, will be found sufficient to acquire 
a knowledge of this language, which hithe^-to 
has rarely been the result of as many years." 

We have before said, that the Hamiltonian 
system must not depend upon Mr. Hamilton's 
method of carrying it into execution ; for in- 
stance, he banishes from his schools the efl^ects 
of emulation. The boys do not take each 
other's places. This, we think, is a sad ab- 
surdity. A cook might as well resolve to 
make bread without fermentation, as a peda- 
gogue to carry on a school without emulation. 
It must be a sad doughy lump without this 
vivifying principle. Why are boys to be shut 
out from a class of feelings to which society 
owes so much, and upon which their conduct 
in future life must (if they are worth any 
thing) be so closely constructed? Poet A 
writes verses to outshine poet B. Philosopher 
■ C sets up roasting Titanium, and boiling 



Chromium, that he may be thought more of 
than philosopher D. Mr. Jackson strives to 
out-paint Sir Thomas ; Sir Thomas Lethbridge 
to overspeak Mr. Canning ; and so society 
gains good chemists, poets, painters, speakers, 
and orators ; and why are not boys to be emu- 
lous as well as men 1 

If a boy were in Paris, would he learn the 
language better by shutting himself up to read 
French books with a dictionary, or by con- 
versing freely with all whom he met 1 and 
what is conversation but an Hamiltonian 
school ■? Every man you meet is a living 
lexicon and grammar — who is perpetually 
changing your English into French, and per- 
petually instructing you, in spite of yourself, 
in the terminations of French substantives 
and verbs. The analogy is still closer, if you 
converse with persons of whom you can ask 
questions, and who will be at the trouble of 
correcting you. What madness would it be 
to run away from these pleasing facilities, as 
too dangerously easy — to stop your ears, to 
double-lock the door, and to look out chickens, 
taking a walk, and fine iveather, in Boyer's 
Dictionary — and then, by the help of Cham- 
baud's Grammar, to construct a sentence which 
should signify, "Come to my house, and eat 
some chickens, if it is fine .?" But there is in 
England almost a love of difficulty and need- 
less labour. We are so resolute and industri- 
ous in raising up impediments which ought to 
be overcome, that there is a sort of suspicion 
against the removal of these impediments, 
and a notion that the advantage is not fairly 
come by without the previous toil. If the 
English were in a paradise of spontaneous 
productions, they would continue to dig and 
plough, though they were never a peach nor a 
pine-apple the better for it. 

A principal point to attend to in the Hamil- 
tonian system, is the prodigious number of 
words and phrases which pass through the 
boy's mind, compared with those which are 
presented to him by the old plan. As a talka- 
tive boy learns French sooner in France than 
a silent boy, so a translator of books learns 
sooner to construe, the more he translates. 
An Hamiltonian makes, in six or seven les- 
sons, three or four hundred times as many 
exchanges of English for French or Latin, as 
a grammar schoolboy can do ; and if he loses 
50 per cent, of all he hears, his progress is 
still, beyond all possibility of comparison, 
more rapid. 

As for pronunciation of living languages, 
we see no reason why that consideration should 
be introduced in this place. We are decidedly 
of opinion, that all living languages are best 
learned in the country where they are spoken, 
or by living with those who come from that 
country; but if that cannot be, Mr. Hamilton's 
method is better than the grammar and dic- 
tionary method. Casteris paribus, Mr. Hamil- 
ton's method, as far as French is concerned, 
would be better in the hands of a Frenchman, 
and his Italian method in the hands of an 
Italian ; but all this has nothing to do with the 
system. 

" Have I read through Lilly 1 — have I learned 
by heart that most atrocious momument of 



n 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



237 



absurdity, the Westminster Grammar 1 — have 
I been whipt fo'^ the substantives ? — whipt for 
the verbs 7 — and whipt for and with the inter- 
jections ? — have I picked the sense slowly, 
and word by word, out of Hederick 1 — and 
shall my son Daniel be exempt from all this 
misery? — Shall a little unknown person in 
Cecil Street, Strand, No. 25, pretend to tell me 
that all this is imnecessary 1 — Was it possible 
that I might have been spared all this ? — The 
whole system is nonsense, and the man an 
impostor. If there had been any truth in it, it 
must have occurred to som€ one else before 
this period." — This is a very common style of 
observation upon Mr. Hamilton's system, and 
by no means an uncommon wish of the 
mouldering and decaying part of mankind, 
that the next generation should not enjoy any 
advantages from which they themselves have 
been precluded. — "^?/, ay, ifs all mighty ivell — 
but I went through this myself, and I am deter- 
mined my children shall do the same." We are 
convinced that a great deal of opposition to 
improvement proceeds from this principle. 
Crabbe might make a good picture of an un- 
benevolent old man, slowly retiring from this 
sublunary scene, and lamenting that the com- 
mg race of men would be less bumped on the 
roads, better lighted in the streets, and less 
tormented with grammars and lexicons, than 
in the preceding age. A great deal of compli- 
ment to the wisdom of ancestors, and a great 
degree of alarm at the dreadful spirit of inno- 
vation, are soluble into mere jealousy and 
envy. 

But what is to become of a boy who has no 
difficulties to grapple with? How enervated 
will that understanding be, to which every 
thing is inade so clear, plain, and easy; — no 
hills to walk up, no chasms to step over ; everj"- 
thing graduated, soft, and smooth. All this, 
however, is an objection to the multiplication 
table, to Napier's bones, and to every invention 
for the abridgment of human labour. There 
is no dread of any lack of difficulties. Abridge 
intellectual labour by any process you please — 
multiply mechanical powers to any extent — 
there will be sufficient, and infinitely more 
than sufficient, of laborious occupation for the 
mind and body of man. Why is the boy to be 
idle 1 — By and by comes the book without a 
key ; by and by comes the lexicon. They do 
come at last — though at a better period. But 
if they did not come — if they were useless, if 
language could be attained without them — 
would any human being wish to retain diffi- 
culties for their own sake, which led to nothing 
useful, and by the annihilation of which our 
faculties were left to be exercised, by diffi- 
culties which do lead to something useful — by 
mathematics, natural philosophy, and every 
branch of useful knowledge ? Can any one 
be so anserous as to suppose, that the faculties 
of yoimg men cannot be exercised, and their 
industry and activity called into proper action, 
because Mr. Hamilton teaches, in three or four 
years, what has (in a more vicious system) 
demanded seven or eight? Besides, even in 
the Hamiltonian method it is very easy for 
one boy to outstrip another. Why may not a 
clever and ambitious boy employ three hours 



upon his key by himself, while another boy 
has only employed one ? There is plenty of 
corn to thrash, and of chaff to be winnowed 
away, in Mr. Hamilton's system; the differ- 
ence is, that every blow tells, because it is 
properly directed. In the old way, half their 
force was lost in air. There is a mighty fool- 
ish apophthegm of Dr. Bell's,* that it is not 
what is done for a boy that is of importance, 
but what a boy does for himself. This is just 
as wise as to say, that it is not the breeches 
which are made for a boy that can cover his 
nakedness, but the breeches he makes for 
himself. All this entirely depends upon a 
comparison of the time saved, by showing the 
boy how to do a thing, rather than by leaving 
him to do it for himself. Let the object be, for 
example, to make a pair of shoes. The boy 
will effect this object much better if you show 
him how to make the shoes, than if you merely 
give him wax, thread, and leather, and leave 
him to find out all the in<rf nious abridgments 
of labour which have been discovered by 
experience. The object is to turn Latin into 
English. The scholar will do it much better 
and sooner if the word is found for hira, than 
if he finds it — much better and sooner if you 
point out the effect of the terminations, and 
the nature of the syntax, tlian if you leave hira 
to detect them for himself. The thing is at 
last done by the pupil himself— for he reads the 
language — which was the thing to be done. 
AH the help he has received has only enabled 
him to make a more economical use of his 
time, and to gain his end sooner. Never be 
afraid of wanting dithculties for your pupil ; 
if means are rendered nigre easy, more will 
be expected. The animal will be compelled, 
or induced to do all that he can do. Macadam 
has made the roads better. Dr. Bell would 
have predicted, that the horses would get too 
fat ; but the actual result is, that they are com- 
pelled to go ten miles an hour instead of eight. 
"For teaching children, this, too, I think is 
to be observed, that, in most cases, where they 
stick, tliey are not to be farther puzzled, by 
putting tliem upon finding it out themselves ; 
as by asking such questions as these, viz. — 
which is the nominative case in the sentence 
they are to consti-ue? or demanding what 
' aufero' signifies, to lead them to the know- 
ledge what 'abstulere' signifies, &c., when 
they cannot readily tell. This wastes time 
only in disturbing "them ; for whilst they are 
learning, and apply themselves with attention, 
they are to be kept in good humour, and every 
thing made easy to them, and as pleasant as 
possible. Therefore, Avherever they are at a 
stand, and are willing to go forwards, help 
them presently over the difficulty, without any 
rebuke or chiding; remembering that, where 
harsher ways are taken, they are the effect 
only of pride and peevishness in the teacher, 
who expects children should instantly be mas- 
ters of as much as he knows ; whereas he 
should rather consider, that his business is to 
settle in them habits, not angrily to inculcate 
rules." — Locke on Education, p. 74. 



* A very foolish old gentleman, seized on eagerly by 
the Church of England to defraud Lancaster of his 
discovery. 



338 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Suppose the first five books of Herodotus to 
be acquired by a key, or literal translation 
after the method of Hamilton, so that the pupil 
could construe them with the greatest accura- 
cy; — we do not pretend, because the pupil 
could construe this book, that he could construe 
any other book equally easy; we merely say, 
that the pupil has acquired, by these means, a 
certain copia verborum, and a certain practical 
knowledge of grammar, which must materially 
diminish the difficulty of reading the next 
book; that his difficulties diminish in a com- 
pound ratio with every fresh book he reads 
with a key — till at last he reads any common 
book, without a key — and that he attains this 
last point of perfection in a time incomparably 
less, and with difficulties incomparably smaller, 
than in the old method. 

There are a certain number of French books, 
which when a boy can construe accurately, he 
may be said, for all purposes of reading, to be 
master of the French language. No- matter 
how he has attained this power of construing 
the books. If you try him thoroughly, and are 
persuaded he is perfectly master of the books — 
then he possesses the power in question — he 
understands the language. Let these books, 
for the sake of the question, be Telemachus, 
the History of Louis XIV., the Henriade, the 
Plays of Racine, and the Revolutions of Ver- 
tot. We would have Hamiltonian keys to all 
these books, and the Lancasterian method of 
instruction. We believe these books would 
be mastered in one-sixth part of the time, 
by these means, that they would be by the 
old method of looking out the words in the 
dictionary, and theji coming to say the lesson 
to the master ; and we believe that the boys, 
long before they came to the end of this 
series of books, would be able to do without 
their keys — to fling away their cork-jackets, 
and to swim alone. But boys who learn a 
language in four or five months, it is said, 
are apt to forget it again. Why, then, does 
not a young person, who has been five or 
six months in Paris, forget his French four or 
five years afterwards "! It has been obtained 
■without any of that labour, which the objectors 
to the Hamiltonian system deem to be so essen- 
tial to memory. It has been obtained in the 
midst of tea and bread and butter, and yet is 
in a great measure retained for a whole life. 
In the same manner, the pupils of this new 
school use a colloquial living dictionary, and, 
from every principle of youthful emulation, 
contend with each other in catching the inter- 
pretation, and in applying to the lesson before 
them. 

"If you wish boys to remember any lan- 
guage, make the acquisition of it very tedious 
and disgusting." This seems to be an odd 
rule : but if it is good for language, it must be 
good also for every species of knowledge — 
music, mathematics, navigation, architecture. 
In all these sciences aversion should be the 
parent of memory — impediment the cause of 
perfection. If difficulty is the cause of memo- 
ry, the boy who learns with the greatest diffi- 
culty will remember with the greatest tenacity ; 
— in other words, the acquisitions of a dunce 
will be greater and more important than those 



of a clever boy- Where is the love of diiE- 
cully to endl Why not leave a boy to com- 
pose his own dictionary and grammar 1 It is 
not what is done for a boy, but what he does 
for himself, that is of any importance. Are 
there difficulties enough in the old method of 
acquiring languages'! Would it be better if 
the difficulties were doubled, and thirty years 
given to languages, instead of fifteen 1 All 
these arguments presume the ditTiculty to be 
got over, and then the memory to be improved. 
But what if the difficulty is shrunk fromi 
What if it puts an end to power, instead of 
increasing it; and extinguishes, instead of ex- 
citing, application 1 And when th°se effects 
are produced, you not only preclude all hopes 
of learning, or language, but you put an end 
for ever to all literary habits, and to all im- 
provements from study. The boy who is lexi- 
con-struck in early youth looks upon all books 
afterwards with horror, and goes over to the 
blockheads. Every boy would be pleased with 
books, and pleased with school, and be glad to 
forward the views of his parents, and obtain 
the praise of his master, if he found it possible 
to make tolerably easy progress ; but he is 
driven to absolute despair by gerunds, and 
wishes himself dead ! Progress is pleasure — 
activity is pleasure. It is impossible for a boy 
not to make progress, and not to be active in 
the Hamiltonian method; and this pleasing 
state of mind we contend to be more favourable 
to memory, than the languid, jaded spirit which 
much commerce with lexicons never fails to 
produce. 

Translations are objected to in schools justly 
enough, when they are paraphrases and not 
translations. It is impossible, from a para- 
phrase or very loose translation, to make any 
useful progress — they retard rather than acce- 
lerate a knowledge of the language to be ac- 
quired, and are the principal causes of the 
discredit into which translations have been 
brought, as instruments of education. 

Infandum Regina jubes renovare dolorem. 
Regina, jubes renovare dolorem infandum. 

Oh ! Qtieen, thou orderest to renew grief not to be spoken of. 

Oh ! Queen, in pursuance of your commands, 1 enter 
upoh the narrative of misfortunes almost too great for 
utterance. 

The first of these translations leads us di- 
rectly to the explication of a foreign language, 
as the latter insures a perfect ignorance of it. 

It is difficult enough to introduce any useful 
novelty in education without enhancing its 
perils by needless and untenable paradox. 
Mr. Hamilton has made an assertion in his 
Preface to the Key of the Italian Gospel, which 
has no kind of foundation in fact, and which 
has afforded a conspicuous mark for the aim 
of his antagonists. 

"I have said that each word is translated by 
its one sole undeviating meaning, assuming, as 
an incontrovertible principle in all languages, 
that, with very few exceptions, each word has 
one meaning only, and can usually be rendered 
correctly into another by one word only, which 
one word should serve for its representative at 
at all times and on all occasions." 

Now, it is probable that each word had one 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



239 



meaning only in its origin ; but metaphor and | 
associatioa are so busy with human speech, 
that the same word comes to serve in a vasi 
variety of senses, and continues to do so long 
after the metaphors and associations which 
called it into this state of activity are buried 
in oblivion. Why may not jubeo be translated 
order as well as command, or dolorem rendered 
grief as well as sorrow? Mr. Hamilton has ex- 
pressed himself loosely ; but he perhaps means 
no more than to say, that in school translations, 
the metaphysical meaning should never be 
adopted, when the word can be rendered by its 
primary signification. We shall allow him, 
however, to detail his own method of making 
the translation in question. 

"Translations on the Hamiltonian system, 
according to which this book is translated, 
must not be confounded with translations made 
according to Locke, Clarke, Sterling, or even 
according to Dumarsais, Fremont, and a num- 
ber of other Frenchmen, who have made what 
have been and are yet sometimes called 
literal, and interlineal translations. The latter 
are, indeed, interlineal, but no literal translation 
had ever appeared in any language before 
those called Hamiltonian, that is, before my 
Gospel of St. John from the French, the Greek, 
and Latin Gospels, published in London, and 
L'Hommond's Epitome of the Historia Sacra. 
These and these only were and are truly 
literal ; that is to say, that every word is ren- 
dered in English by a corresponding part of 
speech, that the grammatical analysis of the 
phrase is never departed from ; that the case 
of every noun, pronoun, adjective, or particle, 
and the mood, tense, and person of every verb, 
are accurately pointed out by appropriate and 
unchanging signs, so that a grammarian not 
understanding one word of Italian, would, on 
reading any part of the translation here given, 
be instantly able to parse it. In the transla- 
tions above alluded to, an attempt is made to 
preserve the correctness of the language into 
which the different works are translated, but 
the wish to conciliate this correctness with a 
literal translation, has only produced a barba- 
rous and uncouth idiom, while it has in every 
case deceived the unlearned pupil by a trans- 
lation altogether false and incorrect. Such 
translations may, indeed, give an idea of what 
is contained- in the book translated, but they 
will not assist, or at least very little, in ena- 
bling the pupil to make out the exact meaning 
of each word, which is the principal object of 
'Hamiltonian translations. The reader will un- 
derstand this better by an illustration: A gen- 
tleman has lately given a translation of Juvenal 
according to the plan of the above-mentioned 
authors, beginning with the words temper ego, 
which he joins and translates, ' shall I always 
be' — if his intention were to teach Latin words, 
he might as well have said, ' shall I always eat 
beef-steaks ■?' — True, there is nothing about 
beef-steaks in semper ego, but neither is there 
about 'shall be :' the whole translation is on 
the same plan, that is to say, that there is not 
one line of it correct, I had almost said one 
word, on which the pupil can rely, as the exact 
equivalent in English of the Latin word above 
.it Not so the translation here given. 



"As the object of the author has been that 
the pupil should know every word as well as 
he knows it himself, he has uniformly given it 
the one sole, precise meaning which it has in 
our language, sacrificing everywhere the 
beauty, the idiom, and the correctness of the 
English language to the original, in order to 
show the perfect idiom, phraseolog}', and pic- 
ture of that original as in a glass. So far is 
this carried, that where the English language 
can express the precise meaning of the Italian 
phrase only by a barbarism, this barbarism is 
employed without scruple — as thus, 'e le tene- 
bre non I'hanno ammessa.' — Here the word 
tenebre being plural, if you translate it dark- 
ness, you not only give a false translation of 
the word itself, which is used by the Italians 
in the plural number, but what is much more 
important, you lead the pupil into an error 
about its government, it being the nominative 
case to hanno, which is the third person plural; 
it is therefore translated not darkness, but 
darknesses." 

To make these keys perfect, we rather think 
there should be a free translation added to the 
literal one. Not a paraphrase, but only so 
free as to avoid any awkward or barbarous 
expression. The comparison between the 
free and the literal translation would immedi- 
ately show to young people the peculiarities 
of the language in which they were engaged. 

Literal translation or key — Oh ! Queeti, thou 
orderest me to renew grief not to be spoken of. 

Free — " Oh ! Queen, thou orderest me to 
renew my grief, too great for utterance." 

The want of this accompajiying free trans- 
lation is not felt in keys of the Scriptures, 
because, in fact, the English Bible is a free 
translation, great part of which the scholar 
remembers. But in a work entirely unknown, 
of which a key was given, as full of awkward 
and barbarous expressions as a key certainly 
ought to be, a scholar might be sometimes 
puzzled to arrive at the real sense. We say 
as full of awkward and barbarous expressions 
as it ought to be, because we thoroughly ap- 
prove of Mr. Hamilton's plan, of always 
sacrificing English and elegance to sense, 
when they cannot be united in the key. We 
are rather sorry Mr. Hamilton's first essay has 
been in a translation of the Scriptures, because 
every child is so familiar with them, that it 
may be ditficult to determine whether the ap- 
parent progress is ancient recollection or 
recent attainment ; and because the Scriptures 
are so full of Hebraisms and Syriacisms, and 
the language so different from that of Greek 
authors, that it does not secure a knowledge of 
the language equivalent to the time employed 
upon it. 

The keys hitherto published by Mr. Hamil- 
ton are the Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and 
German keys to the Gospel of St. John. Per- 
rin's Fables, Latin Historia Sacra, Latm, 
French, and Italian Grammar, and Studia 
Metrica. One of the difficulties under which 
the system is labouring, is a want of more 
keys." Some of the best Greek and Roman 
classics should be immediately published, with 
keys, and by very good scholars. We shall 
now lay before our readers an extract from 



240 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



one of the public papers respecting the pro- 
gress made in the Hamiltonian schools. 

" Extract from the Morning Chronicle of Wed- 
nesday, November, 16th, 1825. — Hamiltonian 
System. — We yesterday were present at an 
examination of eight lads who have been under 
Mr. Hamilton since some time in the month of 
May last, with a view to ascertain the efficacy 
of his system in communicating a knowledge 
of languages. These eight lads, all of them 
between the ages of twelve and fourteen, are 
the children of poor people, who, when they 
were first placed under Mr. Hamilton, pos- 
sessed no other instruction than common 
reading and writing. They were obtained 
from a common country school, through the 
interposition of a member of Parliament, who 
takes an active part in promoting charity 
schools throughout the country ; and the 
choice was determined by the consent of the 
parents, and not by the cleverness of the boys. 

"They have been employed in learning 
Latin, French, and latterly Italian ; and yes- 
terday they were examined by several distin- 
guished individuals, among whom we recog- 
nized John Smith, Esq. M. P. ; G. Smith, Esq. 
M. P.; Mr. J. Mill, the historian of British 
India; Major Camac; Major Thompson ; Mr. 
Cowell, &c. &c. They first read different 
portions of the Gospel of St. John in Latin, 
and of Caesar's Commentaries, selected by the 
visitors. The translation was executed with 
g,n ease which it would be in vain to expect 
in any of the boys who attend our common 
schools, even in their third or fourth year; 
and proved, that the principle of exciting the 
attention of boys to the utmost, during the 
process by which the meaning of the words is 
fixed in their memory, had given them a great 
familiarity with so much of the language as is 
contained in the books above alluded to. Their 
knowledge of the parts of speech was respect- 
able, but not so remarkable ; as the Hamilto- 
nian system follows the natural mode of 
acquiring language, and only employs the 
boys in analyzing, when they have already 
attained a certain familiarity with any lan- 
guage. 

"The same experiments were repeated in 
French and Italian with the same success, 
and, upon the whole, we cannot but think the 
success has been complete. It is impossible 
to conceive a more impartial mode of putting 
any system to the test, than to make such an 
experiment on the children of our peasantry." 

Into the truth of this statement we have 
personally inquired, and it seems to us to 
have fallen short of the facts, from the laud- 
able fear of overstating them. The lads 
selected for the experiment were parish boys 
of the most ordinary description, reading Eng- 
lish worse than Cumberland curates, and 
totally ignorant of the rudiments of any other 
language. They were purposely selected for 
the experiment by a gentleman who defrayed 
its expense, and who had the strongest desire 
to put strictly to the test the efficacy of the 
Hamiltonian system. The experiment was 
begun the middle of May, 1825, and concluded 
on the day of November in the same year 



mentioned in the extract, exactly six months 
after. The Latin books set before them were 
the Gospel of St. John, and parts of Caesar's 
Commentaries ; some Italian book or books 
(what we know not), and a selection of French 
histories. The visitors put the boys on where 
they pleased, and the translation was (as the 
reporter says) executed with an ease which il 
would be vain to expect in any of the boys 
who attend our common schools, even in their 
third or fourth year.* 

From experiments and observations which 
have fallen under our own notice, we do not 
scruple to make the following assertions. If 
there were keys to the fovir Gospels, as there 
is to that of St. John, any boy or girl of thirteen 
years of age, and of moderate capacity, stud}'- 
ing four hours a day, and beginning with an 
utter ignorance eveii of the Greek character, 
would learn to construe the four Gospels with 
the most perfect and scrupulous accuracy, in 
six weeks. Some children, utterly ignorant 
of French or Italian, would learn to construe 
the four Gospels, in either of these languages, 
in three weeks ; the Latin in four weeks ; the 
German in five weeks. We believe they 
would do it in a class ; but not to run any 
risks, we will presume a master to attend 
upon one student alone for these periods. We 
assign a master principally, because the ap- 
plication of a solitar} boy at that age could 
not be depended upon; but if the sedulity of 
the child were certain, he would do it nearly 
as well alone. A greater time is allowed for 
German and Greek, on account of the novelty 
of the character. A person of mature habits, 
eager and energetic in his pursuits, and read- 
ing seven or eight hours per day, might, 
though utterly ignorant of a letter of Greek, 
learn to construe the four Gospels, with the 
most punctilious accuracy in three weeks, by 
the key alone. These assertions we make, 
not of the Gospels alone, b\tt of any tolerably 
easy book of the same extent. We mean to 
be very accurate ; but suppose we are wrong 
— add 10, 20, 30 per cent, to the time, an 
average boy of thirteen, in an average school, 
cannot construe the four Gospels in two years 
from the time of his beginning the language. 

All persons would be glad to read a foreign 
language, but all persons do not want the same 
scrupulous and comprehensive knowledge of 
grammar which a great Latin scholar pos- 
sesses. Many persons may, and do derive 
great pleasure and instruction from French, 
German, and Italian books, who can neither 
speak nor write these languages — who know 
that certain terminations, when they see them, 
signify present or past time, but who, if they 
wished to signify present or past time, could 
not recall these terminations. For many pur- 
poses and objects, therefore, very little gram- 
mar is wanting. 

The Hamiltonian method begins with what 
all persons want, a facility of construing, and 
leaves every scholar to become aftei-wards 



* We have left with the bookseller the names of two 
gentlemen who have verified this account to us, and who 
were present at the experiment. Their names will at 
once put an end to all scepticism as to the fact. Two 
more candid and enlightened judges could not be founiL 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



241 



as profound in grammar as he (or those who 
educate him) may choose ; whereas the old 
method aims at making all more profound 
grammarians than three-fourths wish to be, or 
than nineteen-twentieths can be. One of the 
enormous follies of the enormously foolish 
education in England, is, that all young men 
—dukes, fox-hunters, and merchants — are 
educated as if they were to keep a school, and 
serve a curacy ; while scarcely an hour in the 
Hamiltonian education is lost for any variety 
of life. A grocer may learn enough of Latin 
to taste the sweets of Virgil; a cavalry ofiicer 
may read and understand Homer, without 
knowing that hfxt comes from no with a smooth 
breathing, and that it is formed by an impro- 
per reduplication. In the mean time, there 
is nothing in that education which prevents 
a scholar from knowing (if he wishes to 
know) what Greek compounds draw back 
their accents. He may trace verbs in l/uu 
from polysyllables in Ice, or derive endless 
glory from marking down derivatives in 
■TTTit, changing the i of their primitives into 
iota. 

Thus in the Hamiltonian method, a good 
deal of grammar necessarily impresses itself 
upon the mind (chemin faisant), as it does in 
the vernacular tongue, without any rule at all, 
and merely by habit. How is it possible to 
read many Latin keys, for instance, without 
remarking, willingly or unwillingly, that the 
first person of verbs end in o, the second in s, 
the third in t? — that the same adjective ends 
in us or a, accordingly as the connected sub- 
stantive is masculine or feminine, and other 
such gross and common rules 1 An English- 
man who means to say, / will go to London, 
does not say, / could go to London. He never 
read a word of grammar in his life ; but he 
has learnt by habit, that the word go, signifies 
to proceed or set forth, and by the same habit 
he learns that future intentions are expressed 
hy I will; and by the same habit the Hamil- 
tonian pupil, reading over, and comprehending 
twenty times more words and phrases than 
the pupil of the ancient system, insensibly but 
infallibly fixes upon his mind many rules of 
grammar. We are far from meaning to say, 
that the grammar thus acquired will be suffi- 
ciently accurate for a first-rate Latin and 
Greek scholar ; but there is no reason why a 
young person arriving at this distinction, and 
educated in the Hamiltonian system, may not 
carry the study of grammar to any degree of 
minuteness and accuracy. The only difference 
is, that he begins grammar as a study, after he 
has made a considerable progress in the lan- 
guage, and not before — a very important 
feature in the Hamiltonian system, and a very 
great improvement in the education of chil- 
dren. 

The imperfections of the old system proceed 
in a great measure from a bad and improvi- 
dent accumulation of difficulties, which must 
all, perhaps, though in a less degree, at one 
time or another be encountered, but which may 
be, and in the Hamiltonian system are, much 
more wisely distributed. A boy who sits down 
to Greek with lexicon and grammar, has to 
31 



master an unknown character of an unknown 
language — to look out words in a lexicon, in 
the use of which he is inexpert — to guess, by 
many trials, in which of the numerous senses 
detailed in the lexicon he is to use the word — 
to attend to the inflexions of cases and tense — 
to become acquainted with the syntax of the 
language — and to become acquainted with 
these inflexions and this syntax from books 
written in foreign languages, and full of the 
most absurd and barbarous terms, and this at 
the tenderest ago, when the mind is utterly un- 
fit to grapple with any great difficulty; and 
the -boy, who revolts at all this folly and ab- 
surdity, is set down for a dunce, and must go 
into a marching regiment, or on board a man 
of war ! The Hamiltonian pupil has his word 
looked out for him, its proper sense ascer- 
tained, the case of the substantive, the inflex- 
ions of the verb pointed out, and the syntaxical 
arrangement placed before his eyes. Where, 
then, is he to encounter these difficulties 1 
Does he hope to escape them entirely ? Cer- 
tainly not, if it is his purpose to become a 
great scholar; but he will enter upon them 
when the character is familiar to his eye- 
when a great number of Greek words are fa 
miliar to his eye and ear — when he has practi- 
cally mastered a great deal of grammar — 
when the terminations of verbs convey to him 
different modifications of time, the termina- 
tions of substantives different varieties of 
circumstance — when the rules of grammar, in 
short, are a confirmation of previous observa- 
tion, not an irksome multitude of dii^ections, 
heaped up without any opportunity of imme- 
diate application. 

The real way of learning a dead language, 
is to imitate, as much as possible, the method 
in which a living language is naturally learnt. 
When do we ever find a well-educated Eng- 
lishman or Frenchman embarrassed by an 
ignorance of the grammar of their respective 
languages 1 They first learn it practically 
and uneri'ingly; and then, if they choose to 
look back and smile 'at the idea of having 
proceeded by a number of rules without know- 
ing one of them by heart, or being conscious 
that they had any rule at all, this is a philoso- 
phical amusement: but whoever thinks of 
learning the grammar of their own tongue 
before they are very good grammarians ? Let 
us hear what Mr. Locke says upon this sub- 
ject : — " If grammar ought to be taught at any 
time, it must be to one that can speak the 
language already; how else can he be taught 
the grammar of itl This at least is evident, 
from the practice of the wise and learned na- 
tions amongst the ancients. They made it a 
part of education to cultivate their own, not 
foreign languages. The Greeks counted all 
other nations barbarous, and had a contempt 
for their languages. And though the Greek 
learning grew in credit amongst the Romans 
towards the end of their commonwealth, yet 
it was the Roman tongue that was made the 
study of their youth : their own language they 
were to make use of, and therefore it was 
their own language they were instructed and 
exercised in. 

X 



342 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



"But, more particularly, to determine the 
proper season for grammar, I do not see how 
it can reasonably be made any one's study, 
but as an introduction to rhetoric. When it is 
thought time to put any one upon the care of 
polishing his tongue, and of speaking better 
than the illiterate, then is the time for him to 
be instructed in the rules of grammar, and not 
before. For grammar being to teach men not 
to speak, but to speak correctly, and according 
to the exact rules of the tongue, which is one 
part of elegancy, there is little use of the one 
to him that has no need of the other. Where 
rhetoric is not necessary, grammar may be 
spared. I know not why any one should waste 
his time, and beat his head about the Latin 
grammar, who does not intend to be a critic, 
or make speeches, and write despatches in it. 
When any one finds in himself a necessity or 
disposition to study any foreign language to 
the bottom, and to be nicely exact in the know- 
ledge of it, it will be time enough to take a 
grammatical survey of it. If his use of it be 
only to understand some books writ in it, 
without a critical knowledge of the tongue 
itself, reading alone, as I have said, will attain 
that end, without charging the mind with the 
multiplied rules and intricacies of grammar." 
— Locke on Education, p. 78, folio. 

In the Eton Grammar, the following very 
plain and elementary information is conveyed 
to young gentlemen utterly ignorant of every 
syllable of the language : — 

" Nomina anomala quae contrahuntur sunt, 
'Oxo^raflif, quae contrahuntur in omnibus, ut yooi 
yovi, &c. OxiyoTraBti, quae in paucioribus casibus 
contrahuntur, ut substantiva Barytonia in i/g. 
Imparyllatria in oug," &c. &c. 

From the Westminster Grammar we make 
the following extract — and some thousand 
rules, conveyed in poetry of equal merit, must 
be fixed upon the mind of the youthful Gre- 
cian, before he advances into the interior of 
the language. 



" (J finis thematis finis utriusque flituri est 
Post liquidam in primo, vel in unoquoque secundo, 
(li circumflexum est. Ante to finale character 
Expticitus ae primi est implicitusque fUturi 
o) itaque in quo a quasi plexum est solitu in (rw." 

Westminster Greek Orammar, 1814. 

Such are the easy initiations of our present 
methods of teaching. The Hamiltonian sys- 
tem, on the other hand, 1. teaches an unknown 
tongue by the closest interlinear translation, 
instead of leaving a boy to explore his way by 
the lexicon or dictionary. 2. It postpones the 
study of grammar till a considerable progress 
has been made in the language, and a great 
degree of practical grammar has been ac- 
quired. 3. It substitutes the cheerfulness and 
competition of the Lancasterian system for 
the dull solitude of the dictionary. By these 
means, a boy finds he is making a progress, 
and learning something from the very begin- 
ning. He is not overwhelmed with the first 
appearance of insuperable difficulties ; he re- 
ceives some little pay from the first moment 
of his apprenticeship, and is not compelled to 
wait for remuneration till he is out of his 
time. The student having acquired the great 
art of understanding the sense of what is 
written in another tongue, may go into the 
study of the language as deeply and as exten- 
sively as he pleases. The old system aims at 
beginning with a depth and accuracy which 
many men never will want, which disgusts 
many from arriving even at moderate attain- 
ments, and is a less easy, and not more certain 
road to a profound skill in languages, than if 
attention to grammar had been deferred to a 
later period. 

In fine, we are strongly persuaded, that the 
time being given, this system will make better 
scholars ; and the degree of scholarship being 
given, a much shorter time will be needed. 
If there is any truth in this, it will make Mr. 
Hamilton one of the most useful men of his 
age ; for if there is any thing which fills re- 
flecting men with melancholy and regret, it is 
the waste of mortal time, parental money, and 
puerile happiness, in the present method of 
pursuing Latin and Greek. 



^ 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



243 



COUNSEL FOR prisoners; 



[Edinbukgh Review, 1826.] 



On the sixth of April, 1824, Mr. George 
Lamb (a gentleman who is always the advo- 
cate of whatever is honest and liberal) pre- 
sented the following petition from several jury- 
men in the habit of serving on juries at the 
Old Bailey :— 

"That your petitioners, fully sensible of the 
invaluable privilege of jury trials, and desirous 
of seeing them as complete as human institu- 
tions will admit, feel it their duty to draw the 
attention of the House to the restrictions im- 
posed on the prisoner's counsel, which, they 
humbly conceive, have strong claims to a le- 
gislative remedy. With every disposition to 
decide justly, the petitioners have found, by 
experience, in the course of their attendances 
as jurymen in the Old Bailey, that the opening 
statements for the prosecution too frequently 
leave an impression more unfavourable to the 
prisoner at the bar than the evidence of itself 
could have produced; and it has always 
sounded harsh to the petitioners to hear it an- 
nounced from the bench, that the counsel, to 
whom the prisoner has committed his defence, 
cannot be permitted to address the jur}'- in his 
behalf, nor reply to the charges which have, or 
have not, been substantiated by the witnesses. 
The petitioners have felt their situation pe- 
culiarly painful and embarrassing when the 
prisoner's faculties, perhaps surprised b)^ such 
an intimation, are too much absorbed in the 
difficulties of his unhappy circumstances to 
admit of an effort towards his own justifica- 
tion, against the statements of the prosecu- 
tor's counsel, often unintentionally aggravated 
through zeal or misconception ; and it is purely 
with a view to the attainment of impartial 
justice, that the petitioners humbly submit to 
the serious consideration of the House the ex- 
pediency of allowing every accused person 
the full benefit of counsel, as in cases of mis- 
demeanour, and according to the practice of 
the civil courts." 

With the opinions so sensibly and properly 
expressed by these jurymen, we most cor- 
dially agree. We have before touched inci- 
dentally on this subject ; but shall now give to 
it a more direct and a fuller examination. 
We look upon it as a veiy great blot in our 
over-praised criminal code ; and no effort of 
ours shall be wanting, from time to time, for 
its removal. 

We have now the benefit of discussing these 
subjects under the government of a home se- 
cretary of state, whom we may (we believe) 
fairly call a wise, honest, and high principled 
man — as he appears to us, without wishing for 
innovation, or having any itch for it, not to be 
afraid of innovation,! when it is gradual and 

* Stockton on the Practice of not aUowing Counsel for 
Prisoners accused of Felony. 8vo. London. 1826. 
t We must always exceot the Catholic question. Mr. 



well considered. He is, indeed, almost the 
only person we remember in his station, who 
has not considered sound sense to consist in 
the rejection of every improvement, and loy- 
alty to be proved by the defence of every ac- 
cidental, iniperfect, or superannuated institu- 
tion. 

If this petition of jurymen be a real bona 
fide petition, not the result of solicitation — 
and we have no reason to doubt it — it is a 
warning which the legislature cannot neglect, 
if it mean to avoid the disgrace of seeing the 
lower and middle orders of mankind making 
laws for themselves, which the government is 
at length compelled to adopt as measures of 
their own. The judges and the Parliament 
would have gone on to this day, hanging, by 
wholesale, for the forgeries of bank notes, if 
juries had not become weary of the continual 
butchery, and resolved to acquit. The proper 
execution of laws must always depend, in 
great measure, upon public opinion ; and it is 
undoubtedly most discreditable to any men in- 
trusted with power, when the governed turn 
round upon their governors, and say, "Your 
laws are so cruel, or so foolish, we cannot, and 
will not act upon them." 

The particular improvement, of allowing 
counsel to those who are accused of felony, 
is so far from being unnecessary, from any 
extraordinary indulgence shown to English 
prisoners, that we really caimot help suspect- 
ing, that not a year elapses in which many in- 
nocent persons are not found guilty. How is 
it possible, indeed, that it can be otherwise'? 
There are seventy or eighty persons to be tried 
for various offences at the assizes, who have 
lain in prison for some months ; and fifty of 
whom, perhaps, are of the lowest order of the 
people, without friends in any better condition 
than themselves, and without one single penny 
to employ in their defence. How are they to 
obtain witnesses \ No attorney can be em- 
ployed — no subpcena can be taken out; the 
witnesses are fifty miles off, perhaps — totally 
uninsfructed — living from hand to mouth — ut- 
terly unable to give up their dailj' occupation 
to pay for their journey, or for their support 
when arrived at the town of trial — and, if they 
could get there, not knowing where to go, or 
what to do. It is impossible but that a human 
being, in such a helpless situation, must be 
found guilty ; for, as he cannot give evidence 
for himself, and has not a penny to fetch those 
who can give it for him, any story told against 
him must be taken for true (however false) ; 



Peel's opinions on this subject (giving him credit for sin- 
cerity) have always been a subject of real surprise to 
us. It must surely be some mistake between the right 
honourable eentleman and his chaplain ! They have 
been travelling together ; and some of the parson's no- 
tions have been put in Mr. Peel's head by mistake. We 
yet hope he will return them to their rightrtil owner. 



244 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



since it is impossible for the poor wretch to 
contradict it. A brother or a sister may come 
— and support every suffering and privation 
themselves in coming ; but the prisoner can- 
not often have such claims upon the persons 
who have witnessed the transaction, nor any 
other claims but those which an unjustly ac- 
cused person has upon those whose testimony 
can exculpate him — and who probably must 
starve themselves and their families to do it. 
It is true, a case of life and death will rouse 
the poorest persons, every now and then, to 
extraordinary exertions, and they may tramp 
through mud and dirt to the assize town to save 
a life — though even this effort is precarious 
enough : but imprisonment, hard labour, or 
transportation, appeal less forcibly than death, 
— and would often appeal for evidence in vain, 
to the feeble and limited resources of extreme 
poverty. It is n ot that a great proportion of those 
accused are not guilty — but that some are not 
■■ — and are utterly without means of establish- 
ing their innocence. We do not believe they 
are often acciised from wilful and corrupt per- 
jury: but the prosecutor is himself mistaken. 
The crime has been committed ; and in his 
thirst for vengeance, he has got hold of the 
wrong man. The wheat was stolen out of the 
barn ; and, amidst many other collateral cir- 
cumstances, the witnesses (paid and brought 
up by a wealthy prosecutor, who is repaid by 
the county) swear that they saw a man, very 
like the prisoner, with a sack of corn upon 
his shoulder, at an early hour of tlie morning, 
going from the barn in the direction of the 
prisoner's cottage I Here is one link, and a 
very material link, of a long chain of circum- 
stantial evidence. Judge and jury must give 
it weight, till it is contradicted. In fact, the 
prisoner did not steal the corn ; he was, to be 
sure, out of his cottage at the same hour — and 
that also is proved — but travelling in a totally 
different direction, — and was seen to be so tra- 
velling by a stage coachman passing by, and 
by a market gardener. An attorney with 
money in his pocket, whom every moment of 
such employ made richer by six-and-eighi 
pence, would have had the two witnesses 
ready, and at rack and manger, from the first 
day of the assize ; and the innocence of the pri- 
soner would have been established: but by 
what possible means is the destitute, ignorant 
wretch himself to find or to produce such wit- 
nesses ] or how can the most humane jury, 
and the most acute judge, refuse to consider 
him as guilty, till his witnesses are produced? 
We have not the slightest disposition to exag- 
gerate, and, on the contrary, should be ex- 
tremely pleased to be convinced that our ap- 
prehensions were unfoiinded: but we have 
often felt extreme pain at the hopeless and un- 
protected state of prisoners ; and we cannot 
find any answer to our suspicions, or discover 
any means by which this perversion of jus- 
tice, under the present state of the law, can be 
prevented from taking place. Against the 
prisoner are arrayed all the resources of an 
angry prosecutor, who has certainly (let who 
will be the culprit) suffered a serious injury. 
He has his hand, too, in the public purse ; for 



he prosecutes at the expense of the county. 
He cannot even relent ; for the magistrate is 
bound over to indict. His witnesses cannot 
fail him ; for they are all bound over by the 
same magistrate to give evidence. He is out 
of prison, too, and can exert himself. 

The prisoner, on the other hand, comes into 
court, squalid and depressed from long con- 
finement — utterly unable to tell his own story 
from want of words and want of confidence, 
and is unable to produce evidence for want of 
money. His fate accordingly is obvious; — 
and that there are many innocent men pu- 
nished every year, for crimes they have not 
committed, appears to us to be extremely pro- 
bable. It is, indeed, scarcely possible it should 
be otherwise : and, as if to prove the fact, every 
now and then,' a case of this kind is detected. 
Some circumstances come to light between 
sentence and execution; immense exertions 
are made by humane men ; time is gained, and 
the innocence of the condemned person com- 
pletely established. In Elizabeth Caning's 
case, two women were capitally convicted, 
ordered for execution — and at last found inno- 
cent, and respited. Such, too, was the case of 
the men who were sentenced ten years ago, 
for the robbery of Lord Cowper's steward. 
" I have myself (says Mr. Scarlett) o//e?z seen 
persons I thought innocent convicted, and the 
guilty escape, for want of some acute and in- 
telligent counsel to show the bearings of the 
different circumstances on the conduct and 
situatioii of the prisoner." — (House of Com- 
mons Debates, April 25tJi, 1826.) We were de- 
lighted to see, in this last debate, both Mr. 
Brougham and Mr. Scarlett profess themselves 
friendly to Mr. Lamb's motion. 

But in how many cases has the injustice 
proceeded Avithout any suspicion being ex- 
cited 1 and even if we could reckon upon men 
being watchful in capital cases, where life is 
concerned, we are afraid it is in such cases 
alone that they ever besiege the secretary of 
state, and compel his attention. We never 
remember any such interference to save a 
man unjustly condemned to the hulks or the 
treadmill ; and yet there are certainly more 
condemnations to these minor punishments 
than to the gallows : but then it is all onC' — 
who knows or cares about it? If Harrison or 
Johnson has been condemned, after regular 
trial by jury, to six months' treadmill, because 
Harrison and Johnson were without a penny 
to procure evidence — who knows or cares 
about Harrison or Johnson? how can they 
make themselves heard ? or in what way can 
they obtain redress ? It worries rich and com- 
fortable people to hear the humanity of our 
penal laws called in question. There is talk 
of a society for employing discharged prison- 
ers : might not something be effected by a 
society instituted for the purpose of providing 
to poor prisoners a proper defence, and a due 
attendance of witnesses? But we must hasten 
on from this disgraceful neglect of poor pri- 
soners, to the particular subject of complaint 
we have proposed to ourselves. 

The proposition is. That the prisoner accused 
of felony ought to have the same power of select- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



245 



ing counsel to speak for him as he has in cases 
of treason and misdemeanour, and as defendants 
have in all civil actions. 

Nothing can be done in any discussion njjon 
any point of law in England, without quoting 
Mr. Justice Blackstone. Mr. Justice Black- 
stone, we believe, generally wrote his Com- 
mentaries late in the evening, with, a bottle 
' of wine before him ; and little did he think, as 
each sentence fell from the glass and pen, of 
the immense influence it might hereafter exer- 
cise upon the laws and usages of his country. 
" It is" (says this favourite writer) " not at all 
of a piece with the rest of the humane treat- 
ment of prisoners by the English law; for upon 
what face of reason can that assistance be de- 
nied to save the life of a man, which yet is 
allowed him in prosecutions for every petty 
trespass 1" Nor, indeed, strictly speaking, is 
it a part of our ancient law ; for the Mirror, 
having observed the necessity of counsel in 
civil suits, who know how to forward and de- 
fend the cause by the rules of law and cus- 
toms of the realm, immediately subjoins " and 
more necessary are they for defence upon in- 
dictment and appeals of felony, than upon any 
other venial crimes." To the authority of 
Blackstone may be added that of Sir John 
Hall, in HoUis's case ; of Sir Robert Atkyns, 
in Lord Russell's case ; and of Sir Bartholo- 
mew Shower, in the arguments for a New 
Bill of Rights, in 1682. " In the name of God," 
says this judge, " what harm can accrue to the 
public in general, or to any man in particular, 
that, in cases of State-treason, counsel should 
not be allowed to the accused] What rule 
of justice is there to warrant its denial, when, 
in a civil case of a halfpenny cake, he may 
plead either by himself or by his advocate 1 
That the court is counsel for the prisoner can 
be no effectual reason; for so they are for 
each party, that right may be done." — (Somer's 
Tracts, vol. ii. p. 568.) In the trial of Thomas 
Rosewell, a dissenting clergyman, for high 
treason in 1684, Judge Jeffries, in summing 
up, confessed to the jury, " that he thought it 
a hard case, that a man should have counsel 
to defend himself for a twopenny trespass, 
and his witnesses be examined upon oath; 
but if he stole, committed murder or felony, 
nay, high treason, where life, estate, honour, 
and all were concerned, that he should neither 
have counsel, nor have his witnesses examin- 
ed upon oath." — Howell's State Trials, vol. x. 
p. 207. 

There have been two capital errors in the 
criminal codes of feudal Europe, from which 
a great variety of mistake and injustice have 
proceeded ; the one, a disposition to confound 
accusation with guilt ; the other, to mistake a 
defence of prisoners accused by the crown, for 
disloyalty and disaffection to the crown ; and 
from these errors our own code has been 
slowly and gradually recovering, by all those 
struggles and exertions which it always costs 
to remove folly sanctioned by antiquity. In 
the early periods of our history, the accused 
person could call no evidence: — then, for a 
long time, his evidence against the king could 
not be examined upon oath ; consequently, he 



might as well have producea none, as all the 
evidence against him was upon oath. Till 
the reign of Anne, no one accused of felony 
could produce witnesses upon oath; and the old 
practice was vindicated, in opposition to the new 
one, introduced under the statute of that day, on 
the grounds of humanity and tenderness to the 
prisoner! because, as his witnesses were not re- 
stricted byau oath, they were at libertyto indulge 
in simple falsehood as much as they pleased; — 
so argued the blessed defenders of nonsense in 
those days. Then it was ruled to be indecent 
and improper that counsel should be employed 
against the crown; and, therefore, the prisoner 
accused of treason could have no counsel. In 
like manner, a party accused of felony could 
have no counsel to assist him in the trial. 
Counsel might indeed stay in the court, but 
apart from the prisoner, with whom they could 
have no communication. They were not 
allowed to put any question, or to suggest any 
doubtful point of law; but if the prisoner 
(likely to be a weak, unlettered man) could 
himself suggest any doubt in matter of law, 
the court determined first if the question of 
law should be entertained, and then assigned 
counsel to argue it. In those times, too, the 
jury were punishable if they gave a false ver- 
dict against the king, but were not punishable 
if they gave a false verdict against the pri- 
soner. The preamble of the Act of 1696 runs 
thus, — " Whereas it is expedient that persons 
charged with high treason should make a full 
and sufficient defence." Might it not be altered 
to persons charged with any species or degree of 
crime? All these errors have given way to 
the force of truth, and to the power of common 
sense and common humanity — the Attorney 
and Solicitor General, for the time being, al- 
ways protesting against each alteration, and 
regularly and officially prophesying the utter 
destruction of the whole jurisprudence of Great 
Britain. There is no man now alive, perhaps, 
so utterly foolish, as to propose that prisoners 
should be prevented from producing evidence 
upon oath, and being heard by their counsel in 
cases of high treason; and yet it cost a strug- 
gle for seven sessions to get this measure 
through the two houses of Parliament. But 
mankind are much like the children they be- 
get — they always make wry faces at what is 
to do them good ; and it is necessary some- 
times to hold the nose, and force the medicine 
down the throat. They enjoy the health and 
vigour consequent upon the medicine ; but 
cuff" the doctor, and sputter at his stuff"! 

A most absurd argument was advanced in 
the honourable house, that the practice of em- 
ploying counsel would be such an expense to 
the prisoner ! — ^just as if any thing was so ex- 
pensive as being hanged ! What a fine topic 
for the ordinary ! " You are going" (says that 
exquisite divine) "to be hanged to-morrow, it 
is true, but consider what a sum you have 
saved ! Mr. Scarlett or Mr. Brougham might 
certainly have presented arguments to the 
jury which would have insured your acquit- 
tal ; but do you forget that gentlemen of their 
eminence must be recompensed by large fees, 
and that, if your life had been saved, you 
x2 



246 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



would actually have been out of pocket above 
20/.? You will now die with the conscious- 
ness of having obeyed the dictates of a wise 
economy; and with a grateful reverence for 
the laws of your country, which prevents you 
from running into such unbounded expense — 
so let us now go to prayers." 

It is ludicrous enough to recollect, when the 
employment of counsel is objected to on ac- 
count of the expense to the prisoner, that the 
same merciful law which, to save the prison- 
er's money, has denied him counsel, and pro- 
duced his conviction, seizes upon all his sav- 
ings the moment he is convicted. 

Of all false and foolish dicta, the most trite 
and the most absurd is that which asserts that 
the judge is counsel for the prisoner. We do 
not hesitate to say that this is merely an un- 
meaning phrase, invented to defend a perni- 
cious abuse. The judge cannot be counsel for 
the prisoner, ought not to be counsel for the 
prisoner, never is counsel for the prisoner. 
To force an ignorant man into a court of jus- 
lice, and to tell him that the judge is his coun- 
sel, appears to us quite as foolish as to set a 
hungry man down to his meals, and to tell 
him that the table was his dinner. In the first 
place, a counsel should always have private 
and previous communication with the pri- 
soner, which the judge, of course, cannot have. 
The prisoner reveals to his counsel how far 
he is guilty, or he is not; states to him all the 
circumstances of his case — and might often 
enable his advocate, if his advocate were 
allowed to speak, to explain a long string of 
circumstantial evidence, in a manner favour- 
able to the innocence of his client. Of all 
these advantages, the judge, if he had every 
disposition to befriend the prisoner, is of 
course deprived. Something occurs to a pri- 
soner in the course of the cause ; he suggests 
it in a whisper to his counsel, doubtful if it is 
a wise point to urge or not. His counsel 
thinks it of importance, and would urge it, if 
his mouth were not shut. Can a prisoner 
have this secret communication with a judge, 
and take his advice, whether or not he, the 
judge, shall mention it to the jury? The 
counsel has (after all the evidence has been 
given) a bad opinion of his client's case ; but 
he suppresses that opinion ; and it is his duty 
to do so. He is not to decide ; that is the pro- 
vince of the jury: and, in spite of his own 
opinion — his client may be innocent. He is 
brought there (or would be brought there if 
the privilege of speech were allowed) for the 
express purpose of saying all that could be 
said on one side of the question. He is a 
weight in one scale, and some one else holds 
the balance. This is the way in which truth 
is elicited in civil, and would be in criminal 
cases. But does the Judge ever assume the 
appearance of believing a prisoner to be in- 
nocent whom he thinks to be guilty ? If the 
prisoner advances inconclusive or weak argu- 
ments, does not the judge say they are weak 
and inconclusive, and does he not often sum 
up against his own client 1 How then is he 
counsel for the prisoner 1 If the counsel for 
the prisoner were to see a strong point, which 



the counsel for the prosecution had missed, 
would he supply the deficiency of his antago- 
nist, and urge what had been neglected to be 
urged? But is it not the imperious duty of 
the judge to do so 1 How then can these two 
functionaries stand in the same relation to the 
prisoner? ' In fact the only meaning of the , 
phrase is this, that the judge will not suffer 
any undue advantage to be taken of the igno- 
rance and helplessness of the prisoner — that 
he will point out any evidence or circumstance 
in his favour — and see that equal justice is 
done to both parties. But in this sense he is 
as much the counsel of the prosecutor as of 
the prisoner. This is all the judge can do, or 
even pretends to do ; but he can have no pre- 
vious communication with the prisoner — he 
can have no confidential communication in 
court with the prisoner before he sums up; he 
cannot fling the whole weight of his under- 
standing into the opposite scale against the 
counsel for the prosecution, and produce that 
collision of faculties, which, in all other cases 
but those of felony, is supposed to be the hap- 
piest method of arriving at truth. Baron Gar- 
row, in his charge to the grand jury at Exeter, 
on the 16th of August, 1824, thus expressed 
his opinion of a judge being counsel for the 
prisoner. " It has been said, and truly said, 
that in criminal courts, judges were counsel 
for the prisoners. So undotibtedly they were, 
as far as they could to prevent undue preju- 
dice, to guard against improper influence be- 
ing excited against prisoners; but it was im- 
possible for them to go farther than this ; for 
they could not suggest the course of defence- 
prisoners ought to pursue; for judges only 
saw the depositions so short a time before the 
accused appeared at the bar of their country, 
that it was quite impossible for them to act 
fully in that capacity." The learned Baron 
might have added, that it would be more cor- 
rect to call the judge counsel for the prosecu- 
tion ; for his only previous instructions were 
the depositions for the prosecution, from which, 
in the absence of counsel, he examined the evi- 
dence against the prisoner. On the prisoner's 
behalf he had no instructions at all. 

Can any thing, then, be more flagrantly and 
scandalously unjust, than, in a long case of 
circumstantial evidence, to refuse to a prisoner 
the benefit of counsel 1 A foot-mark, a word, 
a sound, a tool dropped, all gave birth to the 
most ingenious inferences ; and the counsel 
for the prosecution is so far from being blame- 
able for entering into all these things, that they 
are all essential to the detection of guilt, and 
they are all links of a long and intricate chain : 
but if a close examination into, and a logical 
statement of, all these circumstances be neces- 
sary for the establishment of guilt, is not the 
same closeness of reasoning and the same 
logical statement necessary for the establish- 
ment of innocence 1 If justice cannot be done to 
society without the intervention of a pi-^ctised 
and ingenious mind, who may connect all hese 
links together, and make them clear to the ap- 
prehension of a jury, crtw justice be done to 
the prisoner, unless similar practice and simi- 
lar ingenuity are employed to detect the flaws 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



247 



of the chain, and to point out the disconnection 
of the circumstances 1 

Is there any one gentleman in the House of 
Commons, who, in yielding his vote to this 
paltry and perilous fallacy of the judge being 
counsel for the prisoner, does not feel, that, 
were he himself a criminal, he would prefer 
almost any counsel at the bar, to the tender 
mercies of the judge 1 How strange that any 
man who could make his election would 
eagerly and diligently surrender this exquisite 
privilege, and addict himself to the perilous 
practice of giving fees to counsel ? Nor let 
us forget, in considering judges as counsel for 
the prisoner, that there have been such men as 
Chief Justice Jeffries, Mr. Justice Page, and 
Mr. Justice Alybone, and that, in bad times, 
such men may reappear. " If you do not allow 
me counsel, my lords (says Lord Lovat), it is 
impossible for me to make any defence, by 
reason of my infirmity. I do not see, I do not 
hear. I come up to the bar at the hazard of my 
life. I have fainted several times, I have been 
up so early, ever since four o'clock this morn- 
ing. I therefore ask for assistance; and if you 
do not allow me counsel, or such aid as is ne- 
cessary, it will be impossible for me to make 
any defence at all." Though Lord Lovat's 
guilt was evident, yet the managers of the im- 
peachment felt so strongly the injustice which 
was done, that, by the hands of Sir W. Young, 
the chief manager, a bill was brought into par- 
liament, to allow counsel to persons impeached 
by that house, which was not previously the 
case ; so that the evil is already done away 
with, in a great measure, to persons of rank: 
it so happens in legislation, when a gentleman 
suffers, public attention is awakened to the evil 
of laws. Every man who makes laws says, 
" This may be my case :" but it requires the 
repeated efforts of humane men, or, as Mr. 
North calls them, dilettanti philosophers, to 
awaken the attention of lawmakers to evils 
from which they are themselves exempt. We 
do not say this to make the leaders of mankind 
unpopular, but to rouse their earnest attention 
in cases where the poor only are concerned, 
and where neither good nor evil can happen to 
themselves. 

A great stress is laid upon the moderation 
of the opening counsel ; that is, he does not 
conjure the farmers in the jury-box, by the love 
which they bear to their children — he does not 
declaim upon blood-guiltiness — he does not 
describe the death of Abel by Cain, the first 
murderer — he does not describe scattered 
brains, ghastly wounds, pale features, and hair 
clotted with gore — he does not do a thousand 
things, which are not in English taste, and 
which it would be very foolish and very vulgar 
to do. We readily allow all this. But yet, if 
it be a cause of importance, it is essentially 
necessary to our counsellor's reputation that 
his man should be hung ! And accordingly, 
with a very calm voice, and composed manner, 
and with many expressions of candour, he sets 
himself to comment astutely upon the circum- 
stances. Distant events are immediately con- 
nected; meaning is given to insignificant facts ; 
new niotiyes are ascribed to innocent actions ; 



farmer gives way after farmer in the jury-box; 
and a rope of eloquence is woven round the 
prisoner's neck ! Every one is delighted with 
the talents of the advocate ; and because there 
has been no noise, no violent action, and no 
consequent perspiration, he is praised for his 
candour and forbearance, and the lenity of our 
laws is the theme of universal approbation. 
In the mean time, the speech-maker and the 
prisoner know better. 

We should be glad to know of any nation in 
the world, taxed by kings, or even imagined by 
poets (except the English), who have refused 
to prisoners the benefit of counsel. Why is 
the voice of humanity heard every where else, 
and disregarded here 1 In Scotland, the accused 
have not only counsel to speak for them, but a 
copy of the indictment, and a list of the wit- 
nesses. In France, in the Netherlands, in the 
Avhole of Europe, counsel are allotted as a 
matter of course. Every where else but here, 
accusation is considered as unfavourable to 
the exercise of human faculties. It is admitted 
to be that crisis in which, above all others, an 
unhappy man wants the aid of eloquence, wis- 
dom, and coolness. In France, the Napoleon 
code has provided not only that counsel should 
be allowed to the prisoner, but that, as with us in 
Scotland, his counsel should have the last word. . 

It is a most affecting moment in a court of 
justice, when the evidence has all been heard, 
and the judge asks the prisoner what he has to 
say in his defence. The prisoner, who has (by 
great exertions, perhaps of his friends) saved 
up money enough to procure counsel, says to 
the judge, " that he leaves his defence to his 
counsel." We have often blushed for English 
.humanity to hear the reply. " Your counsel 
cannot speak for you, you must speak for 
yourself;" and this is the reply given to a poor 
girl of eighteen — to a foreigner — to a deaf 
man — to a stammerer — to the sick — to the fee- 
ble — to the old — to the most abject and ignorant 
of human beings ! It is a reply, we must say, 
at which common sense and common feeling 
revolt : — for it is full of brutal cruelly, and of 
base inattention, of those who make laws, to 
the happiness of those for whom laws were 
made. We wonder that any juryman can con- 
vict under such a shocking violation of all 
natural justice. The iron age of Clovis and 
Clottaire can produce no more atrocious viola- 
tion of every good feeling, and every good 
principle. Can a sick man find strength and 
nerves to speak before a large assembly] — can 
an ignorant man find words 1 — can a low man 
find confidence 1 Is not he afraid of becoming 
an object of ridicule"? — can he believe that his 
expressions will be understood? How often 
have we seen a poor wretch, struggling against 
the agonies of his spirit, and the rudeness of 
his conceptions, and his awe of better dressed 
men and better taught men, and the shame 
which the accusation has brought upon his 
head, and the sight of his parents and children 
gazing at him in the court, for the last time, 
perhaps, and after a long absence 1 The 
mariner sinking in the wave does not want a 
helping hand more than does this poor wretch. 
But help is denied to all ! Age cannot have it, 



248 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



nor ignorance, nor the modesty of women ! 
One hard, uncharitable rule silences the de- 
fenders of the wretched, in the worst of human 
evils ; and at the bitterest of human moments, 
mercy is blotted out from the ways of men ! 

Suppose a crime to have been committed 
under the influence of insanity; is the insane 
man, now convalescent, to plead his own 
insanity? — to oifer arguments to show that he 
must have been madl — and, by the glimmer- 
ings of his returning reason, to prove that, at a 
former period, that same reason was utterly 
extinct 1 These are the cruel situations into 
which judges and courts of justice are thrown 
by the present state of the law. 

There is a judge now upon the bench, who 
never took away the life of a fellow creature 
without shutting himself up alone and giving 
the most profound attention to every circum- 
stance of the case ! and this solemn act he 
always premises with his own beautiful prayer 
to God, that he will enlighten him with his 
Divine Spirit in the exercise of this terrible 
privilege ! Now would it not be an immense 
satisfaction to this feeling and honourable ma- 
gistrate, to be sure that every witness on the 
side of the prisoner had been heard, and that 
every argument which could be urged in his 
favour had been brought forward, by a man 
whose duty it was to see only on one side of 
the question, and whose interest and reputation 
were thoroughly embarked in this partial exer- 
tion? If a judge fails to get at the truth, after 
these instruments of investigation are used, his 
failure must be attributed to the limited powers 
of man — not to the want of good inclination, 
or wise institutions. We are surprised that 
such a measure does not come into Parliament, 
with the strong recommendation of the judges. 
It is surely better to be a day longer on the cir- 
cuit, than to murder rapidly in ermine. 

It is argued, that, among the various pleas 
for mercy that are offered, no prisoner has ever 
urged to the secretary of state the disadvantage 
of having no counsel to plead for him ; but a 
prisoner who dislikes to undergo his sentence, 
naturally addresses to those who can reverse 
it such arguments only as will produce, in the 
opinion of the referee, a pleasing effect. He 
does not therefore find fault with the established 
system of jurisprudence, but brings forward 
facts and arguments to prove his own inno- 
cence. Besides, how few people there are who 
can elevate themselves from the acquiescence 
in what is, to the consideration of what ought to 
be; and if they could do so, the way to get rid 
of a punishment is not (as we have just ob- 
served) to say, " You have no right to punish 
me in this manner," but to say, " I am innocent 
of the offence." The fraudulent baker at Con- 
stantinople, who is about to be baked to death 
in his own oven, does not complain of the se- 
verity of baking bakers, but promises to use 
more flour and less fraud. 

Whence comes it (we should like to ask Sir 
John Singleton Copley, who seems to dread so 
much the conflicts of talent in criminal cases) 
that a method of getting at truth which is found 
so serviceable in civil cases, should be so much 
objected to in criminal cases? Would you 



have all this wrangling and bickering, it is 
asked, and contentious eloquence, when the 
life of a man is concerned ? Why not, as well 
as when his property is concerned? It is 
either a good means of doing justice, or it is- 
not, that two understandings should be put in 
opposition to each other, and that a third should 
decide between them. Does this open every 
view which can bear upon the question ? Does 
it in the most effectual manner watch the judge, 
detect perjury, and sift evidence ? If not, why 
is it suffered to disgrace our civil institutions? 
If it effect all these objects, why is it not incor- 
porated into our criminal law? Of what im- 
portance is a little disgust at professional tricks, 
if the solid advantage gained is a nearer ap- 
proximation to truth ? Can any thing be more 
preposterous than this preference of taste to 
justice, and of solemnity to truth ? What an 
eulogium of a trial to say, " I am by no means 
satisfied that the jury were right in finding the 
prisoner guilty; but every thing was carried 
on with the utmost decorum. The verdict was 
wrong ; but there was the most perfect pro- 
priety and order in the proceedings. The man 
will be unfairly hanged; but all was genteel!" 
If solemnity is what is principally wanted in a 
court of justice, we had better study the man- 
ners of the old Spanish Inquisition; but if 
battles with the judge, and battles among the 
counsel, are the best method, as they certainly 
are, of getting at the truth, better tolerate this 
philosophical Billingsgate, than persevere, be- 
cause the life of a man is at stake, in solemn 
and polished injustice. 

Why would it not be just as wise and equita- 
ble to leave the defendant without counsel in 
civil cases — and to tell him that the judge was 
his counsel ? And if the reply is to produce 
such injurious effects as are anticipated upon 
the minds of the jury in criminal cases, why 
not in civil cases also ? In twenty-eight cases 
out of thirty, the verdict in civil cases is cor- 
rect ; in the two remaining cases, the error 
may proceed from other causes than the right 
of reply; and yet the right of reply has existed 
in all. In a vast majority of cases, the verdict 
is for the plaintiff, not because there is a right 
of reply, but because he who has it in his 
power to decide whether he will go to law or 
not, and resolves to expose himself to the 
expense and trouble of a lav suit, has probably 
a good foundation for his claim. Nobody, of 
course, can intend to say that the majority of 
verdicts in favour of plaintiffs are against jus- 
tice, and merely attributable to the advantage 
of a last speech. If this were the case, the 
sooner advocates are turned out of court the 
better — and then the improvement of both civil 
and criminal law would be an abolition of all 
speeches ; for those who dread the effect of the 
last word upon the fate of the prisoner, must 
remember that there is at present always a last 
speech against the prisoner ; for, as the counsel 
for the prosecution cannot be replied to, his is 
the last speech. 

There is certainly this difference between a 
civil and a criminal case — that in one a new 
trial can be granted, in the other not. But you 
must first make up your mind whether this 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



249 



system of contentious investigation by opposite 
advocates is or is not the best method of getting 
at truth : if it be, the more irremediable the 
decision, the more powerful and perfect should 
be the means of deciding; and then it would 
be a less oppression if the civil defendant were 
deprived of counsel than the criminal prisoner. 
When an error has been committed, the ad- 
vantage is greater to the latter of these per- 
sons than to the former ; — the criminal is not 
tried again, but pardoned ; while the civil de- 
fendant must run the chance of another jury. 

If the effect of reply, and the contention of 
counsel, have all these baneful consequences 
in felony, why not also in misdemeanour and 
high treason 1 Half the cases at sessions are 
cases of misdemeanour, where counsel are em- 
ployed, and half-informed justices preside in- 
stead of learned judges. There are no com- 
plaints of the unfairness of verdicts, though 
there are every now and then of the severity 
of punishments. Now, if the reasoning of Mr. 
Lamb's opponents were true, the disturbing 
force of the prisoner's counsel must fling every 
thing into confusion. The court for misde- 
meanours must be a scene of riot and per- 
plexity ; and the detection and punishment of 
crime must be utterly impossible : and yet in 
the very teeth of these objections, such courts 
of justice are just as orderly in one set of 
offences as the other ; and the conviction of a 
guilty person just as certain and as easy. 

The prosecutor (if this system were altered) 
would have the choice of counsel ; so he has 
now — with this difference, that, at present, his 
counsel cannot be answered nor opposed. It 
would be belter, in all cases, if two men of 
exactly equal talent could be opposed to each 
other; but as this is impossible, the system 
must be taken with this inconvenience ; biit 
there can be no inequality between counsel so 
great as that between any counsel and the 
prisoner pleading for himself. "It has been 
lately my lot," says Mr. Denman, " to try two 
prisoners who were deaf and dumb, and who 
could only be made to understand what was 
passing by the signs of their friends. The 
cases were clear and simple; but if they had 
been circumstantial cases, in what a situation 
would the judge and jury be placed, when the 
prisoner could have no counsel to plead for 
him." — Debates of the House of Commons, ^ipril 
25, 1826. 

The folly of being counsel for yourself is so 
notorious in civil cases, that it has grown into 
a proverb. But the cruelty of the law compels 
a man, in criminal cases, to be guilty of a 
much greater act of folly, and to trust his life 
to an advocate, who, by the common sense of 
mankind, is pronounced to be inadequate to 
defend the possession of an acre of land. 

In all cases it must be supposed, that rea- 
sonably convenient instruments are selected to 
effect the purpose in view. A judge may be 
commonly presumed to understand his profes- 
sion, and a jury to have a fair allowance of 
common sense; but the objectors to the im- 
provement we recommend appear to make no 
such suppositions. Counsel are always to make 
flashy addresses to the passions. Juries are to 
32 



be so much struck with them, that they are 
always to acquit or to condemn, contrary to 
justice ; and judges are always to be so biassed, 
that they are to fling themselves rashly into the 
opposite scale against the prisoner. Many 
cases of misdemeanour consign a man to in- 
famy, and cast a blot upon his posterity. 
Judges and juries must feel these cases as 
strongly as any cases of felony; and yet, in 
spite of this, and in spite of the free permis- 
sion of counsel to speak, they preserve their 
judgment, and command their feelings sur- 
prisingly. Generally speaking, we believe none 
of these evils would take place. Trumpery 
declamation would be considered as discredit- 
able to the counsel, and would be disregarded 
by the jury. The judge and jury (as in civil 
cases) would gain the habit of looking to the 
facts, selecting the arguments, and coming to 
reasonable conclusions. It is so in all other 
countries — and it would be so in this. But the 
vigilance of the judge is to relax, if there is 
counsel for the prisoner. Is, then, the relaxed 
vigilance of the jijdges complained of, in high 
treason, in misdemeanour, or in civil cases ? 
This appears to us really to shut up the debate, 
and to preclude reply. Why is the practice so 
good in all other cases, and so pernicious in 
felony alone] This question has never re- 
ceived even the shadow of an answer. There 
is no one objection against the allowance of 
counsel to prisoners in felony, which does not 
apply to them in all cases. If the vigilance 
of judges depend upon this injustice to the 
prisoner, then, the greater injustice to the 
prisoner, the more vigilance ; and so the true 
method of perfecting the Bench would be, to 
deny the prisoner the power of calling wit- 
nesses, and to increase as much as possible 
the disparity between the accuser and the 
accused. We hope men are selected for the 
Judges of Israel, whose vigilance depends upon 
better and higher principles. 

There are three methods of arranging a 
trial, as to the mode of employing counsel^ 
that both parties should have counsel, or nei- 
ther — or only one. The first method is the 
best ; the second is preferable to the last ; and 
the last, which is our present system, is the 
worst possible. If counsel were denied to 
either of the parties, if it Ibe necessary that 
any system of jurisprudence should be dis- 
graced by such an act of injustice, they should 
rather be denied to the prosecutor than to the 
prisoner. 

But the most singular caprice of the law 
is, that counsel are pertnitted in very high 
crimes, and in very small crimes, and de- 
nied in crimes of a sort of medium descrip- 
tion. In high treason, where you mean to 
murder Lord Liverpool, and to levy war 
against the people, and to blow up the ' two 
houses of Parliament, all the lawyers of West- 
minster Hall may talk themselves dry, and the 
jury deaf. Lord Eldon, when at the bar, has 
been heard for nine hours on such subjects. 
If, instead of producing the destruction of five 
thousand people, you are indicted for the mur- 
der of one person, here human faculties, from 
the diminution of guilt, are supposed to be so 



250 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



clear and so unclouded, that the prisoner is 
quite adequate to make his own defence, and 
no counsel are allowed. Take it then upon 
that principle ; and let the rule, and the reason 
of it, pass as sufficient. But if, instead of 
murdering the man, you have only libelled 
him, then, for some reason or another, though 
utterly unknown to us, the original imbecility 
of faculties in accused persons i respected, 
and counsel are allowed. Was ever such non- 
sense defended by public men in grave assem- 
blies 1 The prosecutor, too (as Mr. Horace 
Twiss justly observes), can either allow or 
disallow counsel, by selecting his form of pro- 
secution ; — as where a mob has assembled to 
repeal,by riot and force, some unpopular statute, 
and certain persons had continued in that as- 
sembly for more than an hour after proclama- 
tion to disperse. That might be treated as 
levying war against the king, and then the 
prisoner would be entitled to receive (as Lord 
George Gordon did receive) the benefit of 
counsel. It might also be treated as a sedi- 
tious riot; then it would be a misdemeanour, 
and counsel would still be allowed. But if 
government had a mind to destroy the prisoner 
effectually, they have only to abstain from the 
charge of treason, and to introduce into the 
indictment the aggravation, that the prisoner 
had continued with the mob for an hour after 
proclamation to disperse ; this is a felony, the 
prisoner's life is in jeopardy, and counsel are 
effectually excluded. It produces, in many 
other cases disconnected with treason, the 
most scandalous injustice. A receiver of 
stolen goods, who employs a young girl to rob 
her master, may be tried for the misdemea- 
nour ; the young girl taken afterwards would 
be tried for the felony. The receiver would 
be punishable only with fine, imprisonment, 
or whipping, and he could have counsel to 
defend him. The girl indicted for felony, and 
liable to death, would enjoy no such advantage. 

In the comparison between felony and trea- 
son, there are certainly some arguments why 
counsel should be allowed in felony rather 
than in treason. Persons accused of treason 
are generally persons of education and rank, 
accustomed to assemblies, and to public speak- 
ing, while men accused of felony are com- 
monly of the lowest of the people. If it be 
true, that judges, in cases of high treason, are 
more liable to be influenced by the crown, and 
to lean against the prisoner, this cannot apply 
to cases of misdemeanour, or to the defendants 
in civil cases ; but if it be necessary, that 
judges should be watched in political cases, 
how often are cases of felony connected with 
political disaffection ? Every judge, too, has 
his idiosyncrasies, which require to be watched. 
Some hate Dissenters — some mobs ; some 
have one weakness, some another; and the 
ultimate truth is, that no court of justice is 
safe, unless there is some one present whose 
occupation and interest it is to watch the safe- 
ty of the prisoner. Till then, no man of right 
feeling can be easy at the administration of 
justice, and the punishment of death. 

Two men are accused of one offence ; the 
one dexterous, bold, subtile, gifted with speech. 



and remarkable for presence of mind; the 
other timid, hesitating, and confused — is there 
any reason why the chances of these two men 
for acquittal should be, as they are, so very 
different 1 Inequalities there will be in the 
means of defence under the best system, but 
there is no occasion the law should make 
these greater than they are left by chance or 
nature. 

But (it is asked) what practical injustice is 
done — what practical evil is there* in the pre- 
sent system? The great object of all law is, 
that the guilty should be punished, and that 
the innocent should be acquitted. A very 
great majority of prisoners, we admit, are 
guilty — and so clearly guilty, that we believe 
they would be found guilty under any system; 
but among the number of those who are tried, 
some are innocent, and the chance of establish- 
ing their innocence is very much diminished 
by the privation of counsel. In the course 
of twenty or thirty years, among the whole 
mass of English prisoners, we believe many 
are found guilty who are innocent, and who 
would not have been found guilty, if an able 
and intelligent man had watched over their 
interest, and represented their case. If this 
happen only to two or three every year, it is 
quite a sufficient reason why the law should 
be altered. That such cases exist we firmly 
believe ; and this is the practical evil — per- 
ceptible to men of sense and reflection ; but 
not likely to become the subject of general 
petition. To ask why there are not peti- 
tions — why the evil is not more noticed, is 
mere parliamentary froth and ministerial 
juggling. Gentlemen are rarely hung. If 
they were so, there would be petitions without 
end for counsel. The creatures exposed to 
the cruelties and injustice of the law are 
dumb creatures, who feel the evil without be- 
ing able to express their feeling. Besides, 
the question is not, whether the evil is found 
out, but whether the evil exist. Whoever 
thinks it is an evil, should vote against it, 
whether the sufferer from the injustice dis- 
cover it to be an injustice, or whether he suffer 
in ignorant silence. When the bill was en- 
acted, which allowed counsel for treason, there 
was not a petition from one end of England 
to the other. Can there be a more shocking 
answer from the ministerial bench, than to 
say. For real evil we care nothing — only for 
detected evil 1 We will set about curing any 
wrong which affects our popularity and power: 
but as to any other evil, we wait till the peo- 
ple find it out; and, in the mean time, commit 
such evils to the care of Mr. George Lamb, 
and of Sir James Mackintosh. We are sure 
so good a man as Mr. Peel can never feel in 
this manner. 

Howard devoted himself to his country. It 
was a noble example. Let two gentlemen on 
the ministerial side of the house (we only ask 
for two) commit some crimes, which will ren- 
der their execution a matter of painful neces- 
sity. Let them feel, and report to the house, 
all the injustice and inconvenience of having 
neither a copy of the indictment, nor a list of 
witnesses, nor counsel to defend them. We 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



251 



will venture to say, that the evidence of two 
such persons would do more for the improve- 
ment of the criminal law, than all the orations 
of Mr. Lamb or the lucubrations of Beccaria. 
Such evidence would save time, and bring the 
question to an issue. It is a great duty, and 
ought to be fulfilled — and, in ancient Rome, 
would have been fulfilled. 

The opponents always forget that Mr. Lamb's 
plan is not to covipel prisoners to have counsel, 
but to allow them to have counsel, if they choose 
to do so. Depend upon it, as Dr. Johnson 
says, when a man is going to be hanged, his 
faculties are wonderfully concentrated. If it 
be really true, as the defenders of Mumpsimus 
observe, that the judge is the best counsel for 
the prisoner, the prisoner will soon learn to 
employ him, especially as his lordship works 
without fees. All that we want is an option 
given to the prisoner — that a man, left to adopt 
his own means of defence in every trifling 
civil right, may have the same power of se- 
lecting his own auxiliaries for higher interests. 

But nothing can be more unjust than to 
speak of judges, as if they were of one stan- 
dard, and one heart and head pattern. The 
great majority of judges, we have no doubt, 
are upright and pure ; but some have been 
selected for flexible politics — some are pas- 
sionate — some are in a hurry — some are vio- 
lent churchmen — some resemble ancient fe- 
males — some have the gout — some are eighty 
years old — some are blin*!, deaf, and have lost 
the power of smelling. All one to the unhappy 
prisoner — he has no choice. 

It is impossible to put so gross an insult 
upon judges, jurymen, grand jurymen, or any 
person connected with the administration of 
justice, as to suppose that the longer time to 
be taken up by speeches of counsel constitutes 
the grand bar to the proposed alteration. If 
three hours would acquit a man, and he is 
hanged because he is only allowed two hours 
for his defence, the poor man is as much mur- 
dered as if his throat had been cut before he 
came into court. If twelve judges cannot do 
the most perfect justice, other twelve must be 
appointed. Strange administration of criminal 
law, to adhere obstinately to an inadequate 
number of judges, and to refuse any improve- 
ment which is mcompatible with this arbitrary 
and capricious enactment. Neither is it quite 
certain that the proposed alteration would cre- 
ate a greater demand upon the time of the 
court. At present the counsel makes a defence 
by long cross-examinations and examinations 
in chief of the witnesses, and the judge allows 
a greater flatitude than he would do, if the 
counsel of the prisoner were permitted to 
speak. The counsel by these oblique methods, 
and by stating false points of law for the ex- 
press purpose of introducing facts, endeavours 
to obviate the injustice of the law, and takes 
up more time by this oblique, than he would do 
by a direct defence. But the best answer to 
this objection of time (which, if true, is no ob- 
jection at all) is, that as many misdemeanours 
as felonies are tried in a given time, though 
counsel are allowed in the former, and not in 
the latter case. 



One excuse for the absence of counsel is, 
that the evidence upon which the prisoner is 
convicted is always so clear, that the counsel 
cannot gainsay it. This is mere absurdity. 
There is not, and cannot be, any such rule. 
Many a man has been hung upon a string of 
circumstantial evidence, which not only very 
ingenious men, but very candid and judicious 
men, might criticise and call in question. If 
no one were found guilty but upon such evi- 
dence as would not admit of a doubt, half the 
crimes in the world would be unpunished. 
This dictum, by which the present practice has 
often been defended, was adopted by Lord 
Chancellor Nottingham. To the lot of this 
chancellor, however, it fell to pass sentence of 
death upon Lord Stafford, whom (as Mr. Den- 
man justly observes) no court of justice, not 
even the house of lords (constituted as it was 
in those days), could have put to death, if he 
had had counsel to defend him. 

To improve the criminal law of England, 
and to make it really deserving of the incessant 
eulogium which is lavished upon it, we would 
assimilate trials for felony to trials for high 
treason. The prisoner should not only have 
counsel, but a copy of the indictment and a 
list of the witnesses, many days antecedent to 
the trial. It is in the highest degree unjust 
that I should not see and study the description 
of the crime with which I am charged, if the 
most scrupulous exactness be required in that 
instrument which charges me with crime. If 
the place xuhere, the time when, and the manner 
how, and the persons by whom, must all be 
specified with the most perfect accuracy, if any 
deviation from this accuracy is fatal, the pri- 
soner, or his legal advisers, should have a full 
opportunity of judging whether the scruples 
of the law have been attended to in the forma- 
tion of the indictment ; and they ought not to 
be confined to the hasty and imperfect con- 
sideration which can be given to an indictment 
exhibited for the first time in court. Neither 
is it possible for the prisoner to repel accusa- 
tion till he knows who is to be brought against 
him. He may see suddenly, stuck up in the 
witness's box, a man who has been writing 
him letters, to extort money from the threat of 
evidence he could produce. The character of 
such a witness would be destroyed in a mo- 
ment, if the letters were produced; and the 
letters would have been produced, of course, 
if the prisoner had imagined such a person 
would have been brought forward by the pro- 
secutor. It is utterly impossible for a pri- 
soner to know in what way he may be assailed, 
and against what species of attacks he is to 
guard. Conversations may be brought against 
him which he has forgotten, and to which he 
could (upon notice) have given another colour 
and complexion. Actions are made to bear 
upon his case, which (if he had known they 
would have been referred to) might have been 
explained in the most satisfactory manner. 
All these modes of attack are pointed out by 
the list of witnesses transmitted to the prisoner, 
and he has time to prepare his answer, as it is 
perfectly just he should have. This is justice, 
when a prisoner has ample means of compel- 



252 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



ling the attendance of his witnesses ; when his 
written accusation is put into his hand, and he 
tes time to study it— when he knows in what 
planner his guilt is to be proved, and when he 
has a man of practised understanding to state 
his facts, and prefer his arguments. Then 
criminal justice may march on boldly. The 
judge has no stain of blood on his ermine ; and 
the phrases which English people are so fond 
of lavishing upon the humanity of their laws 
will have a real foundation. At present this 
part of the law is a mere relic of the barbarous 
injustice by which accusation in the early part 
of our jurisprudence was always confounded 
with ^ilt. The greater part of these abuses 
have been brushed away, as this cannot fail 
soon to be. In the mean time, it is defended 
(as every other abuse has been defended) by 
men who think it their duty to defend every 



thing which is, and to dread every thing which- 
is not. We are told that the judge does what 
he does not do, and ought not to do. The most 
pernicious effects are anticipated in trials of 
felony, from that which is found to produce 
the most perfect justice in civil causes, and in 
cases of treason and misdemeanour: we are 
called upon to continue a practice without 
example in any other country, and are re- 
quired by lawyers to consider that custom as 
humane, which every one who is not a lawyer 
pronounces to be most cruel and unjust — and 
which has not been brought forward to general 
notice, only because its bad effects are con- 
fined to the last and lowest of mankind.* 



* AH this nonsense is now put an end to. Counsel is 
allowed to the prisoner, andjhey are permitted to speak 
in his defence. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



253 



CATHOLICS.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1827.] 



It a poor man were to accept a guinea upon 
the condition that he spoke all the evil he could 
of another whom he believed to be innocent, 
and whose imprisonment he knew he should 
prolong, and whose privations he knew he 
should increase by his false testimony, would 
not the person so hired be one of the worst and 
basest of human beings 1 And would not his 
guilt be aggravated, if, up to the moment of re- 
ceiving his aceldama, he had spoken in terms 
of high praise of the person whom he subse- 
quently accused 1 Would not the latter feature 
of the case prove him to be as much without 
shame as the former evinced him to be without 
prinoiple ? Would the guilt be less, if the person 
so hired were a man of education 1 Would it be 
less if he were above want ? Would it be less, if 
the profession and occupation of his life were to 
decide men's rights, or to teach them morals and 
religion? Would it be less by the splendour of the 
bribe 1 Does a bribe of 3000/. leave a man in- 
nocent, whom a bribe of 30?. would cover with 
infamy ? You are of a mature period of life, 
when the opinions of an honest man ought to 
be, and are fixed. On Monday you were a bar- 
rister or a country clergyman, a serious and 
temperate friend to religious liberty and Catho- 
lic emancipation. In a few weeks from this 
time you are a bishop, or a dean, or a judge — 
publishing and speaking charges and sermons 
against the poor Catholics, and explaining 
away this sale of your soul by every species 
of falsehood, shabbiness, and equivocation. 
You may carry a bit of ermine on your shoul- 
der, or hide the lower moiety of the body in a 
silken petticoat — and men may call you Mr. 
Dean, or My Lord; but you have sold your 
honour and your conscience for money ; and, 
though better paid, you are as base as the 
witness who stands at the door of the judg- 
ment-hall, to swear whatever the suborner will 
put into his mouth, and to receive whatever he 
will put in his pocket.f 

When soldiers exercise, there stands a goodly 
portly person out of the ranks, upon whom all 
eyes are directed, and whose signs and motions, 
in the performance of the manual exercise, all 
the soldiers follow. The Germans, we believe, 
call him a Flugebnan. We propose Lord Nu- 
gent as a political flugelman ; — he is always 
consistent, plain and honest, steadily and 

* 1. ^ Plain Statement in support of the Political Claims 
of the Roman Catholics; in a Letter to the Rev. Sir Geora-e 
Lee, Bart. By Lord Nugent. Member of Parliament for 
Aylesbury. London, Hookham. 1826. 

2. A Letter to discount Milton, M. P. By One of his 
Constituents. London, Ridgway. 1827. 

3. Charge by the .Archbishop of Cashel. Dublin, Milli- 
ken. 

f It is very far from our intention to say that all who 
were for the Catholics, and are now against them, have 
made this change from base motives; it is equally far 
from our intention not to say that many men of both 
professions have subjected themselves to this shocking 
imputation. 



straightly pursuing his object without hope or 
fear, under the influence of good feelings and 
high principle. The House of Commons does 
not contain within its walls a more honest, up- 
right man. 

We seize upon the opportunity which this 
able pamphlet of his lordship affords us, to 
renew our attention to the Catholic question. 
There is little new to be said ; but we must not 
be silent, or, in these days of baseness and ter- 
giversation, we shall be supposed to have de- 
serted our friend the Pope ; and they will say 
of us, Prostant venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall, 
God forbid it should ever be said of us with 
justice — it is pleasant to loll and roll, and to 
accumulate — to be a purple and fine linen man, 
and to be called by some of those nicknames 
which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond 
of accumulating upon each other; — but the 
best thing of all is to live like honest men, and 
to add something to the cause of liberality, jus- 
tice, and truth. 

The Letter to Lord Milton is very well and 
very pleasantly written. We were delighted 
with the liberality and candour of the Arch- 
bishop of Cashel. The charge is in the high- 
est degree creditable to him. He must lay his 
account for the furious hatred of bigots, and 
the incessant gnawing of rats. 

There are many men who (thoroughly aware 
that the Catholic question must be ultimately 
carried) delay their acquiescence till the last 
moment, and wait till the moment of peril and 
civil war before they yield. That this moment 
is not quite so remote as was supposed a 
twelvemonth since, the events now passing in 
the world seem to afford the strongest proof. 
The truth is, that the disaffected state of Ireland 
is a standing premium for war with every cabi- 
net in Europe which has the most distant in- 
tention of quarrelling with this country for any 
other cause. " If we are to go to war, let us do so 
when the discontents of Ireland are at their greatest 
height, before any spirit of concession has been shoum 
by the British cabinet." Does any man imagine 
that so plain and obvious a principle has not 
been repeatedly urged on the French cabinet? 
— that the eyes of the Americans are shut upon 
the state of Ireland — and that that great and 
ambitious republic will not, in case of war, 
aim a deadly blow at this most sensitive part 
of the British empire 1 We should really say, 
that England has fully as much to fear from 
Irish fraternization with America as with 
France. The language is the same; the Ame- 
ricans have preceded them in the struggle ; the 
number of emigrant and rebel Irish is very 
great in America ; and all parties are sure of 
perfect toleration under the protection of Ame- 
rica. We are astonished at the madness and folly 
of Englishmen, who do not perceive that both 
France and America are only waiting for a con- 



254 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



venient opportunity to go to war with this coun- 
try; and that one of the first blows aimed at our 
independence would be the invasion of Ireland. 
We should like to argue this matter with a 
regular tory lord, whose members vote steadily 
against the Catholic question. "I wonder that 
mere fear does not make you give up the Ca- 
tholic question ! Do you mean to put this fine 
place in danger — the venison — the pictures — 
the pheasants — the cellars — the hot-house and 
the grapery? Should you like to see six or 
seven thousand French or Americans landed 
in Ireland, and aided by a universal insurrec- 
tion of the Catholics 1 Is it worth your while 
to run the risk of their success 1 What evil 
from the possible encroachment of Catholics, 
by civil exertions, can equal the danger of such 
a position as this ? How can a man of your 
carriages, and horses, and hounds, think of 
putting your high fortune in such a predica- 
ment, and crying out, like a schoolboy or a 
chaplain, " Oh, we shall beat them ! we shall 
put the rascals down !" No Popery, I admit to 
your lordship, is a very convenient cry at an 
election, and has answered your end ; but do 
not push the matter too far : to bring on a civil 
war for no popery is a very foolish proceeding 
in a man who has two courses, and a remove ! 
As you value your side-board of plate, your 
broad riband, your pier glasses — if obsequious 
domestics and large rooms are dear to you — if 
you love ease and flattery, titles and coats of 
arms — if the labour of the French cook, the 
dedication of the expecting poet, can move you 
— if you hope for a long life of side-dishes — 
if you are not insensible to the periodical arri- 
val of the turtle fleets — emancipate the Catho- 
lics ! Do it for your ease, do it for your indo- 
lence, do it for your safety — emancipate and 
eat, emancipate and drink — emancipate, and 
preserve the rent-roll and the family estate !" 

The most common excuse of the Great Shab- 
by is, that the Catholics are their own enemies 
— that the violence of Mr. O'Connell and Mr. 
Shiel have ruined their cause — that, but for 
these boisterous courses, the question would 
have been carried before this time. The an- 
swer to this nonsense and baseness is, that the 
very reverse is the fact. The mild and the 
long-suffering may suffer for ever in this world. 
If the Catholics had stood with their hands be- 
fore them simpering at the Earls of Liverpool 
and the Lords Bathurst of the moment, they 
would not have been emancipated till the year 
of our Lord four thousand. As long as the pa- 
tient will suffer, the cruel will kick. No trea- 
son — no rebellion— but as much stubbornness 
and stoutness as the law permits — a thorough 
intimation that you know what is your due, 
and that you are determined to have it if you 
can lawfully get it. This is the conduct we 
recommend to the Irish. If they go on with- 
holding, and forbearing, and hesitating whether 
this is the time for the discussion or that is the 
time, they will be laughed at for another cen- 
tury as fools — and kicked for another century 
as slaVes. " I must have my bill paid (says 
the sturdy and irritated tradesman) ; your mas- 
ter has put me off" twenty times under different 
pretences. I know he is at home, and I will 
not quit the premises till I get the money." 



Many a tradesman gets paid in this manner, 
who would soon smirk and smile himself into 
the gazette, if he trusted to the promises of the 
great. 

Can any thing be so utterly childish and 
foolish as to talk of the bad taste of the Catho- 
lic leaders 1 — as if, in a question of conferring 
on, or withholding important civil rights from 
seven millions of human beings, any thing 
could arrest the attention of a wise man but 
the good or evil consequences of so great a 
measure. Suppose Mr. S. does smell slightly 
of tobacco— admit Mr. L. to be occasionally 
stimulated by rum and water — allow that Mr. 
F. was unfeeling in speaking of the Duke of 
York — what has all this nonsense to do with 
the extinction of religious hatred and the paci- 
fication of Ireland 1 Give it if it is right, re^ 
fuse it if it is wrong. How it is asked, or how 
it is given or refused, is less than the dust of the 
balance. 

What is the real reason why a good honest 
tory, living at ease on his possessions, is an 
enemy to Catholic emancipation 1 He admits 
the Catholic of his own rank to be a gentle- 
man, and not a bad subject — and about theo- 
logical disputes an excellent tory never troubles 
his head. Of what importance is it to him 
whether an Irish Catholic or an Irish Protest- 
ant is a judge in the King's Bench at Dublin! 
None ; but 1 am afraid for the church of Ireland, 
says our alarmist. Why do you care so much 
for the church of Ireland, a country you never 
live la 1 — Jnswer — / do not care so much for the 
church of Ireland, if I was sure the church of Eng- 
land would not be destroyed. — And is it for the 
Church of England alone that you fear? — jin- 
swer — Not quite to that, but I am afraid uk should 
all be lost, that every thing loould be overturned, and 
that I should lose my rank and my estate. Here, 
then, we say, is a long series of dangers, which 
(if there were any chance of their ever taking 
place) would require half a century for their 
development ; and the danger of losing Ireland 
by insurrection and invasion, which may hap- 
pen in six months, is utterly overlooked and 
forgotten. And if a foreign influence should 
ever be fairly established in Ireland, how many 
hours would the Irish church, how many months 
would the English church, live after such an 
event? How much is any English title worth 
after such an event — any English family — any 
English estate ? We are astonished that the 
brains of rich Englishmen do not fall down 
into their bellies in talking of the Catholic 
question — that they do not reason through the 
cardia and the pylorus — that all the organs of 
digestion do not become intellectual. The de- 
scendants of the proudest noblemen in England 
may become beggars in a foreign land from 
this disgraceful nonsense of the Catholic ques- 
tion — fit only for the ancient females of a mar- 
ket town. 

What alarms us in the state of England is 
the uncertain basis on which its prosperity is 
placed — and the prodigious mass of hatred 
which the English government continues, by 
its obstinate bigotry, to accumulate — eight hun- 
dred and forty millions sterling of debt. The 
revenue depending upon the demand for the 
shoes, stockings, and breeches of Europe — and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



255 



seven millions of Catholics in a state of the 
greatest fury and exasperation. We persecute 
as if we did not oice a shilling — we spend as if 
we had no disaflecti n. This, by possibility, 
may go on ; but it is dangerous walking — the 
chance is, there will be a fall. No wise man 
should take such a course. All probabilities 
are against it. We are astonished that Lord 
Hertford and Lord Lowther, shrewd and calcu- 
lating tories, do not see that it is nine to one 
against such a game. 

It is not only the event of war we fear in the 
military struggle with Ireland ; but the expense 
of war, and the expenses of the English go- 
vernment, are paving the way for future revo- 
lutions. The world never yet saw so extravagant 
a government as the government of England. 
Not only is economy not practised — but it is 
despised; and the idea of it connected with 
disaffection, Jacobinism, and Joseph Hume. 
Every rock in the ocean where a cormorant 
can perch is occupied by our troops — has a 
governor, deputy-governor, store-keeper, and 
deputy-store-keeper — and will soon have an 
archdeacon and a bishop. Military colleges, 
with thirty-four professors, educating seventeen 
ensigns per annum, being half an ensign for 
each professor, with every species of nonsense, 
athletic, sartorial, and plumigerous. A just and 
necessary war costs this country about one 
hundred pounds a minute ; whipcord fifteen 
thousand pounds ; red tape seven thousand 
pounds ; lace for drummers and fifers, nineteen 
thousand pounds ; a pension to one man who 
has broken his head at the Pole ; to another 
who has shattered his leg at the Equator ; sub- 
sidies to Persia; secret service-money to Thi- 
bet ; an annuity to Lady Henry Somebody and 
her seven daughters — the husband being shot 
at some place where we never ought to have 
had any soldiers at all ; and the elder brother 
returning four members to Parliament. Such 
a scene of extravagance, corruption, and ex- 
pense as must paralyze the industry, and mar 
the fortunes, of the most industrious, spirited 
people that ever existed. 

Few men consider the historical view which 
will be taken of present events. The bubbles 
of last year; the fishing for half-crowns in 
Vigo Bay ; the Milk Muffin and Crumpet Com- 
panies; the Apple, Pear, and Plum Associa- 
tions ; the National Gooseberry and Current 
Company ; will all be remembered as instan- 
ces of that partial madness to which society is 
occasionally exposed. What will be said of 
all the intolerable trash which is issued forth 
at public meetmgs of No Popery 1 The follies 
of one century are scarcely credible in that 
which succeeds it. A grandmamma of 1827 
is as wise as a very wise man of 1727. If the 
world lasts till 1927, the grandmammas of that 
period will be far wiser than the tip-top No- 
Popery men of this day. That this childish 
nonsense will have got out of the drawing- 
room, there can be no doubt. It will most pro- 
bably have passed through the steward's room 
— and butler's pantry, into the kitchen. This 
is the case with ghosts. They no longer loll 
on couches and sip tea ; but are down on their 
knees scrubbing with the scullion — or stand 
sweating, and Jjasting with the cook. Mrs. 



Abigail turns up her nose at them, and the 
housekeeper declares for flesh and blood, and 
will have none of their company. 

It is delicious to the persecution-fanciers to 
reflect that no general bill has passed in favour 
of the Protestant Dissenters. They are still 
disqualified from holding any office — and are 
only protected from prosecution by an annual 
indemnity act. So that the sword of Damocles 
still hangs over them — not suspended, indeed, 
by a thread, but by a cart-rope — still it hangs 
there an insult, if not an injury, and prevents 
the painful idea from presenting itself to the 
mind of perfect toleration, and pure justice. 
There is the larva of tyranny, and the skeleton 
of malice. Now this is all we presume to ask 
for the Catholics — admission to Parliament, 
exclusion from every possible office by law, 
and annual indemnity for the breach of law. 
This is surely much more agreeable to feeble- 
ness, to littleness, and to narrowness, than to 
say the Catholics are as free and as eligible as 
ourselves. 

The most intolerable circumstance of the 
Catholic dispute is, the conduct of the Dissent-^ 
ers. Any man may dissent from the Church 
of England, and preach against it, by paying 
sixpence. Almost every tradesman in a mar- 
ket town is a preacher. It must absolutely be 
ride and tie with them ; the butcher must 
hear the baker in the morning, and the baker 
listen to the butcher in the afternoon, or there 
would be no congregation. We have often 
speculated upon the peculiar trade of the 
preacher from his style of action. Some have 
a tying-up or parcel-packing action ; some 
strike strongly against the anvil of the pulpit ; 
some screw, some bore, some act as if they 
were managing a needle. The occupation ot 
the preceding week can seldom be mistaken. 
In the country, three or four thousand Ranters 
are sometimes encamped, supplicating in reli- 
gious platoons, or roaring psalms out of wag- 
gons. Now all this freedom is very proper ; 
because, though it is abused, yet in truth there 
is no other principle in religious matters, than 
to let men alone as long as they keep the peace. 
Yet we should imagine this unbounded license 
of Dissenters should teach them a little charity 
towards the Catholics, and a little respect for 
their religious freedom. But the picture of 
sects is this — there are twenty fettered men in 
a jail, and every one is employed in loosening 
his own fetters with one hand, and riveting 
those of his neighbour with the other. 

"'If, then,' says a minister of our own 
church, the Reverend John Fisher, rector of 
Wavenden, in this county, in a sermon pub- 
lished some years ago, and entitled 'The 
Utility of the Church Establishment, and its 
Safety consistent with Religious Freedom' — 
'If, then, the Protestant religion could have ori- 
ginally worked its way in this country against 
numbers, prejudices, bigotry, and interest ; if, 
in times of its infancy, the power of the prince 
could not prevail against it; surely, when 
confirmed by age, and rooted in the affections 
of the people — when invested with authority, 
and in full enjoyment of wealth and power — 
when cherished by a sovereign who holds his 
very throne by this sacred tenure, and whose 



256 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



conscientious attachment to it well warrants 
the title of Defender of the Faith — surely any 
attack upon it must be contemptible, any alarm 
of danger must be imaginary.' " — Lord Nugent's 
Letter, p. 18. 

To go into a committee upon the state of the 
Catholic laws is to reconsider, as Lord Nugent 
justly observes, passages in our domestic his- 
tory, which bear date about 270 years ago. 
Now,what human plan, device, or invention, 270 
years old, does not require reconsideration 1 If 
a man drest as he drest 270 years ago, the pug- 
dogs in the street would tear him to pieces. If 
he lived in the houses of 270 years ago, unre- 
vised and uncorrected, he would die of rheu- 
matism in a week. If he listened to the ser- 
mons of 270 years ago, he would perish with 
sadness and fatigue; and when a man cannot 
make a coat or a cheese, for 50 years together, 
without making them better, can it be said that 
laws made in those days of ignorance, and 
framed in the fury of religious hatred, need no 
revision, and are capable of no amendment. 

We have not the smallest partiality for the 
Catholic religion; quite the contrary. That it 
should exist at all — that all Catholics are not 
converted to the Protestant religion — we con- 
sider to be a serious evil ; but there they are, 
with their spirit as strong, and their opinions as 
decided, as your own ; the Protestant part of 
the cabinet have quite given up all idea of put- 
ting them to death; what remains to be donel 
We all admit the evil; the object is to make it 
as little as possible. One method commonly 
resorted to, Ave are sure, does not lessen, but 
increase the evil; and that is, to falsify histo- 
ry, and deny plain and obvious facts, to the 
injury of the Catholics. No true friend to the 
Protestant religion, and to the Church of Eng- 
land, will ever have recourse to such disin- 
genuous arts as these. 

" Our histories have not, I believe, stated what 
is untrue of Queen Mary, nor, perhaps, have 
they very much exaggerated what is true of 
her; but our arguers, whose only talk is of 
Smithfield, are generally very uncandid in what 
they conceal. It would appear to be little known 
that the statutes which enabled Mary to burn 
those who had conformed to the church of her 
father and brother, were Protestant statutes, 
declaring the common law against heresy, and 
framed by her father Henry the Eighth, and 
confirmed and acted upon by order of council 
of her brother Edward the Sixth, enabling that 
mild and temperate young sovereign to burn 
divers misbelievers, by sentence of commis- 
sioners (little better, says Neale, than a Pro- 
testant Inquisition) appointed to 'examine and 
search after all Anabaptists, Heretics, or con- 
temners of the Book of Common Prayer.' It 
would appear to be seldom considered, that her 
zeal might very possibly have been warmed by 
the circumstance of both her chaplains having 
been imprisoned for their religion, and herself 
arbitrarily detained, and her safety threatened, 
during the short but persecuting reign of her 
brother. The sad evidences of the violence of 
those days are by no means confined to her 
acts. The fagots of persecution were not kin- 
dled by Papists only, nor did they cease to blaze 
when the power of using them as instruments 



of conversion ceased to be in Popish hands. 
Cranmer himself, in his dreadful death, met 
with but equal measure for the flames to which 
he had doomed several who denied the spiritual 
supremacy of Henry the Eighth ; to which he 
had doomed, also a Dutch Arian, in Edward the 
Sixth's reign ; and to which, with great pains 
and difficulty, he had persuaded that prince to 
doom another miserable enthusiast, Joan Bo- 
cher, for some metaphysical notions of her own 
on the divine incarnation. ' So that on both 
sides' (says Lord Herbert of Cherbury) ' it grew 
a bloody time.' Calvin burned Servetus at Ge- 
neva, for ' discoursing concerning the Trinity 
contrary to the sense of the whole church ; and 
thereupon set forth a book wherein he giveth 
an account of his doctrine, and of whatever 
else had passed in this affair, and teacheth that 
the sword may be lawfully employed against 
heretics.' Yet Calvin was no Papist. John 
Knox extolled in his writings, as 'the godly 
fact of James Melvil,' the savage murderer by 
which Cardinal Beaton was made to expiate his 
many and cruel persecutions ; a murder to 
which, by the great popular eloquence of Knox, 
his fellow labourers in the vineyard of refor- 
mation, Lesly and Melvil, had been excited ; 
and yet John Knox, and Lesly and Melvil, were 
no Papists. Henry the Eighth, whose one vir- 
tue was impartiality in these matters, (if an 
impartial and evenly balanced persecution of 
all sects be a virtue,) beheaded a chancellor 
and a bishop, because having admitted his civil 
supremacy, they doubted his spiritual. Of the 
latter of them Lord Herbert says, 'The pope, 
who suspected not perchance, that the bishop's 
end was so near, had, for more testimony of his 
favour to him as disaffection to our king, sent 
him a cardinal's hat; but unseasonably, his 
head being off.' He beheaded the Countess 
of Salisbury, because at upwards of eighty 
years old she wrote a letter to Cardinal Pole, 
her own son : and he burned Barton, the 'Holy 
Maid of Kent,' for a prophecy of his death. 
He burned four Anabaptists in one day for op- 
posing the doctrine of infant baptism ; and he 
burned Lambert, and Anne Ascue, and Beleri- 
can, and Lassells, and Adams, on another day, 
for opposing that of transubstantiation ; with 
many others of lesser note, who refused to sub- 
scribe to his Six Bloody Articles, as they were 
called, or whose opinions fell short of his, or 
exceeded them, or who abided by opinions after 
he had abandoned them ; and all this after the 
Reformation. And yet Henry the Eighth was 
the sovereign who first delivered us from the 
yoke of Rome. 

"In later times, thousands of Protestant Dis- 
senters of the four great sects were made to 
languish in loathsome prisons, and hundreds 
to perish miserably, during the reign of Charles 
the Second, under a Protestant high church go- 
vernment, who then first applied, in the prayer 
for the Parliament, the epithets of ' most reli- 
gious and gracious,' to a sovereign whom they 
knew to be profligate and unprincipled beyond 
example, and had reason to suspect to be a con- 
cealed Papist. 

"Later still, Archbishop Sharpe was sacri- 
ficed by the murderous enthsiasm of certain 
Scotch Covenanters, who yet appear to have 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



257 



sincerely believed themselves inspired by Hea- 
ven to this act of cold-blooded barbarous as- 
sassination. 

"On subjects like these, silence on all sides, 
and a mutual interchange of repentance, for- 
giveness, and oblivion, is wisdom. But to quote 
grievances on one side only, is not honesty." — 
Lord Nugent's Letter, pp. 24 — 27. 

Sir Richard Birnie can only attend to the 
complaints of individuals ; but no cases of 
swindling are brought before him so atrocious 
as the violation of the treaty of Limerick, and 
the disappointment of those hopes, and the 
frustration of that arrangement; which hopes, 
and which arrangements, were held out as 
one of the great arguments for the union. 
The chapter of English fraud comes next to 
the chapter of English cruelty, in the his- 
tory of Ireland — and both are equally dis- 
graceful. 

Nothing can be more striking than the conduct 
of the parent legislature to the legislature of the 
West Indian Islands. "We cannot leave you to 
yourselves upon these points" (says the English 
government); " the wealth of the planter and the 
commercial prosperity of the island are not the 
only points to be looked to. We must look to 
the general rights of humanity, and see that 
they are not outraged in the case of the poor 
slave. It is impossible we can be satisfied, till 
we know that he is placed in a state of progress 
and amelioration." How beautiful is all this ! 
and how wise, and how humane and affecting 
are our efforts throughout Europe to put an end 
to the slave trade ? Wherever three or four 
negotiators are gathered together, a British di- 
plomate appears among them, with some arti- 
cle of kindness and pity for the poor negro. All 
is mercy and compassion, except when wretch- 
ed Ireland is concerned. The saint who swoons 
at the lashes of the Indian slave is the en- 
courager of No-Popery meetings, and the hard, 
bigoted, domineering ty«ant of Ireland. 

See the folly of delaying to settle a question 
which, in the end, must be settled, and, ere long, 
to the advantage of the Catholics. How the 
price rises by delay ! This argument is ex- 
tremely well put by Lord Nugent. 

" I should observe that two occasions have 
already been lost of granting these claims, 
coupled with what were called securities, such 
as never can return. In 1808, the late Duke of 
Norfolk and Lord Grenville, in the one house, 
and Mr. Ponsonby and Mr. Grattan, in the other, 
were authorized by the Irish Catholic body to 
propose a negative to be vested in the crown 
upon the appointment of their bishops. Mr. 
Perceval, the chancellor, and the spiritual 
bench, did not see the importance of this op- 
portunity. It was rejected; the Irish were dri- 
ven to despair; and in the same tomb with the 
question of 1808 lies forever buried the veto. 
The same was the fate with what were called 
the ' wings' attached to Sir Francis Burdett's 
bill of last year. I voted for them, not for the 
sake certainly of extending the patronage of 
the crown over a new body of clergy, nor yet 
for the sake of diminishing the popular cha- 
racter of elections in Ireland, but because Mr. 
O'Connell, and because some of the Protestant 
friends of the measure Avho knew Ireland the 
3.3 



best, recommended them; and because I be- 
lieved, from the language of some who sup- 
ported it only on these conditions, that they 
offered the fairest chance for the measure being 
carried. I voted for them as the price of Ca- 
tholic emancipation, for which I can scarcely 
contemplate any Irish price that I would not 
pay. With the same object, I would vote for 
them again ; but I shall never again have the 
opportunity. For these also, if they were 
thought of any value as securities, the events 
of this year in Ireland have shown you that 
you have lost for ever. And the necessity of 
the great measure becomes every day more ur- 
gent and unavoidable." — Lord NugenCs Letter, 
pp. 71, 72. 

Can any man living say that Ireland is not 
in a much more dangerous state than it was 
before the Catholic convention began to exist T 
that the inflammatory state of that country is 
not becoming worse and worse ] — that those • 
men whom we call demagogues and incendia- 
ries have not produced a very considerable and 
alarming effect upon the Irish population? 
Where is this to endl But the fool liftelh up 
his voice in the coffee-house, and sayeth, " We 
shall give them an hearty thrashing : let them 
arise — the sooner the better — we will soon put 
them down again." The fool sayeth this in 
the coffee-house, and the greater fool praiseth 
him. But does Lord Stowell say this 1 does 
Mr. Peel say this 1 does the Marquis of Hertford 
say thisi do sensible, calm, and reflecting men 
like these, not admit the extreme danger of 
combating against invasion and disaffection, 
and this with our forces spread in active hos- 
tility over the whole face of the globe 1 Can 
they feel this vulgar, hectoring certainty of 
success, and stupidly imagine that a thing can- 
not be because it has never yet been ? because 
we have hitherto maintained our tyranny in 
Ireland against all Europe, that we are always 
to maintain it 1 And then, what if the struggle 
does at last end in our favour'? Is the loss of 
English lives and of English money not to be 
taken into account 1 Is this the way in which 
a nation overwhelmed with debt, and trembling 
whether its looms and ploughs will not be over- 
matched by the looms and ploughs of the rest 
of Europe — is this the way in which such a 
country is to husband its resources 1 Is the 
best blood of the land to be flung away in a 
war of hassocks and surplices ? Are cities to 
be summoned for the Thirty-nine Articles, and 
men to be led on to the charge by professors of ^ 
divinity 1 The expense of A-eepjig- such a coun- I 
try must be added to all other enormous ex- 
penses. What is really possessed of a country 
so subdued? four or five yards round a sentry- 
box, and no more. And in twenty years' time 
it is all to do over again — another war — another 
rebellion, and another enormous and ruinously 
expensive contest, with the same dreadful un- 
certainty of the issue ! It is forgotten, too, that 
a new feature has arisen in the history of this 
country. In all former insurrections in Ireland 
no democratic party existed in England. The 
efforts of government were left free and unim- 
peded. But suppose a stoppage in your manu- 
factures coincident with a rising of the Irish 
Catholics, when every soldier is employed in 
Y 2 



258 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the sacred dutv of Papist-hunting. Can any 
man contemplate such a state of things without 
horror ? Can any man say that he is taken by 
surprise for such a combination 1 Can any 
man say that any danger to church or state is 
comparable to this 1 But for the prompt inter- 
ference of the military in the early part of 1826, 
three or four hundred thousand starving manu- 
facturers would have carried ruin and destruc- 
tion over the north of England, and over Scot- 
land. These dangers are inseparable from an 
advanced state of manufactures — but they nee^ 
not the addition of other and greater perils, 
which need not exist in any country too wise 
and too enlightened for persecution. 

Where is the weak point in these plain ar- 
guments ? Is it the remoteness of the chance 
of foreign war 1 Alas! we have been at war 
35 minutes out of every hour since the peace 
of Utrecht. The state of war seems more 
natural to man than the state of peace ; and if 
we turn from general probabilities to the state 
of Europe — Greece to be liberated — Turkey to 
be destroyed — Portugal and Spain to be made 
free — the wounded vanity of the French, the 
increasing arrogance of the Americans, and 
our own philopolemical folly, are endless scenes 
of war. We believe it at all times a better 
speculation to make ploughshares into swords 
than swords into ploughshares. If war is cer- 
tain, we believe insurrection to be quite as 
certain. We cannot believe but that the French 
or Americans would, in case of war, make a 
serious attempt upon Ireland, and that all Ire- 
land would rush, tail foremost, into insurrec- 
tion. 

A new source of disquietude and war has 
lately risen in Ireland. Our saints are evan- 
gelical people, or serious people, or by what- 
ever name they are to be designated, have taken 
the field in Ireland against the pope, and are 
converting in the large way. Three or four 
Irish Catholic prelates take a post-chaise, and 
curse the converters and the converted. A 
battle royal ensues with shillelas : the police- 
man comes in, and, reckless of Lambeth or the 
Vatican, makes no distinction between what is 
perpendicular, and what is hostile, but knocks 
down every body and every thing which is up- 
right ; and so the feud ends for the day. We 
have no doubt but that these efforts will tend to 
bring things to a crisis much sooner between 
the parties, than the disgraceful conduct of the 
cabinet alone would do. 

" It is a charge not imputed by the laws of 
England, nor by the oaths which exclude the 
Catholics : for those oaths impute only spirit- 
ual errors. But it is imputed, which is more 
to the purpose, by those persons who approve 
of the excluding oaths, and wish them retained. 
But, to the whole of this imputation, even if no 
other instance could be adduced, as far as a 
strong and remarkable example can prove the 
negative of an assumption which there is not a 
single example to support — the full, and suffi- 
cient, and incontestable answer is Canada. 
Canada, which, until you can destroy the me- 
mory of all that now remains to you of your 
sovereignty on the North American continent, 
is an answer practical, memorable, difficult to 
be accounted for, but blazing as the sun itself 



in sight of the whole world, to the whole charge 
of divided allegiance. At your conquest of 
Canada, you found it Roman Catholic ; you had 
to choose for her a constitution in church and 
state. You were wise enough not to thwart 
public opinion. Your own conduct towards 
Presbyterianism in Scotland was an example 
for imitation ; your own conduct towards Ca- 
tholocism in Ireland was a beacon for avoid- 
ance ; and in Canada you established and 
endowed the religion of the people. Canada 
was your only Roman Catholic colony. Your 
other colonies revolted ; they called on a Catho- 
lic power to support them, and they achieved 
their independence. Catholic Canada, with 
what Lord Liverpool would call her half-alle- 
giance, alone stood by you. She fought by 
your side against the interference of Catholic 
France. To reward and encourage her loyalty, 
you endowed in Canada bishops to say mass, 
and to ordain others to say mass, whom, at that 
very time, your laws would have hanged for 
saying mass- in England ; and Canada is still 
yours in spite of Catholic France, in spite of 
her spiritual obedience to the pope, in spite of 
Lord Liverpool's argument, and in spite of the 
independence of all the states that surround 
her. This is the only trial you have made. 
Where you allow to the Roman Catholics their 
religion undisturbed, it has proved itself to be 
compatible with the most faithful allegiance. 
It is only where you have placed allegiance 
and religion before them as a dilemma, that 
they have preferred (as who will say they ought 
nof?) their religion to their allegiance. How 
then stands the imputation 1 Disproved by 
history, disproved in all states where both reli- 
gions co-exist, and in both hemispheres, and 
asserted in an exposition by Lord Liverpool, 
solemnly and repeatedly abjured by all Catho- 
lics, of the discipline of their church." — Lord 
Nugent's Letter, pp. 35, 36. 

Can any man who has gained permission to 
take off his strait-waistcoat, and been out of 
Bedlam three weeks, believe that the Catholic 
question will be set to rest by the conversion 
of the Irish Catholics to the Protestant religion! 
The best chance of conversion will be gained 
by taking care that the point of honour is not 
against conversion. 

" We may, I think, collect from what we 
know of the ordinary feelings of men that, by 
admitting all to a community of political bene- 
fits, we should remove a material impediment 
that now presents itself to the advances of 
proselytism to our established mode of worship ; 
particularly assuming, as we do, that it is the 
purest, and that the disfranchised mode is sup- 
ported only by superstition and priestcraft. By 
external pressure and restraint, things are com- 
pacted as well in the moral as in the physical 
world. Where a sect is at spiritual variance 
with the established church, it only requires an 
abridgment of civil privileges to render it at 
once a political faction. Its members become 
instantly pledged, some from enthusiasm, some 
from resentment, and many from honourable 
shame, to cleave with desperate fondness to the 
suffering fortunes of an hereditary religion. Is 
this human nature, or is it not 1 Is it a natural 
or an unnatural feeling for the representative 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



259 



of an ancient Roman Catholic family, even if 
in his heart he rejected the controverted tenets 
of his early faith, to scorn an open conformity 
to ours, so long as such conformity brings with 
it the irremovable suspicion that faith and con- 
science may have bowed to the base hope of 
temporal advantage 1 Every man must feel 
and act for himself: but, in my opinion, a good 
man might be put to difficulty to determine 
■whether more harm is not done by the example 
of one changing his religion to his worldly 
advantage, than good by his openly professing 
conformity from what we think error to what 
we think truth." — Lord Nugent' s Letter, pp. 54, 
55. 

" We will not be bullied out of the Catholic 
question." This is a very common text, and 
requires some comment. If you mean that the 
sense of personal danger shall not prevent you 
from doing what you think right — this is a 
worthy and proper feeling, but no such motive 
is suspected, and no such question is at issue. 
Nobody doubts but that any English gentleman 
would be ready to join his No-Popery corps, 
and to do his duty to the community, if the 
government required it; but the question is, Is 
it worth while in the government to require if? 
Is it for the general advantage that such a war 
should be carried on for such an object"? It is 
a question not of personal valour, but of politi- 
cal expediency. Decide seriously if it is worth 
the price of civil war to exclude the Catholics, 
and act accordingly; taking it for granted that 
you possess, and that every body supposes you 
to possess, the vulgar attribute of personal 
courage ; but do not draw your sword like a 
fool, from the unfounded apprehension of being 
called a coward. 

We have great hopes of the Duke of Cla- 
rence. Whatever else he may be, he is not a 
bigot — not a person who thinks it necessary to 
show respect to his royal father, by prolonging 
the miseries and incapacities of six millions of 
people. If he ascends the throne of these 
realms, he must stand the fire of a few weeks' 
clamour and unpopularity. If the measure is 
passed by the end of May, we can promise his 
royal highness it will utterly be forgotten be- 
fore the end of June. Of all human nonsense, 
it is surely the greatest to talk of respect to the 
late king — respect to the memory of the Duke 
of York — by not voting for the Catholic ques- 
tion. Bad enough to burn widows when the 
husband dies — bad enough to burn horses, 
dogs, butlers, footmen, and coachmen, on the 
funeral pile of a Scythian warrior — but to offer 
up the happiness of seven millions of people to 
the memory of the dead, is certainly the most 
insane sepulchral oblation of which history 
makes mention. The best compliment to these 
deceased princes, is to remember their real 
good qualities, and to forget (as soon as we can 
forget it) that these good qualities were tar- 
nished by limited and mistaken views of reli- 
gious liberty. 

Persecuting gentlemen forget the expense of 
persecution ; whereas, of all luxuries, it is the 
most expensive. The Ranters do not cost us 
a farthing, because they are not disqualified by 
ranting. The Methodists and Unitarians are 
gratis. The Irish Catholics, supposing every 



alternate year to be war, as it has been for the 
last century, will cost us within these next 
twenty years, forty millions of money. There 
are 20,000 soldiers there in time of peace ; in 
war, including the militia, their numbers will 
be doubled — and there must be a very formida- 
ble fleet in addition. Now, when the tax paper 
comes round, and we are to make a return of 
the greatest number of horses, buggies, ponies, 
dogs, cats, bulfinches, and canary birds, dec, 
and to be taxed accordingly, let us remember 
how well and wisely our money has been 
spent, and not repine that we have purchased, 
by severe taxation, the high and exalted plea- 
sures of intolerance and persecution. 

It is mere unsupported and unsupportable 
nonsense to talk of the exclusive disposition 
of the Catholics to persecute. The Protestants 
have murdered, and tortured, and laid waste as 
much as the Catholics. Each party, as it 
gained the upper hand, tried death as the 
remedy for heresy — both parties have tried it 
in vain. 

•A distinction is set up between civil rights, 
and political power, and applied against the 
Catholics : the real difference between these 
two words is, that civil comes from a Latin 
word, and political from a Greek one ; but if 
there is any difference in their meaning, the 
Catholics do not ask for political power, but 
for eligibility to political power. The Catho- 
lics have never prayed, or dreamt of praying, 
that so many of the judges and king's counsel 
should necessarily be Catholics ; but that no 
law should exist which prevented them from 
becoming so, if a Protestant king chose to 
make them so. Eligibility to political power is 
a civil privilege, of which we have no more 
right to deprive any man than of any other 
civil privilege. The good of the state may 
require that all civil rights may be taken from 
Catholics ; but to say that eligibility to political 
power is not a civil right, and that to take it 
away without grave cause, would not be a 
great act of injustice, is mere declamation. 
Besides, what is called political power, and 
what are called civil rights, are given or with- 
holden, without the least reference to any prin- 
ciple, but by mere caprice. A right of voting 
is given — this is political power; eligibility to 
the office of alderman or bank director is re- 
fused — this is a civil right : the distinction is 
perpetually violated, just as it has suited the 
state of parties for the moment. And here a 
word or two on the manner of handling the 
question. Because some offices must be filled 
with Catholics, all would be : this is one topic. 
A second is, because there might be inconve- 
nience from a Catholic king or chancellor, 
that, therefore, there would be no inconve- 
nience from Catholic judges or Serjeants. In 
talking of establishments, they always take 
care to blend the Irish and English establish- 
ments, and never to say which is meant, though 
the circumstances of both are as different as 
possible. It is always presumed, that sects 
holding opinions contrary to the establishment, 
are hostile to the establishment; meaning by 
the word hostile, that they are combined, or 
ready to combine, for its destruction. It is 
contended that the Catholics would not be satis- 



260 



WORKS OF THE RE\^. SYDNEY SMITH. 



fied by these concessions; meaning, therebj', 
that many would not be so — but forgetting to 
add, that many u-ould be quite satisfied — all 
Tnore satisfied, and less likely to run into rebel- 
lion. It is urged that the mass of Catholics 
are indifferent to the question ; whereas (never 
mind the cause) there is not a Catholic plough- 
boy, at this moment, who is not ready to risk 
his life for it, nor a Protestant stable-boy, who 
does not give himself airs of superiority over 
any papistical cleaner of horses, who is scrub- 
bing with him under the same roof. 

The Irish were quiet under the severe code 
of Queen Anne — so the half-murdered man 
left on the ground bleeding by thieves is quiet; 
and he only moans, and cries for help as he 
recovers. There was a method which would 
have made the Irish still more quiet, and effec- 
tually have put an end to all further solicita- 
tion respecting the Catholic question. It was 
adopted in the case of the wolves. 

They are forming societies in Ireland for the 
encouragement of emigration, and striving, 
and successfully striving, to push their redun- 
dant population into Great Britain. Our busi- 
ness is to pacify Ireland — to give confidence to 
capitalists — and to keep their people where 
they are. On the day the Catholic question 
was passed, all property in Ireland would rise 
20 per cent. 

Protestants admit that there are sectaries sit- 
ting in Parliament, who differ from the Church 
of England as much as the Catholics ; but it 
is forgotten that, according to the doctrine of 
the Church of England, the Unitarians are con- 
sidered as condemned to eternal punishment in 
another world — and that many such have seats 
in Parliament. And can any thing be more 
preposterous (as far as doctrine has any in- 
fluence in these matters) than that men, whom 
we believe to be singled out as objects of God's 
eternal vengeance, should have a seat in our 
national councils : and that Catholics, whom 
we believe may be saved, should not 1 

The only argument which has any appear- 
ance of weight, is the question of divided alle- 
giance; and, generally speaking, we should 
say it is the argument which produces the 
greatest effect in the country at large. Eng- 
land, in this respect, is in the same state, at 
least, as the whole of Catholic Europe. Is not 
the allegiance of every French, every Spanish, 
and every Italian Catholic (who is not a Ro- 
man,) divided 1 His king is in Paris, or Madrid, 
or Naples, while his high-priest is at Rome. 
We speak of it as an anomaly in politics ; 
whereas, it is the state, and condition of almost 
the whole of Europe. The danger of this 
divided allegiance, they admit, is nothing, as 
long as it is confined to purely spiritual con- 
cerns ; but it may extend itself to temporal 
matters, and so endanger the safety of the state. 
This danger, however, is greater in a Catholic 
than in a Protestant country; not only on ac- 
count of the greater majority upon whom it 
might act: but because there are objects in a 
Catholic country much more desirable, and 
attainable, than in a country like England, 
where Popery does not exist, or Ireland, where 
it is humbled, and impoverished. Take, for 
instance, the freedom of the Galilean Church. 



What eternal disputes did this object give birth 
to 1 What a temptation to the Pope to infringe 
in rich Catholic countries ! How is it possible 
his holiness can keep his hands from picking 
and stealing? It must not be imagined that 
Catholicism has been any defence against the 
hostility and aggression of the Pope ; he has 
cursed and excommunicated every Catholic 
state in Europe, in their turns. Let that emi- 
nent Protestant, Lord Bathurst, state any one 
instance where, for the last century, the Pope 
has interfered with the temporal concerns of 
Great Britain. We can mention, and his lord- 
ship will remember, innumerable instances 
where he might have done so, if such were the 
modern habit and policy of the court of Rome. 
But the fact is, there is no court of Rome, and 
no Pope. There is a wax-work Pope, and a 
wax-work court of Rome. But popes of flesh 
and blood have long since disappeared ; and 
in the same way, those great giants of the city 
exist no more, but their truculent images are 
at Guildhall. We doubt if there is in the trea- 
sury of the Pope change for a guinea — we are 
sure there is not in his armory one gun which 
will go off. We believe, if he attempted to 
bless any body whom Dr. Doyle cursed, or to 
curse any body whom Dr. Doyle blessed, that 
his blessings and curses would be as power- 
less as his artillery. Dr. Doyle* is the Pope 
of Ireland ; and the ablest ecclesiastic of that 
country will always be its Pope — and that Lord 
Bathurst ought to know — most likely does 
know. But what a waste of life and time, to 
combat such arguments ! Can my Lord Bath- 
urst be ignorant 1 Can any man, who has the 
slightest knowledge of Ireland, be ignorant, 
that the portmanteau which sets out every 
quarter for Rome, and returns from it, is an 
heap of ecclesiastical matters, which have no 
more to do with the safety of the country, than 
they have to do with the safety of the moon — 
and which but for the respect to individual 
feelings, might all be published at Charing 
Cross 1 Mrs. Flanagan, intimidated by sto- 
mach complaints, wants a dispensation for 
eating flesh. Cornelius Oh Bowel has intermar- 
ried by accident with his grandmother; and 
finding that she is really his grandmother, his 
conscience is uneas}'-. Mr. Mac Tooley, the 
priest, is discovered to be married: and to have 
two sons. Castor and Pollux Mac Tooley. Three 
or four schools-full of little boys have been 
cursed for going to hear a Methodist preacher. 
Bargains for shirts and toe-nails of deceased 
saints — surplices and trencher-caps blessed by 
the Pope. These are the fruits of double alle- 
giance — the objects of our incredible fear, and 
the cause of our incredible folly. There is not 
a syllable which goes to or comes from the 
court of Rome, which, by a judicious expendi- 
ture of sixpence by the year, would not be open 
to the examination of every member of the 



*" Of this I can with great truth assure you; and 
my testimony, if not entitled to respect, should not be 
utterly disregarded, that papal influence will never in- 
duce the Catholics of this country either to continue 
tranquil, or to be disturbed, either to aid or to oppose 
the government ; and that your lordship can contribute 
much more than the Pope to secure their allegiance, or 
to render them disaffected. "—Z>r. Doyle's Letter to Lord 
Liverpool, 115. 



■WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



261 



cabinet. Those who use such arguments know 
the answer to them as well as we do. The 
real evil they dread is the destruction of the 
church of Ireland, and, through that, of the 
Church of England. To which we reply, that 
such danger must proceed from the regular 
proceedings of Parliament, or be effected by 
insurrection and rebellion. The Catholics, re- 
stored to civil functions, would, we believe, be 
more likely to cling to the church than to Dis- 
senters. If not, both Catholics and Dissenters 
must be utterly powerless against the over- 
whelming English interests and feelings in the 
house. Men are less inclined to run into rebel- 
lion, in proportion as they have less to com- 
plain of; and, of all other dangers, the greatest 
to the Irish and English church establishments, 
and to the Protestant faith throughout Europe, 
is to leave Ireland in its present stale of discontetit. 

If the intention is to wait to the last, before 
concession is made, till the French or Ameri- 
cans have landed, and the holy standard has 
been unfurled, we ought to be sure of the terms 
which can be obtained at such a crisis. This 
game was played in America. Commissioners 
were sent in one year to offer and to press what 
"would have been most thankfully received the 
year before ; but they were always too late. 
The rapid concessions of England were out- 
stripped by the more rapid exactions of the 
colonies ; and the commissioners returned with 
the melancholy history, that they had humbled 
themselves before the rebels in vain. If you 
ever mean to concede at all, do it when every 
concession will be received as a favour. To 
wait till you are forced to treat, is as mean in 
principle as it is dangerous in effect. 

Then, how many thousand Protestant Dis- 
senters are there who pay a double allegiance 
to the king, and to the head of their church, 
who is not the king ? Is not Mr. William 
Smith, member for Norwich, the head of the 
Unitarian Church 7 Is not Mr. Wilberforce the 
head of the Clapham Church'? Are there not 
twenty preachers at Leeds, who regulate all the 
proceedings of the Methodists] The gentle- 
men we have mentioned are eminent, and most 
excellent men ; but if any thing at all is to be 
apprehended from this divided allegiance, we 
should be infinitely more afraid of some Jaco- 
binical fanatic at the head of Protestant vota- 
ries — some man of such character as Lord 
George Gordon — than we should of all the 
efforts of the Pope. 

As so much evil is supposed to proceed from 
not obeying the king as head of the church, 
it might be supposed to be a very active office 
— that the king was perpetually interfering with 
the affairs of the church — and that orders were 
in a course of emanation from the throne 
which regulated the fervour, and arranged 
the devotion, of all the members of the Church 
of England. But we really do not know 
what orders are ever given by the king to 
tVie church, except the appointment of a fast- 
day once in three or four years ; — nor can 
we conceive (for appointment to bishoprics 
is out of the question) what duties there 
would be to perform, if this allegiance were 
paid, instead of being withholden. Supremacy 
appears to us to be a mere name, without ex- 



ercise of power — and allegiance to be a duty 
without any performance annexed. If any one 
will say what ought to be done, which is not 
done, on account of this divided allegiance, we 
shall better understand the magnitude of the 
evil. Till then, we shall consider it as a lucky 
Protestant phrase, good to look at, like the 
mottos and ornaments on cake, but not fit to 
be eaten. 

Nothing can be more unfair than to expect, 
in an ancient church like that of the Catholics, 
the same uniformity as in churches which 
have not existed for more than two or three 
centuries. The coats and waistcoats of the 
reign of Henry VIII. bear some resemblance to 
the same garments of the present day ; but, as 
you recede, you get to the skins of wild beasts, 
or the fleeces of sheep, for the garments of 
savages. In the same way, it is extremely 
difficult for a church, which has to do with the 
counsels of barbarous ages, not to be detected 
in some discrepancy of opinion ; while in 
younger churches, every thing is fair and fresh, 
and of modern date and figure ; and it is not 
the custom among theologians to own their 
church in the wrong. "No religion can stand, 
if men, without regard to their God, and with 
regard only to controversy, shall rake out of 
the rubbish of antiquity the obsolete and quaint 
follies of the sectarians, and affront the majesty 
of the Almighty, with the impudent catalogue 
of their devices ; and it is a strong argument 
against the proscriptive system, that it helps to 
continue this shocking contest. Theologian 
against theologian, polemic against polemic, 
until the two madmen defame their common 
parent, and expose their common religion." — 
Grattan's Speech on the Catholic Question, 1805. 

A good-natured and well-conditioned person 
has pleasure in keeping and distributing any 
thing that is good. If he detects any thing with 
superior flavour, he presses and invites, and is 
not easy till others participate ; — and so it is 
with political and religious freedom. It is a 
pleasure to possess it, and a pleasure to com- 
municate it to others. There is something 
shocking in the greedy, growling, guzzling mo- 
nopoly of such a blessing. 

France is no longer a nation of atheists ; and 
therefore, a great cause of offence to the Irish 
Roman Catholic clergy is removed. Naviga- 
tion by steam renders all shores more accessi- 
ble. The union among Catholics is consoli- 
dated ; all the dangers of Ireland are redoubled ; 
every thing seems tending to an event fatal to 
England — fatal (whatever Catholics may fool- 
ishly imagine) to Ireland — and which will 
subjecWhem both to the dominion of France. 

Formerly a poor man might be removed 
from a parish if there was the slightest danger 
of his becoming chargeable ; a hole in his coat 
or breeches excited suspicion. The church- 
wardens said, " He has cost us nothing, but he 
may cost us something; and we must not live 
even in the apprehension of evil." All this is 
changed ; and the law now says, " Wait till you 
are hurt ; time enough to meet the evil when it 
comes; you have no right to do a certain evil 
to others, to prevent an uncertain evil to your- 
selves." The Catholics, however, are told that 
what they do ask is objected to, from the fear 



262 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



of what they may ask ; that they must do with- 
out that which is reasonable, for fear they should 
ask what is unreasonable. " I would give you a 
penny (says the miser to the beggar), if I was 
quite sure you would not ask me for half a 
crown." 

" Nothing, I am told, is now so common on 
the continent as to hear our Irish policy dis- 
cussed. Till of late the extent of the disabili- 
ties was but little understood, and less regarded, 
partly because, having less liberty themselves, 
foreigners could not appreciate the deprivations, 
and partly because the pre-eminence of Eng- 
land was not so decided as to draw the eyes of 
the world on all parts of our system. It was 
scarcely credited that England, that knight- 
errant abroad, should play the exclusionist at 
home ; that every where else she should declaim 
against oppression, but contemplate it without 
emotion at her doors. That her armies should 
march, and her orators philippize, and her poets 
sing against continental tyranny, and yet that 
laws should remain extant, and principles be 
operative within our gates, which are a bitter 
satire on our philanthropy, and a melancholy 
negation of our professions. Our sentiments 
have been so lofty, our deportment to foreigners 
so haughty, we have set up such liberty and 
such morals, that no one could suppose that we 
were hypocrites. Still less could it be foreseen 
that a great moralist, called Joseph Surface, 
kept a ' little milliner' behind the scenes, we 
too should be found out at length in taking the 
diversion of private tyranny after the most 
approved models for that amusement." — Letter 
to Lord Milton, pp. 50, 51. 

We sincerely hope — we firmly believe — it 
never will happen ; but if it were to happen, 
why cannot England be just as happy with 
Ireland being Catholic, as it is with Scotland 
being Presbyterian 1 Has not the Church of 
England lived side by side with the Kirk, with- 
out crossing or jostling, for these last hundred 
years 1 Have the Presbyterian members enter- 
ed into any conspiracy for mincing bishoprics 
and deaneries into synods and presbyteries 1 
And is not the Church of England tenfold more 
rich and more strong than when the separation 
took place 1 But however this may be, the real 
danger, even to the church of Ireland, as we 
have before often remarked, is the refusal of 
Catholic emancipation. 

It would seem, from the phrenzy of many 
worthy Protestants, whenever the name of Ca- 
tholic is mentioned, that the greatest possible 
diversity of religious opinions existed between 
the Catholic and the Protestant — that they were 
as different as fish and flesh — as alkali aM acid 
— as cow and cart-horse ; whereas it is quite 
clear, that there are many Protestant sects 
whose difference from each other is much more 
marked, both in church discipline and in tenets 
of faith, than that of Protestants and Catholics. 
We maintain that Lambeth, in these two points, 



is quite as near to the Vatican as it is to the 
Kirk — if not much nearer. 

Instead of lamenting the power of the priests 
over the lower orders of the Irish, we ought to 
congratulate ourselves that any influence can 
affect or control them. Is the tiger less formi- 
dable in the forest than when he has been 
caught and laught to obey a voice, and tremble 
at an hand 1 But we overrate the power of 
the priest, if we suppose that the upper orders 
are to encounter all the dangers of treason and 
rebellion, to confer the revenues of the Protest- 
ant church upon the Catholic clergy. If the 
influence of the Catholic clergy upon men of 
rank and education is so unbounded, why can- 
not the French and Italian clergy recover their 
possessions, or acquire an equivalent for them 1 
They are starving in the full enjoyment of an 
influence which places (as we think) all the 
wealth and power of the country at their feet — 
an influence which, in our opinion, overpowers 
avarice, fear, ambition, and is the master of 
every passion which brings on change and 
movement in the Protestant world. 

We conclude with a few words of advice to 
the different opponents of the Catholic ques- 
tion. 

To the No-Popery Fool. 

You are made use of by men who laugh at 
you, and despise you for your folly and igno- 
rance ; and who, the moment it suits their 
purpose, will consent to emancipation of the 
Catholics, and leave you to roar and bellow No 
Popery ! to vacancy and the moon. 
To the No-Popery Rogue. 

A shameful and scandalous game, to sport 
with the serious interests of the country, in 
order to gain some increase of public power ! 
To the Holiest No-Popery People, 

We respect you very sincerely — but are 
astonished at your existence. 
To the Base. 

Sweet children of turpitude, beware ! the 
old anti-popery people are fast perishing away. 
Take heed that you are not surprised by an 
emancipating king, or an emancipating admin- 
istration. Leave a locus panitentia ! — prepare 
a place for retreat — get ready your equivoca- 
tions and denials. The dreadful day may yet 
come, when liberality may lead to place and 
power. We understand these matters here. 
It is the safest to be moderately base — to be 
flexible in shame, and to be always ready for 
what is generous, good, and just, when any 
thing is to be gained by virtue. 
To the Catholics. 

Wait. Do not add to your miseries by a mad 
and desperate rebellion. Persevere in civil 
exertions^ and concede all you can concede. 
All great alterations in human affairs are pro- 
duced by compromise. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH, 



263 



NECKAE'S LAST VIEWS/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



If power could be measured by territory, or 
counted by population, the inveteracy, and the 
disproportion which exists between France and 
England, must occasion to every friend of the 
latter country the most serious and well-found- 
ed apprehensions. Fortunately however for 
us, the question of power is not only what is 
the amount of population ] but, how is that 
population governed 1 How far is a confidence 
in the stability of political institutions establish- 
ed by an experience of their wisdom ? Are the 
various interests of society adjusted and pro- 
tected by a system of laws thoroughly tried, 
gradually ameliorated, and purely administer- 
ed ■? What is the degree of general prosperity 
evinced by that most perfect of all criteria, ge- 
neral credit? These are the considerations to 
which an enlightened politician, who speculates 
on the future destiny of nations, will direct his 
attention, more than to the august and impos- 
ing exterior of territorial dominion, or to those 
brilliant moments, when a nation, under the 
influence of great passions, rises above its 
neighbours, and above itself, in military re- 
nown. 

If it be visionary to suppose the grandeur 
and safety of the two nations as compatible 
and co-existent, we have the important (though 
the cruel) consolation of reflecting, that the 
French have yet to put together the very ele- 
ments of a civil and political constitution ; that 
they have to experience all the danger and all 
the inconvenience which result from the rash- 
ness and the imperfect views of legislators, 
who have every thing to conjecture, and every 
thing to create ; that they must submit to the 
confusion of repeated change, or the greater 
evil of obstinate perseverance in error; that 
they must live for a century in that state of 
perilous uncertainty in which every revolution- 
ized nation remains, before rational liberty be- 
comes feeling and habit, as well as law, and is 
written in the hearts of men as plainly as in 
the letter of the statute; and that the opportu- 
nity of beginning this immense edifice of hu- 
man happiness is so far from being presented 
to them at present, that it is extremely problem- 
atical whether or not they are to be bandied 
from one vulgar usurper to another, and remain 
for a century subjugated to the rigour of a 
military government, at once the scorn and the 
scourge of Europe.f * 

To the more pleasing supposition, that the 
First Consul will make use of his power to 
give his country a free constitution, we are in- 
debted for the work of M. Neckar now before 
us, a work of which good temper is the charac- 
teristic excellence : it every where preserves 



* Derniires Vvesde Politiques, et.de Fivance. Par M. 
Neckar. An 10, 1S02. 

f All this is, unfortunately, as true now as it was 
•when written thirty years ago. 



that cool impartiality which it is so difficult to 
retain in the discussion of subjects connected 
with recent and important events ; modestly 
proposes the results of reflection ; and, neither 
deceived nor wearied by theories, examines the 
best of all that mankind have said or done for 
the attainment of rational liberty. 

The principal object of M. Neckar's book is 
to examine this question, " An opportunity of 
election supposed, and her present circumstan- 
ces considered — what is the best form of go- 
vernment which France is capable of receiv- 
ing?" and he answers his own query by giving 
the preference to a Republic One and Indivisible. 

The work is divided into four parts. 

1. An Examination of the present constitu- 
tion of France. 

2. On the best form of a Republic One and 
Indivisible. 

3. On the best form of a Monarchical Go- 
vernment. 

4. Thoughts upon Finance. 

From the misfortune which has hitherto at- 
tended all discussions of present constitutions 
in France, M. Neckar has not escaped. The 
subject has proved too rapid for the author; 
and its existence has ceased before its proper- 
ties were examined. This part of the work, 
therefore, we shall entirely pass over : because, 
to discuss a mere name, is an idle waste of 
time; and no man pretends that the present 
constitution of France can, with propriety, be 
considered as any thing more. We shall pro- 
ceed to a description of that form of a republi- 
can government which appears to M. Neckar 
best calculated to promote the happiness of that 
country. 

Every department is to be divided into five 
parts, each of which is to send one member. 
Upon the eve of an election, all persons paying 
200, livres of government taxes in direct con- 
tribution, are to assemble together, and choose 
100 members from their own number, who 
form what M. Neckar calls a chamber of indi- 
cation. This chamber of indication is to pre- 
sent five candidates, of whom the people are 
to elect one ; and the right of voting in this 
latter election is given to every body engaged 
in a wholesale or retail business ; to all super- 
intendents of manufactures and trades; to all 
commissioned and non-commissioned officers 
and soldiers who have received their discharge ; 
and to all citizens paying, in direct contribu- 
tion, to the amount of twelve livres. Votes 
are not to be given in one spot, but before the 
chief magistrate of each cmnnmnc where the 
voter resides, and there inserted in registers ; 
from a Comparison of which, the successful 
candidate is to be determined. The municipal 
officers are to enjoy the right of recommending 
one of these candidates to the people, who are 
free to adopt their recommendation or not, as 



264 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



they may think proper. The right of voting is 
confined to qualified single men of twenty-five 
years of age : married men of the same de- 
scription may vote at any age. 

To this plan of election we cannot help 
thinking there are many great and insuperable 
objections. The first and infallible conse- 
quence of it would be, a devolution of the 
whole elective franchise upon the chamber of 
indication, and a complete exclusion of the 
people from any share in the privilege : for the 
chamber bound to return five candidates, would 
take care to return four out of the five so tho- 
roughly objectionable, that the people would 
be compelled to choose the fifth. Such has 
been the constant effect of all elections so con- 
stituted in Great Britain, where the power of 
conferring the office has always been found to 
be vested in those who nanied the candidates, 
not in those who selected an individual from 
the candidates named. 

But if such were not the consequences of a 
double election ; and if it were so well consti- 
tuted, as to retain that character which the 
legislature meant to impress upon it, there are 
other reasons which would induce us to pro- 
nounce it a very pernicious institution. The 
only foundation of political liberty is the spirit 
of the people ; and the only circumstance 
which makes a lively impression upon their 
senses, and powerfully reminds them of their 
importance, their power, and their rights, 
is the periodical choice of their represen- 
tatives. How easily that spirit may be to- 
tally extinguished, and of the degree of abject 
fear and slavery to which the human race may 
be reduced for ages, every man of reflection is 
sufficiently aware : and he knows that the pre- 
servation of that feeling is, of all other objects 
of political science, the most delicate and the 
most difficult. It appears to us, that a people 
who did not choose their representatives, but 
only those who chose their representatives, 
would very soon become indifferent to their 
elections altogether. To deprive them of their 
power of nominating their own candidate, 
would be still M'orse. The eagerness of the 
people to vote, is kept alive by their occasional 
expulsion of a candidate who has rendered 
himself objectionable, or the adoption of one 
who knows how to render himself agreeable 
to them. They are proud of being solicited 
personally by a man of family or wealth. The 
uproar even, and the confusion and the clamour 
of a popular election in England, have their 
use : they give a stamp to the names, Liberty, 
Constitution, and People : they infuse sentiments 
which nothing but violent passions and gross 
objects of sense roidd infuse ; and which would 
never exist, perhaps, if the sober constituents 
were to sneak, one by one, into a notary's office 
to deliver their votes for a representative, or 
were to form the first link in that long chain 
of causes and effects, which, in this compound 
kind of elections, ends with choosing a mem- 
ber of parliament. 

"Above all things (says M. Neckar) languor 
is the most deadly to a republican government; 
for when such a political association is anima- 
ted neither by a kind of instinctive affection 
for its beauty, nor by the continual homage of 



reflection to the happy union of order and 
liberty, the public spirit is half lost, and with it 
the republic. The rapid brilliancy of despot- 
ism is preferred to a mere complicated ma- 
chine, from which every symptom of life and 
organization is fled." 

Sickness, absence, and nonage, would (even 
under the supposition of universal suff"rage) re- 
duce the voters of any country to one fourth 
of its population. A qualification much lower 
than that of the payment of twelve livres in 
direct contribution, would reduce that fourth 
one half, and leave the number of voters in 
France three millions and a half, which, divided 
by 600, gives between five and six thousand 
constituents for each represensative ; a num- 
ber not amounting to a third part of the voters 
for many counties in England, and which cer- 
tainly is not so unwieldy as to make it neces- 
sary to have recourse to the complex mechan- 
ism of double elections. Besides, too, if it 
could be believed that the peril were consider- 
able, of gathering men together in such masses, 
we have no hesitation in saying, that it would 
be infinitely preferable to thin their numbers, 
by increasing the value of the qualification, 
than to obviate the apprehended bad effects, by 
complicating the system of election. 

M. Neckar (much as he has seen and ob- 
served,) is clearly deficient in that kind of ex- 
perience which is gained by living under free 
governments : he mistakes the riots of a free, 
for the insurrections of an enslaved people ; 
and appears to be impressed with the most tre- 
mendous notions of an English election. The 
difference is, that the tranquillity of an arbi- 
trary government is rarely disturbed, but from 
the most serious provocations, not to be expi- 
ated by any ordinary vengeance. The excesses 
of a free people are less important, because 
their resentments are less serious ; and they 
can commit a great deal of apparent disorder 
with very little real mischief. An English mob, 
which, to a foreigner, might convey the belief 
of an impending massacre, is often contented 
by the demolition of a few windows. 

The idea of diminishing the number of con- 
stituents, rather by extending the period of non- 
age to twenty-five years, than by increasing the 
value of the qualification, appears to us to be 
new and ingenious. No person considers him- 
self as so completely deprived of a share in 
the government, who is to enjoy it when he be- 
comes older, as he would do, were that privi- 
lege deferred till he became richer; time 
comes to all, wealth to few. 

This assembly of representatives, as M. 
Neckar has constituted it, appears to us to be 
in extreme danger of turning out to be a mere 
collection of country gentlemen. Every thing 
is determined by territorial extent and popula- 
tion ; and as the voters in towns must, in any 
single division, be almost always inferior to the 
country voters, the candidates will be returned 
in virtue of large landed property ; and that in- 
finite advantage which is derived to a popular 
assembly, from the variety of characters of 
which it is composed, would be entirely lost 
under the system of M. Neckar. The sea-ports, 
the universities, the great commercial towns, 
should all have their separate organs in the- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



265 



parliament of a great country. There should 
be some means of bringing in active, able, 
young men, who would submit to the labour of 
business, from the stimulus of honour and 
■wealth. Others should be there, expressly to 
speak the sentiments, and defend the interests 
of the executive. Every popular assembly 
must be grossly imperfect, that is not composed 
of such heterogeneous materials as these. Our 
own parliament may perhaps contain within 
itself too many of that species of representa- 
tives, who could never have arrived at the dig- 
nity under a pure and perfect system of elec- 
tion ; but, for all the practical purposes of go- 
vernment, amidst a great majority fairly elected 
by the people, we should always wish to see a 
certain number of the legislative body repre- 
senting interests very distinct from those of the 
people. 

The legislative part of his constitution M. 
Neckar manages in the following manner. 
There are two councils, the great and the little. 
The great council is composed of five mem- 
bers from each department, elected in the man- 
ner we have just described, and amounting to 
the number of six hundred. The assembly is 
re-elected every five years. No qualification* 
of property is necessary to its members, who 
receive each a salary of 12,000 livres. No one 
is eligible to the assembly before the age of 
twenty-five years. The little national council 
consists of one hundred members, or from that 
number to one hundred and twenty; one for 
each department. It is re-elected every ten 
years ; its members must be thirty years of age ; 
and they receive the same salary as the mem- 
bers of the great council. For the election of 
the little council, each of the five chambers of 
indication, in every department, gives in the 
name of one candidate ; and, from the five so 
named, the same voters who choose the great 
council select one. 

The municipal officers enjoy, in this election, 
the same right of recommending one of the can- 
didates to the people; a privilege which they 
would certainly exercise indirectly, without a 
law, wherever they could exercise it with any 
effect, and the influence of which the sanction 
of the law would at all times rather diminish 
than increase. 

The grand national council commences all 
deliberations which concern public order, and 
the interest of the state, with the exception of 
those only which belong to finance. Neverthe- 
less, the executive and the little council have 
it in their power to propose any law for the con- 
sideration of the grand council. When a law 
has passed the two councils, and received the 
sanction of the executive senate, it becomes 
binding upon the people. If the executive 
senate disapprove of any law presented to them 
for their adoption, they are to send it back to 
the two councils for their reconsideration ; but 
if it pass these two bodies again, with the ap- 
probation of two-thirds of the members of each 
assembly, the executive has no longer the 
power of withholding its assent. All measures 
of finance are to initiate with government. 

♦ Nothing can be more at>.surit thrin our qualification 
for parliiiment : il is notliiiig but a foolish and expen- 
sive lie on parctii;u:nt. 

34 



We believe M. Neckar to be right in his idea 
of not exacting any qualification of property in 
his legislative assemblies. When men are left 
to choose their own governors, they are guided 
in their choice by some one of those motives 
which has always commanded their homage 
and admiration : — if they do not choose wealth, 
they choose birth or talents, or military fame; 
and of all these species of pre-eminence, a large 
popular assembly should be constituted. In 
England, the laws, requiring that members of 
parliament should be possessed of certain pro- 
perty, are (except in the instance of members 
for counties) practically repealed. 

In the salaries of the members of the two 
councils, with the exception of the expense, 
there is, perhaps, no great balance of good or 
harm. To some men it would be an induce- 
ment to become senators; toothers, induced by 
more honourable motives, it would afford the 
means of supporting that situation without dis- 
grace. Twenty-five years of age is certainly 
loo late a period for the members of the great 
council. Of what astonishing displays of elo- 
quence and talent should we have been de- 
prived in this country under the adoption of a 
similar rule! 

The institution of two assemblies cohstitutes 
a check upon the passion and precipitation by 
which the resolutions of any single popular as- 
sembly may occasionally be governed. The 
chances, that one will correct the other, do not 
depend solely upon their dividuality, but upon 
the different ingredients of which they are com- 
posed, and that difference of system and spirit, 
which results from a difference of conformei- 
tion. Perhaps M. Neckar has not sufficiently 
attended to this consideration. The difference 
between his two assemblies is not very mate- 
rial ; and the same popular fury which marked 
the proceedings of the one, would not be very 
sure of meeting with an adequate corrective in 
the dignified coolness and wholesome gravity 
of the other. 

All power which is tacitly allowed to devolve 
upon the executive part of a government, from 
the experience that it is most conveniently 
placed there, is both safer, and less likely to be 
complained of, than that which is conferred 
upon it by law. If M. Neckar had placed some 
agents of the executive in the great council, all 
measures of finance would, in fart, have origi- 
nated in them, without any exclusive right to 
such initiation; but the right of initiation, from 
M. Neckar's contrivance, is likely to excite that 
discontent in the people, which alone can render 
it dangerous and objectionable. 

In this plan of a republic, every thing seems 
to depend upon the purity and the moderation 
of its governors. The executive has no con- 
nection with the great council; the members of 
the great council have no motive of hope, or 
interest, to consult the wishes of the executive. 
The assembly, which is to give example to the 
nation, and enjoy its confidence, is composed of 
six hundred men, whose passions have no other 
control than that pure love of the public, which 
it is hoped they may possess, and that cool inves- 
tigation of interests, which it is hoped they may 
pursue. 

Of the effects of such a constitution, every 
Z 



266 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



thing must be conjectured; for experience ena- 
bles us to make no assertion respecting it. 
There is only one government in the modern 
world, which, from the effects it has produced, 
and the time it has endured, can with justice be 
called o-Qod and free. Its constitution, in books, 
contains the dej^cription of a legislative assem- 
bly, similar to that of M. Neckar's. Happily, 
perhaps, for the people, the share they have 
really enjoyed in its election, is much less ample 
than that allotted to them in this republic of the 
closet. How long a really popular assembly 
would tolerate any rival and co-existing power 
m the state — for what period the feeble execu- 
tive, and the untitled, unblazoned peers of a 
republic, could not stand against it — whether 
any institutions, compatible with the essence 
and meaning of a republic, could prevent it 
from absorbing all the dignity, the popularity 
and the power of the state, — are questions that 
we leave for the resolution of wiser heads ; with 
the sincerest joy, that we have only a theoretical 
interest in stating them.* 

The executive senate is to consist of seven ; 
and the right of presenting the candidates, and 
selecting from the candidates alternately from 
one assembly to the other, i. e. on a vacancy, 
the great council pfesent three candidates to 
the little council, who select one from that 
number; and, on the next vacancy, by the in- 
version of this process, the little council pre- 
sent, and the great council select; and so alter- 
nately. The members of the executive must 
be thirty-five years of age. Their measures 
are determined by a majority. The president, 
called the Consul, has a casting vote : his sal- 
ary is fixed at 300,000 livres ; that of all the 
other senators at 60,000 livres. The office of 
consul is annual. Every senator enjoys it in 
his turn. Every year one senator goes out, 
unless re-elected; which he may be once, and 
even twice, if he unites three-fourths of the 
votes of each council in his favour. The exe- 
cutive shall name to all civil and military of- 
fices, except to those of mayors and municipali- 
ties. Political negotiations, and connections 
with foreign countries, fall under the direction 
of the executive. Declarations of war or 
peace, when presented by the executive to the 
legislative body, are to be adopted, the first by 
a majority of three-fifths, the last by a simple 
majority. The parade, honours, and ceremo- 
nies of the executive, devolve upon the consul 
alone. The members of the senate, upon going 
out of office, become members of the little 
council, to the number of seven. Upon the 
vacation of an eighth senator, the oldest ex- 
senator in the little council resigns his seat to 
make room for him. All responsibility rests 
upon the consul alone, who has a right to stop 
the proceedings of a majority of the executive 
senate, by declaring them unconstitutional; 
and if the majority persevere, in spite of this 
declaration, the dispute is referred to and de- 
cided by a secret committee of the little coun- 
cil. 

M. Neckar takes along with him the same 
mistake through the whole of his constitution, 

* That interest is at present not quite so theoretical 
as it was. 



by conferring the choice of candidates on one 
body, and the election of the member on an- 
other : so that though the alternation would take 
place between the two councils, it would turn 
out to be in an order directly opposite to that 
which was intended. 

We perfectly acquiesce in the reasons M. 
Neckar has alleged for the preference given to 
an executive constituted of many individuals, 
rather than of one. The prize of supreme 
power is too tempting to admit of fair play in 
the game of ambition ; and it is wise to lessen 
its value by dividing it : at least it is wise to 
do so under a form of government that cannot 
admit the better expedient of rendering the ex- 
ecutive hereditary ; an expedient (gross and 
absurd as it seems to be) the best calculated, 
perhaps, to obviate the effects of ambition upon 
the stability of governments, by narrowing the 
field on which it acts, and the object for which 
it contends. The Americans have determined 
otherwise, and adopted an elective presidency : 
but there are innumerable circumstances, as 
M. Neckar very justly observes, which render 
the example of America inapplicable to other 
governments. America is a federative repub- 
lic, and the extensive jurisdiction of the indi- 
vidual stales exonerates the president from so 
great a portion of the cares of domestic go- 
vernment, that he may almost be considered 
as a mere minister of foreign affairs. America 
presents such an immediate, and such a seduc 
ing species of provision to all its inhabitants, 
that it has no idle discontented populace ; its 
population amounts only to six millions, and it 
is not condensed in such masses as the popu- 
lation of Europe. After all, an experiment of 
twenty years is never to be cited in politics ; 
nothing can be built upon such a slender infer- 
ence. Even if America were to remain sta- 
tionary, she might find that she had presented 
too fascinating and irresistible an object to hu- 
man ambition: of course, that peril is increas- 
ed by every augmentation of a people, who are 
hastening on, with rapid and irresistible pace, 
to the highest eminences of human grandeur. . 
Some contest for power there must be in every 
free state : but the contest for vicarial and de- 
puted power, as it implies the presence of a 
moderator and a master, is more prudent than 
the struggle for that which is original and su- 
preme. 

The difficulty of reconciling the responsi- 
bility of the executive with its dignity, M. 
Neckar foresees ; and states, but does not reme- 
dy. An irresponsible executive, the jealousy 
of a republic would never tolerate ; and its 
amenability to punishment, by degrading it in 
the eyes of the people, diminishes its power. 

All the leading features of civil liberty are 
copied from the constitution of this country, 
with hardly any variation. 

Having thus finished his project of a repub- 
lic, M. Neckar proposes the government of this 
country as the best model of a temperate and 
hereditary monarchy; pointing out such alter- 
ations in it as the genius of the French people, 
the particular circumstances in which they are 
placed, or the abuses which have crept into 
our policy, may require. From one or the 
other of these motives he re-establishes the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



267 



salique law ;* forms his elections after the 
same manner as that previously described in 
his scheme of a republic; and excludes the 
clergy from the house of peers. This latter 
assembly M. Neckar composes of 250 heredi- 
tary peers chosen from the best families in 
France, and of 50 assistant peers enjoying that 
dignity for life only, and nominated by the 
crown. The number of hereditary peers is 
limited as above ; the peerage goes only in the 
male line ; and upon each peer is perpetually 
entailed landed property to the amount of 
30,000 livres. This partial creation of peers 
for life only, appears to remedy a very material 
defect in the English constitution. An heredi- 
tary legislative aristocracy not only adds to the 
dignity of the throne, and establishes that gra- 
dation of ranks which is, perhaps, absolutely 
necessary to its security, but it transacts a con- 
siderable share of the business of the nation, 
as well in the framing of laws as in the dis- 
charge of its juridical functions. But men of 
rank and wealth, though they are interested by 
a splendid debate, will not submit'to the drijdg- 
ery of business, much less can they be supposed 
conversant in all the niceties of law questions. 
It is therefore necessary to add to their number 
a certain portion of novi homines, men of estab- 
lished character for talents, and upon whom 
the previous tenor of their lives has necessa- 
rily impressed the habits of business. The 
evil of this is, that the title descends to their 
posterity, without the talents and the utility 
that procured it ; and the dignity of the peerage 
is impaired by the increase of its numbers : 
not only so, but as the peerage is the reward 
of military, as well as the earnest oi' civil ser- 
vices, and as the annuity commonly granted 
with it is only for one or two lives, we are in 
some danger of seeing a race of nobles wholly 
dependent upon the crown for their support, 
and sacrificing their political freedom to their 
necessities. These evils are eflectually, as il 
should seem, obviated by the creation of a ccr- 
tain-\ number of peers for life only ; and the in- 
crease of power which it seems to give to the 
crown, is very fairly counteracted by the ex- 
clusion of the episcopacy, and the limitation 
of the hereditary peerage. As the weight of 
business in the upper house would principally 
devolve upon the created peers, and as they 
would hardly arrive at that dignity without 
having previously acquired great civil or mili- 
tary reputation, the consideration they j/ould 
enjoy would be little inferior to that of the 
other part of the aristocracy. When the no- 
blesse of nature are fairly opposed to the noblesse 
created by political institutions, there is little 
fear that the former should suifer by the com- 
parison. 

If the clergy are suffered to sit in the lower 
house, the exclusion of the episcopacy from 
the upper house is of less importance : but, in 
some part of the legislative bodies, the inter- 



* A most sensible and valuable law, banishing gal- 
lantry and chivalry from cabinets, and preventing the 
amiable antics of grave statesmen. 

f The most useless and offensive tumour in the body 
politic, is the titled son of a great man whose merit has 
'friaced him in the peerage. The name, face, and per- 
haps the pension, remain. The dsnion is gone ; or 
lliere is a slight flavour from the cask, but it is empty. 



ests of the church ought unquestionably to be 
represented. This consideration M. Neckar 
wholly passes over.* 

Though this gentleman considers an heredi- 
tary monarchy as preferable in the abstract, he 
deems it impossible that such a government 
could be established in. France, under her pre- 
sent circumstances, from the impracticability 
of establishing with it an hereditary aristocra- 
cy ; because the property, and the force of 
opinion, which constituted their real power, are 
no more, and cannot be restored. Though we 
entirely agree with M. Neckar, that an heredi- 
tary aristocracy is a necessary part of temperate 
monarchy, and that the latter must exist upon 
the base of the former, or not at all — we are by 
no means converts to the very decided opinion 
he has expressed of the impossibility of restor- 
ing them both to France. 

We are surprised that M. Neckar should at- 
tempt to build any strong argument upon the 
durability of opinions in nations that are about 
to undergo, or that have recently undergone, 
great political changes. What opinion was- 
there in favour of a republic in 1780 7 Or 
against it in 1794 ? Or, what opinion is there 
now in favour of it in 1802? Is not the tide 
of opinions, at this moment, in France, setting 
back with a strength equal to its flow 1 and is 
there not reason to presume, that, for some time 
to come, their ancient institutions may be 
adored with as much fury as they were de- 
stroyed ? If opinion can revive in favour of 
kings (and M. Neckar allows it may), why not 
in favour of nobles ? It is true their property 
is in the hands of other persons ; and the whole 
of that species of proprietors will exert them- 
selves to the utmost to prevent a restoration so 
pernicious to their interests. The obstacle is 
certainly of a very formidable nature. But 
why this weight of property, so weak a weapon 
of defence to its ancient, should be deemed so 
irresistible in the hands of its present possessors, 
we are at a loss to conceive; unless, indeed, it 
be supposed, that antiquity of pot;session di- 
minishes the sense of right and the vigour of 
retention ; and that men will struggle harder to 
keep what they have acquired only yesterday, 
than that which they have possessed, by them- 
selves or their ancestors, for six centuries. 

In France, the inferiority of the price of 
revolutionary lands to others, is immense. Of 
the former species, church land is considerably 
dearer than the forfeited estates of emigrants. 
Whence the difference of price, but from the 
estimated difference of security! Can any fact 
display more strongly the state of public opinion 
with regard to the probability of a future resto- 
ration of these estates, either partial or total ? 
and can any circumstance facilitate the execu- 
tion of such a project more than the general 
belief that it will be executed? M. Neckar 
allows, that the impediments to the formation 
of a republic are very serious ; but thinks they 
would all yield to the talents and activity of 
Buonaparte, if he were to dedicate himself to 

* The parochial clergy are as much unrepresented in 
the English Parliament as they are in the Parliament 
of Brobdisnag. The bishops make just what laws they 
please, and the bearing they may have on the happiness 
of the clergy at large never for one moment comes into 
the serious consideration of Parliament 



268 



WORKS OF THE REV. SIDNEY SMITH. 



the superintendence of such a government 
during the period of its infancy : of course, 
therefore, he is to suppose the same power 
dedicated to the formation of an hereditary 
monarchy : or his parallel of difficulties is un- 
just, and his preference irrational. Buonaparte 
could represent the person of a monarch, during 
his life, as well as he could represent the execu- 
tive of a republic ; and if he could overcome 
the turbulence of electors, to whom freedom 
was new, he could appease the jealousy that 
his generals would entertain of the returning 
nobles. Indeed, without such powerful inter- 
vention, this latter objection does not appear to 
us to be by any means insuperable. If the his- 
tory of our own restoration were to be acted 
over again in France, and royalty and aristo- 
cracy brought back by the military successor 
of Buonaparte, it certainly could not be done 
without a veiy liberal distribution of favours 
among the great leaders of the army. 

Jealousy of the executive is one feature of a 
republic ; in consequence, that government is 
clogged with a multiplicity of safeguards and 
restrictions, which render it unfit for investi- 
gating complicated details, and managing ex- 
tensive relations with vigour, consistency, and 
despatch. A republic, therefore, is better fitted 
for a little state than a large one. 

A love of equality is another very strong 
principle in a republic ; therefore it does not 
tolerate hereditary honour or wealth ; and all 
the effect produced upon the minds of the people 
by this factitious power is lost, and the govern- 
ment weakened; but, in proportion as the 
government is less able to command, the people 
should be more willing to obey; therefore a 
republic is better suited to a moral than an im- 
moral people. 

A people who have recently experienced great 
evils from the privileged orders and from mon- 
archs, love republican forms so much, that the 
warmth of their inclination supplies, in some 
degree, the defect of their institutions. Imme- 
diately, therefore, upon the destruction of des- 
potism, a republic 7?iay be preferable to a limited 
monarchy. 

And yet, though narrowness of territory, 
purity of morals, and recent escape from des- 
potism, appear to be the circumstances which 
most strongly recommend a republic, M. Neckar 
proposes it to the most numerous and the most 
profligate people in Europe, who are disgusted 
with the very name of liberty, from the incredi- 
ble evils they have suffered in pursuit of it. 

Whatever be the species of free government 
adopted by France, she can adopt none without 
the greatest peril. The miserable dilemma in 
which men living under bad governments are 
placed, is, that, without a radical revolution, 
they may never be able to gain liberty at all ; 
and, with it, the attainment of liberty appears 
to be attended with almost insuperable difficul- 
ties. To call upon a nation, on a sudden, totally 
destitute of such knowledge and experience, to 
perform all the manifold functions of a free 
constitution, is to entrust valuable, delicate, and 
abstruse mechanism, to the rudest skill and the 
grossest ignorance. Public acts may confer 
liberty; but experience only can teach a people 
to use it; and, till they have gained that expe- 



rience, they are liable to tumult, to jealousy, to 
collision of powers, and to every evil to which 
men are exposed, who are desirous of preserv- 
ing a great good, without knowing how to set 
about it. In an old established system of liberty, 
like our own, the encroachments which one de- 
partment of the state makes on any other, are 
slow, and hardly intentional ; the political feel- 
ings and the constitutional knowledge which 
every Englishman possesses, create a public 
voice, which tends to secure the tranquillity of 
the whole. Amid the crude sentiments and 
new-born precedents of sudden liberty, the 
crown might destroy the commons, or the 
commons the crown, almost before the people 
had formed any opinion of the nature of their 
contention. A nation grown free in a single 
day, is a child bom with the limbs and the 
vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword 
for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that 
he might chuckle over the splendour. 

Why can factious eloquence produce such 
limited effects in this country? Partly because 
we are accustomed to it, and know how to ap- 
preciate it. We are acquainted with popular 
assemblies ; and the language of our Parlia- 
ment produces the effect it ought upon public 
opinion, because long experience enables us to 
conjecture the real motives by which men are 
actuated ; to separate the vehemence of party 
spirit from the language of principle and truth; 
and to discover whom we can trust, and whom 
we cannot. The want of all this, and of much 
more than this, must retard, for a very long pe- 
riod, the practical enjoyment of liberty iu 
France, and present very serious obstacles to 
her prosperity; obstacles little dreamed of by 
men who seem to measure the happiness and 
future grandeur of France by degrees of lon- 
gitude and latitude, and who believe she might 
acquire liberty with as much facility as she 
could acquire Switzerland or Naples. 

M. Neckar's observations on the finances of 
France, and on finance in general, are useful, 
entertaining, and not above the capacity of 
every reader. France, he says, at the begin- 
ning of 1781, had 438 millions of revenue; 
and, at present 540 millions. The state paid, 
in 1781, about 21.5 millions in pensions, the in- 
terest of perpetual debts, and debts for life. It 
pays, at present, 80 millions in interests and 
pensions ; and owes about 12 millions for anti- 
cipations on the public revenue. A considera- 
ble ^are of the increase of the revenue is 
raised upon the conquered countries; and the 
people are liberated from tithes, corvees, and 
the tax on salt. This, certainly, is a magnifi- 
cent picture of finance. The best informed 
people at Paris, who would be very glad to con- 
sider it as a copy from life, dare not contend 
that it is vso. At least, we sincerely ask pardon 
of M. Neckar. if our information as to this 
point be not correct : but we believe he is gene- 
rally considered to have been misled by the 
public financial reports. 

In addition to the obvious causes which keep 
the interest of money so high in France, M. 
Neckar states one which we shall present to 
our readers : — 

"There is one means for the establishment 
of credit," he says, " equally important with 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



269 



the others which I hare stated — a sentiment of 
respect for morals, sufficiently diffused to over- 
awe the government, and intimidate it from 
treating with bad faith any solemn engagements 
contracted in the name of the state. It is this 
respect for 7norah ivhich seems at present to have dis- 
appeared? a respect which the Revolution has 
destroyed, and which is unquestionably one of 
the firmest supports of national faith." 

The terrorists of this country are so ex- 
tremely alarmed at the power of Buonaparte, 
that they ascribe to him resources which M. 
Neckar very justly observes to be incompati- 
ble — despotism and credit. Now, clearly, if he 
is so omnipotent in France as he is represented 
to be, there is an end of all credit; for nobody 
will trust /lit^twhom nobody can compel to pay; 
and if he establishes a credit, he loses all that 
temporary vigour which is derived from a re- 
volutionary government. Either the despotism 
or the credit of France directed against this 
country would be highly formidable; but, both 
together, can never be directed at the same 
time. 

In this part of his work, M. Neckar very 
justly points out one of the most capital defects 
of Mr. Pitt's administration ; who always sup- 
posed that the power of France was to cease 



with her credit, and measured the period of her 
existence by the depreciation of her assignats. 
Whereas, France was never more powerful 
than when she was totally unable to borrow a 
single shilling in the whole circumference of 
Europe, and when her assignats were not worth 
the paper on which they were stamped. 

Such are the principal contents of M. Neck- 
ar's very i-espectable work. Whether, in the 
course of that work, his political notions ap- 
pear to be derived from a successful study of 
the passions of mankind, and whether his plan 
for the establishment of a republican govern- 
ment in France, for the ninth or tenth time, 
evinces a more sanguine, or a more sagacious 
mind, than the rest of the world, we would ra- 
ther our readers should decide for themselves, 
than expose ourselves to any imputation of ar- 
rogance,"by deciding for them. But when we 
consider the pacific and impartial disposition 
which characterizes the Last Vieivs on Politics 
and Finance, the serene benevolence which it 
always displays, and the pure morals which it 
always inculcates, we cannot help entertaining 
a high respect for its venerable author, and feel- 
ing a fervent wish, that the last views of every 
public man may proceed from a heart as up- 
right, and be directed to objects as good. 
z 2 



2Y0 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



CATTEAU, TABLEAU DES ETATS DANOIS/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



The object of this book is to exhibit a pic- 
ture of the kingdom of Denmark, under all its 
social relations, of politics, statistics, science, 
morals, manners, and every thing which can 
influence its character and importance, as a 
free and independent collection of human 
beings. 

This book is, upon the whole, executed with 
great diligence and good sense. Some sub- 
jects of importance are passed over,- indeed, 
with too much haste; but if the publication 
had exceeded its present magnitude, it would 
soon have degenerated into a mere book of 
reference, impossible to be read, and fit only, 
like a dictionary, for the purposes of occasional 
appeal : It would not have been a picture pre- 
senting us with an interesting epitome of the 
whole; but a typographical plan, detailing, 
with minute and fatiguing precision, every 
trifling circumstance, and every subordinate 
feature. We should be far from objecting to a 
much more extended and elaborate perform- 
ance than the present; because those who 
read, and those who write, are now so nume- 
rous, that there is room enough for varieties 
and modifications of the same subject : but 
information of this nature, conveyed in a form 
and in a size adapted to continuous reading, 
gains in surface what it loses in depth, — and 
gives general notions to many, though it can- 
not afibrd all the knowledge which a few have 
it in their power to acquire, from the habits 
of more patient labour, and more profound 
research. 

This work, though written at a period when 
enthusiasm or disgust had thrown most men's 
minds off their balance, is remarkable, upon 
the whole, for sobriety and moderation. The 
observations, though seldom either strikingly 
ingenious or profound, are just, temperate, and 
always benevolent. We are so far from per- 
ceiving any thing like extravagance in Mr. 
Catteau, that we are inclined to think he is 
occasionally too cautious for the interests of 
truth; that he manages the court of Den- 
mark with too much delicacy; and exposes, 
by distant and scarcely perceptible touches, 
that which it was his duty to have brought 
out boldly and strongly. The most disa- 
greeable circumstance in the style of the 
book is, the author's compliance with that 
irresistible avidity of his country to declaim 
upon common-place subjects. He goes on, 
mingling bucolic details and sentimental effu- 
sions, melting and measuring, crying and caU 
culating, in a manner which is very bad, if it 
is poetry, and worse if it is prose. In speaking 
of the mode of cultivating potatoes, he cannot 
avoid calling the potato a modest vegetable : and 



* Tableaux des Etats Danois. Par Jeak Pierre Cat- 
TEAO. 3 tomes. 1802. a Paris. 



when he comes to the exportation of horses 
from the duchy of Holstein, we learn that 
"these animals are dragged from the bosom of 
their peaceable and modest country, to hear, in 
foreign regions, the sound of the warlike trum- 
pet; to carry the combatant amid the hostile 
ranks ; to increase the eclat of some pompous 
procession; or drag, in gilded car, some 
favourite of fortune." 

We are sorry to be compelled to notice 
these untimely effusions, especiallj' as they 
may lead to a suspicion of the fidelity of the 
work ; of which fidelity, from actual examina- 
tion of many of the authorities referred to, we 
have not the most remote doubt. Mr. Catteau 
is to be depended upon as securely as any 
writer, going over such various and extensive 
ground, can ever be depended upon. He is 
occasionally guilty of some trifling inaccura- 
cies ; but what he advances is commonly de- 
rived from the most indisputable authorities ; 
and he has condensed together a mass of infor- 
mation, which will render his book the most 
accescible and valuable road of knowledge, to 
those who are desirous of making any re- 
searches respecting the kingdom of Den- 
mark. 

Denmark, since the days of piracy, has 
hardly been heard of out of the Baltic. Mar- 
garet, by the union of Calmar, laid the founda- 
tion of a monarchy, which (could it have been 
preserved by hands as strong as those which 
created it) would have exercised a powerful 
influence upon the destinies of Europe, and 
have strangled, perhaps in the cradle, the in- 
fant force of Russia. Denmark, reduced to 
her ancient bounds by the patriotism and 
talents of Gustavus Vasa, has never since 
been able to emerge into notice by her own 
natural resources, or the genius of her minis,- 
ters and her monarchs. During that period, 
Sweden has more than once threatened to give 
laws to Europe ; and, headed by Charles and 
Gustavus, has broke out into chivalrous enter- 
prises, with an heroic valour, which merited 
wiser objects, and greater ultimate success. 
The spirit of the Danish nation has, for the 
last two or three centuries, been as little car- 
ried to literature or to science, as to war. 
They have written as little as they have done. 
With the exception of Tycho Brahe and a 
volume of shells, there is hardly a Danish 
book, or a Danish writer, known five miles 
from the Great Belt. It is not sufficient to say, 
that there are many authors read and admired 
in Denmark: there are none that have passed 
the Sound, none that have had energy enough 
to force themselves into the circulation of Eu- i 
rope, to extort universal admiration, and live, I 
without the aid of municipal praise, and local 
approbation. From the period, however, of the 
first of the Bernstorffs, Denmark has made a 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



271 



great spring, and has advanced more within 
the last twenty or thirty years, than for the 
three preceding centuries. The peasants are 
now emancipated; the laws of commerce, 
foreign and interior, are simplified and ex- 
panded ; the transport of corn and cattle is 
made free ; a considerable degree of liberty is 
granted to the press ; and slavery is to cease 
this very year in their West Indian possessions. 
If Ernest Bernstorff was the author of some 
less considerable measures, they are to be 
attributed more to the times, than to the defects 
of his understanding, or of his heart. To this 
great minister succeeded the favourite Struen- 
see, and to him Ove Guild berg: the first, with 
views of improvements, not destitute of libe- 
rality or genius, but little guided by judgment, 
or marked by moderation ; the latter, devoid 
of that energy and firmness which were ne- 
cessary to execute the good he intended. In 
1788, when the king became incapable of bu- 
siness, and the crown-prince assumed the go- 
vernment. Count Andrew Bernstorfi", nephew 
of Ernest, was called to the ministry: and, 
while some nations were shrinking from the 
very name of innovation, and others overturn- 
ing every establishment and violating every 
principle, Bernstorff steadily pursued, and ulti- 
mately effected, the gradual and bloodless 
amelioration of his country. His name will 
ever form a splendid epoch in the history of 
Denmark. The spirit of economical research 
and improvement which emanated from him 
still remains ; while the personal character of 
the prince of Denmark, and the zeal with 
which he seconded the projects of his favourite 
minister, seem to afford a guarantee for the 
continuation of the same system of adminis- 
tration. 

In his analysis of the present state of Den- 
mark, Mr. Catteau, after a slight historical 
sketch of that country, divides his subject into 
sixteen sections. 

1. Geographical and physical qualities of 
the Danish territory' : 2. Form of Government: 
3. Administration: 4. Institutions relative to 
government and administration : 5. Civil and 
criminal laws, and judiciary institutions : 6. 
Military system, land, array, and marine : 7. 
Finance : 8. Popiilation : 9. Productive indus- 
try, comprehending agriciilture, the fisheries, 
and the extraction of mineral substances : 10. 
Manufacturing industry : 11. Commerce, "in- 
terior and exterior, including the state of the 
great roads, the canals of navigation, the mari- 
time insurances, the bank, &c. &c. : 12. Es- 
tablishments of charity and public utility : 13. 
Religion: 14. Education : 15. Language, cha- 
racter, manners, and customs: 16. Sciences 
and arts. — This division we shall follow. 

From the southern limits of Holstein to the 
southern extremity of Norway, the Danish do- 
minions extend to 300 miles* in length, and 



* The mile alluded to here, and through the whole of 
the book, is the Danish mile, 15 to a degree, or 4000 toises 
in round numbers : the ancient mile of Norway is much 
more considerable. It may he as well to mention here, 
that the Danes reckon their money by rixdollars, marks, 
and schellings. A rixdollar contains 6 niarks, and a mark 
16 schellings ; 20 schellings are equal to one livre ; con- 
sequently, the pound sterling is equal to 4 r. 4 m. 14 sch., 
> or nearly 5 rixdollars. 



are, upon an average, from about 50 to 60 in 
breadth ; the whole forms an area of about 
8000 square miles. The western coast of 
Jutland, from Riba to Lemvig, is principally 
alluvial, and presents much greater advan- 
tages to the cultivator, than he has yet drawn 
from it. The eastern coast is also extremely 
favourable to vegetation. A sandy and barren 
ridge stretching from north to south, between 
the two coasts, is unfavourable to every spe- 
cies of culture, and hardly capable of support- 
ing the wild and stunted shrubs which lan- 
guish upon its surface. Towards the north, 
where the Jutland peninsula terminates in the 
Baltic, every thing assumes an aspect of bar- 
renness and desolation. It is Arabia, without 
its sun or its verdant islands ; but not without 
its tempests or sands, which sometimes over- 
whelm what little feeble agriculture they may 
encounter, and convert the habitual wretched- 
ness of the Jutlanders into severe and cruel 
misfortune. The Danish government has at- 
tempted to remedy this evil, in some measure, 
by encouraging the cultivation of those kinds 
of shrubs which grow on the sea-shore, and 
by their roots give tenacity and aggregation 
to the sand. The Elymus Arenaria, though 
found to be the most useful for that purpose, 
is still inadequate to the prevention of the ca- 
lamity.* 

The Danish isles are of a green and pleasant 
aspect. The hills are turfed up to the top, or 
covered with trees ; the valleys animated by 
the passage of clear streams ; and the whole 
strikingly contrasted with the savage sterility, 
or imposing grandeur, of the scenes on the op- 
posite coast of Jutland. All the seas of Den- 
mark are well stored with fish ; and a vast 
number of deep friths and inlets affords a cheap 
and valuable communication with the interior 
of the country. 

The Danish rivers are neither numerous nor 
considerable. The climate, generally speaking, 
is moist and subject to thick fogs, which al- 
most obscure the horizon. Upon a mean of 
twenty-six years, it has rained for a hundred 
and thirty days every year, and thundered for 
thirteen. Their summer begins with June, and 
ends with September. A calm serene sky, and 
an atmosphere free from vapours, are very 
rarely the lot of the inhabitants of Denmark ; 
but the humidity with which the air is impreg- 
nated is highly favourable to vegetation ; and 
all kinds of corn and grass are cultivated 
there with great success. To the south of 
Denmark are the countries of Sleswick and 
Holstein. Nature has divided these countries 
into two parts ; the one of which is called 
Geetsland, the other Marschland. Geetsland is 
the elevated ground situated along the Baltic. 
The soil resembles that of Denmark. The di- 
vision of Marschland forms a band or stripe, 
which extends from the Elbe to the frontiers 
of Jutland, an alluvium gained and preserved 
from the sea, by a labour which, though vigi- 
lant and severe, is repaid by the most ample 

* There is a Danish work, by Professor Viborg, upon 
those plants which grow in sand. It has been very ac- 
tively distributed in Jutland, by the Danish administra- 
tion, and might be of considerable service in Norfolk, 
and other parts of Great Britain. 



272 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



profits. The sea, however, in all these allu- 
vial countries, seldom forgets his original 
rights. Marschland, in the midst of all its 
tranquillity, fat, and silence, was invaded by 
this element in the year 1634, with the loss of 
whole villages, many thousands of horned cat- 
tle, and 1500 human beings. 

Nature is as wild and grand in Norway as 
she is productive in Marschland. Cataracts 
amid the dark pines ; the eternal snow on the 
mountains ; seas that bid adieu to the land, 
and stretch out to the end of the world ; an end- 
less succession of the great and the terrible, — 
leave the eye and the mind without repose. 
The climate of Norway is extremely favoura- 
ble to the longevity of the human race, and 
sufficiently so to the life of many animals do- 
jnesticated by man. The horses are of good 
breed; the horned cattle excellent, though 
.small. Crops of grain are extremely precari- 
ous, and often perish before they come to ma- 
turity.* 

In 1660, the very year in which this happier 
country was laying the foundations of rational 
liberty by the wise restrictions imposed upon 
its returning monarch, the people of Denmark, 
by a solemn act, surrendered their natural 
rights into the hands of their sovereign, en- 
dowed him with absolute power, and, in express 
words, declared him, for all his political acts, 
accountable only to him to whom all kings 
and governors are accountable. This revolu- 
tion, similar to that effected by the king and 
people at Stockholm in 1772, was not a change 
from liberty to slavery ; but from a worse sort 
of slavery to a better ; from the control of an 
insolent and venal senate, to that of one man : 
it was a change which simplified their degra- 
dation, and, by lessening the number of their 
tyrants, put their servitude more out of sight. 
There ceased immediately to be an arbitrary 
monarch in every parish, and the distance of 
the oppressor either operated as a diminution 
of the oppression, or was thought to do so. 
The same spirit, to be sure, which urged them 
to victory over one evil, might have led them 
on a little farther to the subjugation of both ; 
and they might have limited the king, by the 
same powers which enabled them to dissolve 
the senate. But Europe, at that period, knew 
no more of liberty than of galvanism ; and the 
peasants of Denmark no more dreamt of be- 
coming free than the inhabitants of Paris do 
at this moment. 

At present, Denmark is in theory one of the 
most arbitrary governments on the face of the 
earth. It has remained so ever since the revo- 
lution to which we have just alluded ; in all 
which period the Danes have not, by any im- 
portant act of rebellion, evinced an impatience 
of their yoke, or any sense that the enormous 
power delegated to their monarchs has been 
improperly exercised. In fact, the Danish go- 
vernment enjoys great reputation for its for- 
bearance and mildness; and sanctifies, in a 
certain degree, its execrable constitution, by 
the moderation with which it is administered. 



* We shall take littte notice of Iceland in this review, 
from the attetilion we mean to pay to that subject in 
the review of " Voyage en Iceland, fait par ordre de sa 
MajestI Danoise," 5 vols. 1802. 



We regret extremely that Mr. Catteau has 
given us, upon this curious subject of the 
Danish government, such a timid and sterile 
dissertation. Many governments are despotic 
in law, which are not despotic in fact ; not be- 
cause they are restrained by their own mode- 
ration, but because, in spite of their theoretical 
omnipotence, they are compelled, in many 
important points, to respect either public 
opinion or the opinion of other balancing pow- 
ers, which, without the express recognition of 
law, have gradually sprung up in the state. 
Russia, and Imperial Rome, had its praetorian 
guards. Turkey has its uhlema. Public opi- 
nion almost always makes some exceptions to 
its blind and slavish submission ; and in bow- 
ing its neck to the foot of a sultan, stipulates 
how hard he shall tread. The very fact of en- 
joying a mild government for a century and a 
half, must, in their own estimation, have given 
the Danes a sort of right to a mild govern- 
ment. Ancient possession is a good title in all 
cases ; and the King of Denmark may have 
completely lost the power of doing many just 
and many unjust actions, from never having 
exercised it in particular instances. What 
he has not done for so long a period, he may 
not dare to do now ; and he may in vain pro- 
duce constitutional parchment, abrogated by 
the general feelings of those whom they were 
intended to control. Instead of any informa- 
tion of this kind, the author of the Tableau has 
given us at full length the constitutional act 
of 1660, and has afforded us no other knowledge 
than we could procure from the most vulgar 
histories ; as if state papers were the best 
place to look for constitutions, and as if the 
rights of king and people were really adjusted, 
by the form and solemnity of covenant and 
pacts ; by oaths of allegiance, or oaths of coro- 
nation. 

The king has his privy council, to which he 
names whom he pleases, with the exception 
of the heir-apparent, and the princes of the 
blood, who sit there of right. It is customary, 
also, that the heads of colleges should sit 
there. These colleges are the offices in which 
the various business of the state is carried on. 
The chancelry of Denmark interprets all laws 
which concern privileges in litigation, and the 
different degrees of authority belonging to va- 
rious public bodies. It watches over the in- 
terests of church and poor: issues patents, 
edicts, grants, letters of naturalization, legiti- 
macy, and nobility. The archives of the state 
are also under its custody. The German 
chancelry has the same powers and privileges 
in Sleswick and Holstein, which are fiefs of 
the empire. There is a college for foreign af- 
fairs ; two colleges of finance ; and a college 
of economy and commerce; which, divided 
into four parts, directs its attention to four ob- 
jects : 1. Manufacturing industry: 2. Com- 
merce : 3. Productions : 4. Possessions in the 
East Indies. All projects and speculations, 
relative to any of these objects, are referred to 
this college; and every encouragement given 
to the prosecution of such as it may approve. 
There are two other colleges, which respec- 
tively manage the army and navy. The total 
number is nine. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY" SMITH. 



273 



The court of Denmark is on a footing of 
great simplicity. The pomp introduced by 
Christian IV., who modelled his establishments 
after those of Louis XIV., has been laid aside, 
and a degree of economy adopted, much more 
congenial to the manners of the people, and 
the resources of the country. The hereditary 
nobility of Denniark may be divided into those 
of the ancient, those of the modern fiefs, and 
the personal nobility. The first class are only 
distinguished from the second, by the more 
extensive privileges annexed to their fiefs ; as 
it has been the policy of the court of Denmark, 
in latter times, not to grant such immunities 
to the possessors of noble lands as had been 
accorded to them at earlier periods. Both of 
these classes, however, derive their nobility 
from their estates, which are inalienable, and 
descend according to the laws of primogeni- 
ture. In the third class, nobility derives from 
the person, and not from the estate. To pre- 
vent the female noblesse from marrying be- 
neath their rank, and to preserve the dignity 
of their order, nine or ten Protestant nunne- 
ries have been from time to time endowed, in 
each of which about twelve noble women are 
accommodated, who, not bound by any vow, 
find in these societies an economical and ele- 
gant retirement. The nobility of Norway 
have no fiefs. The nobility of Holstein and 
Sleswick derive their nobility from their fiefs, 
and are possessed of very extensive privileges. 
Every thing which concerns their common 
interest is discussed in a convention held 
periodically in the town of Keil ; during the 
vacations of the convention, there is a perma- 
nent deputation resident in the same town. 
Interests so well watched by the nobles them- 
selves, are necessarily respected by the court 
of Denmark. The same institution of free 
nunneries for the female nobility prevails in 
these provinces. Societies of this sort might 
perhaps be extended to other classes, and to 
other countries with some utility. The only 
objection to a nunnery is, that those who 
change their mind cannot change their situa- 
tion. That a number of unmarried females 
should collect together into one mass, and 
subject themselves to some few rules of con- 
venience, is a system which might aiford great 
resources and accommodation to a number of 
helpless individuals, without proving injurious 
to the community ; unless, indeed, any very 
timid statesman shall be alarmed at the pro- 
gress of celibacy, and imagine that the increase 
and multiplication of the human race may be- 
come a mere antiquated habit. 

The lowest courts in Denmark are com- 
posed of a judge and a secretary, both chosen 
by the landed proprietors within the jurisdic- 
tion, but confirmed by the king, in whose name 
all their proceedings are carried on. These 
courts have their sessions once a week in 
Denmark, and are attended by four or five 
burgesses or farmers, in the capacity of asses- 
sors, who occasionally give their advice upon 
subjects of which their particular experience 
may entitle them to judge. From this juris- 
diction there is appeal to a higher court, held 
every month in different places in Denmark, 
by judges paid by the crown. The last appeal 
35 



for Norway and Denmark is to the Hoieste 
Rett, or supreme court, fixed at Copenhagen, 
which is occupied for nine months in the 
year, and composed half of noble, half of 
plebeian judges. This is the only tribunal in 
which the advocates plead viva voce; in all the 
others, litigation is carried on by writing. 
The king takes no cognisance of pecuniary 
suits determined by this court, but reserves to 
himself a revision of all its sentences which 
affect the life or honour of the subject. It has 
always been the policy of the court of Den- 
mark to render justice as cheap as possible. 
We should have been glad to have learned 
from Mr. Catteau, whether or not the cheap- 
ness of justice operates as an encouragemerit 
to litigation ; and whether (which we believe 
is most commonly the case) the quality of 
Danish justice is not in the ratio of the price. 
But this gentleman, as we have before re- 
marked, is so taken up by the formal part of 
institutions, that he has neither leisure nor 
inclination to say much of their spirit. The 
Tribunal of Conciliation, established since 1795, 
is composed of the most intelligent and re- 
spectable men in the vicinage, and its sessions 
are private. It is competent to determine 
upon a great number of civil questions ; and 
if both parties agree to the arrangement pro- 
posed by the court, its decree is registered, and 
has legal authority. If the parties cannot be 
brought to agreement by the amicable inter- 
ference of the mediators, they are at full 
liberty to prosecute their suit in a court of 
justice. All the proceedings of the Tribunal 
of Conciliation are upon unstamped paper, 
and they cannot be protracted longer than 
fifteen days in the country, and eight days in 
the towns, unless both parties consent to a 
longer delay. The expenses, which do not 
exceed three shillings, are not payable, but in 
case of reconciliation. During the three years 
preceding this institution, there came before 
the courts of law, 25,521 causes; and, for the 
three years following, 9653, makitig the asto- 
nishing difference of fifteen thousand eight hun- 
dred and sixty-three lawsuits. The idea of this 
court was taken from the Dutch, among whom 
it likewise produced the most happy effects. 
And when we consider what an important 
point it is, that there should be time for dis- 
putants to cool ; the strong probability there 
is, that four or five impartial men from the 
vicinage will take a right view of the case, 
and the reluctance that any man must feel to 
embark his reputation and property in opposi- 
tion to their opinion, we cannot entertain a 
doubt of the beauty and importance of the 
invention. It is hardly possible that it should 
be bad justice which satisfies both parties, and 
this species of mediation has no validity but 
upon such condition. It is curious, too, to 
remark, how much the progress of rancour 
obstructs the natural sense of justice ; it ap- 
pears that plaintiff and defendant were both 
satisfied in 15,868 causes : if all these causes 
had come on to a regular hearing, and the 
parties been inflamed by the expense and the 
publicity of the quarrel, we doubt if there 
would have been one single man out of the 
whole number who would have acknowledged 



27€ 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



that his cause was justly given against 
. him. 

There are some provisions in the criminal 
law of Denmark, for the personal liberty of 
the subject, which cannot be of much import- 
ance, so long as the dispensing power is vested 
in the crown ; however, though they are not 
much, they are better than nothing ; and have 
probably some effect in offences merely crimi- 
nal, where the passions and interests of the 
governors do not interfere. Mr. Catteau con- 
siders the law which admits the accused to 
bail, upon finding proper security, to be unjust, 
because the poor cannot avail themselves of 
it. But this is bad reasoning : for every coun- 
try has a right to impose such restrictions and 
liens upon the accused, that they shall be 
forthcoming for trial ; at the same time, those 
restrictions are not to be more severe than the 
necessity of the case requires. The primary 
and most obvious method of security is im- 
prisonment. Whoever can point out any 
other method of effecting the same object, less 
oppressive to himself and as satisfactory to 
the justice of the country, has a right to re- 
quire that it be adopted ; whoever cannot, 
must remain in prison. It is a principle that 
should never be lost sight of, that an accused 
person is presumed to be innocent; and that 
no other vexation should be imposed upon 
him than what is absolutely necessary for the 
purposes of future investigation. The im- 
prisonment of a poor man, because he cannot 
find bail, is not a gratuitous vexation, but a 
necessary severity ; justified only, because no 
other nor milder mode of security can, in that 
particular instance, be produced. 

Inquisitorial and penal torture is, in some 
instances, allowed by the laws of Denmark : 
the former, after having been abolished, was 
re-established in 1771. The corporations have 
been gradually and covertly attacked in Den- 
mark, as they have been in Great Britain. 
The peasants, who had before been attached 
to the soil, were gradually enfranchised be- 
tween 1788 and 1800; so that, on the first day 
of the latter year, there did not remain a single 
slave in the Danish dominions ; or, to speak 
more correctly, slavery was equalized among 
all ranks of people. We need not descant on 
the immense importance of this revolution ; and 
if Mr. Catteau had been of the same opinion, we 
should have been spared two pages of very bad 
declamation ; beginning, in the true French 
style, with " oh toi," and going on with what 
might be expected to follow such a beginning. 
The great mass of territorial proprietors in 
Denmark are the signiors, possessing fiefs with 
very extensive privileges and valuable exemp- 
tions from taxes. Many persons hold lands 
under these proprietors, with interests in the 
land of very different descriptions. There are 
some cultivators who possess freeholds, but 
the number of these is very inconsiderable. 
The greater number of farmery are what the 
French call Metayers, put in by the landlord, 
furnished with stock and seed at his expense, 
and repaying him in product, labour, or any 
other manner agreed on in the contract. This 
■ is the first, or lowest stage of tenantry, and 
. is the surest sign of a poor country. The 



feudal system never took root very deeply in 
Norway: the greater part of the lands are 
freehold, and cultivated by their owners. 
Those which are held under the few privileged 
fiefs which still exist in Norway, are subjected 
to less galling conditions than farms of a simi- 
lar tenure in Denmark. Marriage is a mere 
civil contract among the privileged orders : 
the presence of a priest is necessary for its 
celebration among the lower orders. In every 
large town, there are two public tutors ap- 
pointed, who, in conjunction with the magis- 
trates, watch over the interests of wards, at 
the same time that they occupy themselves 
with the care of the education of children 
within the limits of their jurisdiction. Natural 
children are perhaps more favoured in Den- 
mark than in any other kingdom of Europe; 
they have half the portion which the law 
allots to legitimate children, and the whole if 
there are no legitimate. 

A very curious circumstance took place in 
the kingdom of Denmark, in the middle of the 
last century, relative to the infliction of capital 
punishments upon malefactors. They were 
attended from the prison to the place of execu- 
tion by priests, accompanied by a very nu- 
merous procession, singing psalms, &c. &c. : 
which ended, a long discourse was addressed 
by the priest to the culprit, who was hung as 
soon as he had heard it. This spectacle, and 
all the pious cares bestowed upon the cri- 
minah, so far seduced the imaginations of the 
common people, that many of them committed 
murder purposely to enjoy such inestimable 
advantages, and the governmentwas positively 
obliged to make hanging dull as well as deadly, 
before it ceased to be an object of popular 
ambition. 

In 1796, the Danish land forces amounted 
to 74,654, of which 50,880 were militia.* 
Amongst the troops on the Norway establish- 
ment, is a regiment of skaters. The pay of a 
colonel in the Danish service is about 1740 
rixdollars ^er cnrawTO, with some perquisites; 
that of a private 6 schellings a day. The 
entry into the Danish states from the German 
side is naturally strong. The passage between 
Lubeck and Hamburg is only eight miles, and 
the country intersected by marshes, rivers, 
and lakes. The straits of the Baltic afford 
considerable security to the Danish isles ; and 
there are very few points in which an army 
could penetrate through the Norway moun- 
tains to overrun that country. The principal 
fortresses of Denmark are Copenhagen, 
Rendsbhurg, Gluchstadt, and Frederickshall. 
In 1801, the Danish navy consisted of 3 ships 
of 80 guns, 12 of 74, 2 of 70, 3 of 64, and 2 of 
60 ; 4 frigates of 40, 3 of 36, 3 of 24, and a 
number of small vessels ; in all, 22 of the line, 
and 10 frigates.f 



* The militia is not embodied in regiments by itself, 
but divided among the various regiments of the line. 

t In 1T91, the Swedish army amounted to 47,000 men, 
regulars and militia ; their navy to not more than 16 
ships of the line : before the war it was about equal to 
the Danish navy. The author of Voyage des deux Fran- 
fais places the regular troops of Russia at 250,000 men 
exclusive of guards and garrisons;, and her navy, as it 
existed in 1791, at 30 frigates, and 50 sail of the line, of 
which 8 were of UO guns. This is a brief picture of the 
forces of the Baltic powers. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



275 



The revenues of Denmark are derived from 
the interest of a capital formed by the sale of 
crown lands ; from a share in the tithes ; from 
the rights of fishing and hunting let to farm ; 
from licenses granted to the farmers to distil 
their own spirits ; from the mint, post, turn- 
pikes, lotteries, and the passage of the Sound. 
About the year 1750, the number of vessels 
which passed the Sound both ways, was 
annually from 4000 to 5000; in 1752, the 
number of 6000 was considered as very ex- 
traordinary. They have increased since in 
the following ratio : — 

1770 - - 7,736 
1777 - - 9,047 
1783 - - 11,166 
1790 - - 9,734 
1796 - - 12,113 
1800 - - 9,048 
In 1770, the Sound duties amounted to 
459,890 rixdollars ; and they have probably 
been increased since that period to about half 
a million. To these sources of revenue are 
to be added, a capitation tax, a land tax, a tax 
on rank, a tax on places, pensions, and the 
clergy ; the stamps, customs, and excise ; con- 
stituting a revenue of 7,270,172 rixdollars.* 
The following is a table of the expenses of the 
Danish government. 

Rixdollars. 

The court 250,000 

The minor branches of the royal family - 180,000 
Civil servants ...... 707,500 

Secret service money and pensions - - 231,000 

Army 2,080,000 

Navy 1,200,000 

East India colonies ----- 180,000 
Bounties to commerce and manufactures - 300,000 

Annuities 27,000 

Buildings and repairs - - - - l 120,000 
Interest of the public debt - - . . 1,100,000 
Sinking ftind ------- 150,000 

- 6,525,500 



Total 



The state of the Danish debt does not ap- 
pear to be well ascertained. Voyage des deux 
Frangais makes it amount to 13,645,046 rix- 
dollars. Catteau seems to think it must have 
been above 20,000,000 rixdollars at that period. 
The Danish government has had great re- 
course to the usual expedient of issuing paper 
money. So easy a method of getting rich has 
of course been abused ; and the paper was, in 
the year 1790, at a discount of 8, 9, and 10 
per cent. There is, in general, a great want 
of specie in Denmark; for, though all the 
Sound duties are paid in gold and silver, the 
government is forced to export a considerable 
quantity of the precious metals, for the payment 
of its foreign debts and agents ; and, in spite 
of the rigid prohibitions to the contrary, the 
Jews, who swarm at Copenhagen, export 
Danish ducats to a large value. The court of 
Denmark has no great credit out of its own 
dominions, and has always experienced a con- 
siderable difficulty in raising its loans in 

* Upon the subject of the Danish revenues, see Toze's 
Introduction to the Statistics, edited and improved by 
Heinz, 1T99, torn. xi. From this work, Mr. Catteau has 
taken his information concerning the Danish revenues. 
See also the ICth cap. vol. ii. of Voyaire des detii Frnn^au, 
which is admirable for e.xtent and precision of informa- 
tion. In general, indeed, this work cannot be too much 
attended to by those who wish to become acquainted 
with the statistics of the north of Europe. 



Switzerland, Genoa, and Holland, the usual 
markets it has resorted to for that purpose. 

In the census taken in 1769, the return was 
as follows : — 

In Denmark 785,690 

Norway ----- 722,141 

Iceland ----- 4«,201 

Ferro Isles ' - - - - - 4,754 
Sleswick , - ... - 243,605 

Holstein 134,665 

Oldenbourg and Delmenhurst - 79,071 

2,017,127 



This census was taken during the summer, 
a season in which great numbers of sailors 
are absent from their families ; and as it does 
not include the army, the total ought, perhaps, 
to be raised to 2,225,000. The present popula- 
tion of the Danish states, calculating from the 
tables of life and death, should be about two 
millions and a half; the census lately taken 
has not yet been published. From registers 
kept for a number of years, it appears that the 
number of marriages were to the whole popula- 
tion, as 1 to 125; and the number of births to 
the whole population, were as 1 to 32 or 33 ; 
of deaths, as 1 to 38. In 1797, in the diocese 
of Vibourg, out of 8600 children, 80 were 
bastard : in the diocese of Fionia, 280 out of 
1146. Out of 1356, dead in the first of these 
dioceses, 100 had attained the age of 80, and 
one of 100. In 1769, the population of the 
towns was 144,105 ; in 1787, it was 142,880. 
In the first of these years, the population of 
the country was 641,485; and in the latter, 
667,165. The population of Copenhagen con- 
sisted, in the year 1799, of 42,142 males, and 
41,476 females. The deaths exceeded the 
births, says Mr. Catteau ; and to prove it, he 
exhibits a table of deaths and births for six 
years. Upon calculating this table, however, 
it appears, that the sum of the births, at Co- 
penhagen, during that period, exceeds the sum 
of the deaths by 491, or nearly ^2 per annum; 
about j-^\-g of the whole population of the city. 
The whole kingdom increases y/j^f, or nearly 
17^2 in a year.* There is no city in Denmark 
proper, except Copenhagen, which has a po- 
pulation of more than 5000 souls. The density 
of population in Denmark proper is about 
1300 to the square mile.f The proportion of 
births and deaths in the duchies is the same 
as in Denmark ; that of marriages, as 1 to 1 15. 
Altona, the second city in the Danish domi- 
nions, has a population of 20,000. The density 
of population in Marschland is 6000 per square 
mile. The paucity of inhabitants in Norway 
is not merely referable to the difiiculties of sub- 
sistence, but to the administrative system 
established there, and to the bad state of its 
civil and economical laws. It has been more 
than once exposed to the horrors of famine, by 
the monopoly of the commerce of grain esta- 
blished there, from which, however, it has at 
length been delivered. The proportion of 
births to the living, is as 1 to 35 ; that of deaths 
to the living, as 1 to 49.+ So that the whole 



* The average time in which old countries double their 
population is stated by Adam Smith to be about 500 
years. 

+ The same rule is used here as in p. 279. 

X This proportion is very remarkable proof of the 
longevity of the Norwegians. 



276 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Danish dominions increase, every year, by 
about 2^3 ; and Norway, which has the worst 
climate and soil, by about ^^ 3 ; exceeding the 
common increase by nearly" ^^^ of the whole 
population. Out of 26,197 persons who died 
in Denmark in 1799, there were 165 between 
80 and 100; and out of 18,354 who died in 
Norway the same year, there were 208 indi- 
viduals of the same advanced age. The 
country population is to the town population 
in the ratio of 13 to 137. In some parts of 
Nordland and Finmarken, the population is as 
low as 15 to the square mile. 

Within the last twenty or thirty years, the 
Danes have done a great deal for the improve- 
ment of their country. The peasants, as we 
have before mentioned, are freed from the soil. 
The greater part of the clerical, and much of 
the lay tithes are redeemed, and the corvees 
and other servile tenures begin to be commuted 
for money. A bank of credit is established 
at Copenhagen, for the loan of money to per- 
sons engaged in- speculations of agriculture 
and mining. The interest is 4 per cent., and 
the money is repaid by instalments in the 
course of from 21 to 28 years. In the course 
of 12 years, the bank has lent about three mil- 
lions of rixdoUars. The external and domestic 
commerce of grain is now placed upon the 
most liberal footing. The culture of potatoes 
(ce fruit modeste) has at length found its way 
into Denmark, after meeting with the same 
objections which it experienced at its first in- 
troduction from every nation in Europe. Hops 
are a good deal attended to in Fionia, though 
enough are not yet grown for the supply of 
the country. Tobacco is cultivated in the en- 
virons of Fredericia, in Jutland, by the indus- 
trious descendants of a French colony planted 
there by Frederick IV. Very little hemp and 
flax are grown in the Danish dominions. They 
had veterinary schools previous to the present 
establishment of them in Great Britain. In- 
deed, there was a greater necessity for them in 
Denmark ; as no country in Europe has suf- 
fered so severely from diseases among its 
animals. The decay of the woods begins to 
be very perceptible ; and great quantities, both 
for fuel and construction, are annually im- 
ported from the other countries bordering the 
Baltic. They have pit-coal ; but, either from 
its inferior quality, or their little skill in work- 
ing it, they are forced to purchase to a con- 
siderable amount from England. The Danes 
have been almost driven out of the herring 
market by the Swedes. Their principal ex- 
port of this kind is dried fish; though, at Altona, 
their fisheries are carried on with more ap- 
pearance of enterprise than elsewhere. The 
districts of Hedemarken, Hodeland, Toten, and 
Romerige, are the parts of Norway most cele- 
brated for the cultivation of grain, which prin- 
cipally consists of oats. The distress in Nor- 
way is sometimes so great, that the inhabitants 
are compelled to make bread of various sorts 
of lichens, mingled with thdr grain. It has 
lately been discovered that the Lichen rangif- 
erus, or rein-deer's moss, is extremely well 
calculated for that purpose. The Norway 
fisheries bring to the amount of a million and 
a half of rixdollars annually into the country. 



The most remarkable mines in Norway are, 
the gold mines of Edsvold, the silver mines of 4j 

Konigsberg, the copper mines of Rasraas, and. ll 
the iron mines of Arendal and Kragerse, the 
cobalt mines of Fossum, and the black-lead 
mines of Englidal. The court of Denmark is 
not yet cured of the folly of entering into com- 
mercial speculations on its own account. From 
the year 1769 to 1792, 78,000 rixdollars per 
annum have been lost on the royal mines alone.- 
Norway produces marble of ditferent colours, 
very beautiful granites, mill, and whet-stones,, 
and alum. 

The principal manufactures of Denmark are 
those of cloth, cotton-printing, sugar refining, 
and porcelain ; of which latter manufactures, 
carried on by the crown, the patient proprie- 
tors hope that the profits may at some future 
period equal the expenses. The manufactories 
for large and small arms are at Frederick- 
waerk and Elsineur ; and, at the gates of Co- 
penhagen, there has lately been erected a cot- 
ton spinning-mill upon the construction so 
well known in England. At Tendern, in Sles- 
wick, there is a manufacture of lace ; and very 
considerable glass manufactories in several 
parts of Norway. All the manufacturing arts 
have evidently travelled from Lubeck and 
Hamburg; the greater part of the manufac- 
turers are of German parentage ; and vast 
numbers of manufacturing Germans are to be 
met with, not only in Denmark, but throughout 
Sweden and Russia. 

The Hoi stein canal, uniting the Baltic and 
the North Sea, is extremely favourable to the 
interior commerce of Denmark, by rendering 
unnecessary the long and dangerous voyage 
round the peninsula of Jutland. In the year 
1785, there passed through this canal 409 
Danish, and 44 foreign ships. In the year 
1798, 1086 Danish, and 1164 foreign. This 
canal is so advantageous, and the passage 
round Jutland so very bad, that goods, before 
the creation of the canal, were very often sent 
by land from Lubeck to Hamburg. The 
amount of cargoes despatched from Copenha- 
gen for Iceland, between the years 1764 and 
1784, was 2,560,000 rixdollars; that of the 
returns, 4,665,000. The commerce with the 
isles of Foeroe is quite inconsiderable. The 
exports from Greenland, in the year 1787, 
amounted to 168,475 rixdollars ; its imports 
to 74,427. None of these possessions are suf- 
fered to trade with foreign nations, but through 
the intervention of the mother country. The 
cargoes despatched to the Danish West Indies 
consist of all sorts of provisions, of iron, of 
copper, of various Danish manufactures, and 
of some East India goods. The returns are 
made in sugar, rum, cotton, indigo, tobacco, 
and coffee. There are about 75 vessels em- 
ployed in this commerce, from the burden of 
40 to 200 tons. 

If the slave trade, in pursuance of the laws 
to that effect, ceases in the Danish colonies, 
the establishments on the coast of Africa will 
become rather a burden than a profit. What 
measures have been taken to insure the aboli- 
tion, and whether or not the philanthropy of 
the mother country is likely to be defeated by 
the interested views of the colonists, are deli- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



277 



cate points, which Mr. Catteau, who often 
seems to think more of himself than of his 
reader, passes over with his usual timidity and 
caution. The present year is the period at 
which all further importation of negroes ought 
to cease ; and if this wise and noble law be 
really carried into execution, the Danes will 
enjoy the glory of having been the first to 
erase this foulest blot in the morality of Europe, 
and to abolish a wicked and absurd traffic, 
which purchases its luxuries at the price of 
impending massacre, and present oppression. 
Deferred revenge is always put out to com- 
pound interest, and exacts its dues with more 
than Judaicai rigour. The Africans have 
begun with the French : 

Jam proximus ardet 

UcaXegon. 

Tea, rhubarb, and porcelain are the princi- 
pal articles brought from China. The factories 
in the East Indies send home cotton cloths, 
silk, sugar, rice, pepper, ginger, indigo, opium, 
and arrack. Their most important East Indian 
settlement is Fredericksnager.* Denmark, 
after having been long overshadowed by the 
active industry of the Hanseatic towns, and 
embarrassed by its ignorance of the true prin- 
ciples of commerce, has at length established 
important commercial connections with all the 
nations of Europe, and has regulated those 
connections by very liberal and enlightened 
principles. The regulations for the customs, 
published in 1791, are a very remarkable 
proof of this assertion. Every thing is there 
arranged upon the most just and simple prin- 
ciples ; and the whole code evidences the 
striking progress of mercantile knowledge in 
that country. In looking over the particulars 
of the Danish commerce, we were struck with 
the immense increase of their freightage dur- 
ing the wars of this country ; a circumstance 
which should certainly have rendered them 
rather less disposed to complain of the vexa- 
tions imposed upon the neutral powers during 
such periods.f In the first six months of the 
year 1796, 5032 lasts of Danish shipping were 
taken up by strangers for American voyages 
only. The commercial tonnage of Denmark 
is put at about 85,000 lasts. 

There appears to exist in the kingdom of 
Denmark, according to the account of Mr. 
Catteau, a laudable spirit of religious tolera- 
tion; such as, in some instances, we might 
copy, with great advantage, in this island. It 
is not, for instance, necessary in Denmark, 
that a man should be a Lutheran, before he 
can be the mayor of a town; and, incredible 
as it may seem to some people, there are many 
officers and magistrates, who are found capable 
of civil trusts, though they do not take the 
sacraments, exactly in the forms prescribed 
by the established church. There is no doubt, 



* We should very willingly have gone through every 
branch of the Danish commerce, if we had not been ap- 
prehensive of extending this article loo fiir. Mr. Catteau 
gives no general tables of the Danish exports and im- 
ports. A German work places them, for the year 1768, 
as follows :— Exports, 3,067,051 rixdoUars ; imports, 
3,215,085. — Ut. Kunden, par Oatspari, 

tTo say nothing of the increased sale of Norway tim- 
ber, out of 86,000 lasts exported from Norway, 1799, 
76,000 came to Great Britain. 



however, of the existence of this very extraor- 
dinary fact; and, if Mr. Catteau's authority is 
called in question, we are ready to corroborate 
it by the testimony of more than one dozen 
German statists. The Danish church consists 
of 13 bishops, 227 archpriests, and 2462 priests. 
The principal part of the benefices are, in 
Norway, in the gift of the crown. In some 
parts of Denmark, the proprietors of the pri- 
vileged lands are the patrons ; in other parts, 
the parishes. The revenues of the clergy are 
from the same sources as our own clergy. 
The sum of the church revenues is computed 
to be 1,391,895 rixdollars ; which is little more 
than 500 for each clergyman.* The court of 
Denmark is so liberal upon the subject of sec- 
taries, that the whole royal family and the 
Bishop of Seland assisted at the worship of the 
Calvinists in 1789, when they celebrated, in the 
most public manner, the centenary of the 
foundation of their church. In spite of this 
tolerant spirit, it is computed that there are not 
more than 1800 Calvinists in the whole Danish 
dominions. At Christianfield, on the frontiers 
of Sleswick and Jutland, there is a colony of 
Northern Quakers, or Hernhutes, of which 
Mr. Catteau has given a very agreeable 
account. They appear to be characterized by 
the same neatness, order, industry, and ab- 
surdity, as their brethren in this country ; tak- 
ing the utmost care of the sick and destitute, 
and thoroughly persuaded that by these good 
deeds, aided by long pockets and slouched hats, 
they are acting up to the true spirit of the 
Gospel. The Greenlanders were converted to 
Christianity by a Norwegian priest, named 
John Egede. He was so eminently successful 
in the object of his mission, and contrived to 
make himself so very much beloved, that his 
memoiy is still held among them in the highest 
veneration ; and they actually date their chro- 
nology from the year of his arrival, as we do 
ours from the birth of our Saviour. 

There are, in the University of Copenhagen, 
seven professors of theology, two of civil law, 
two of mathematics, one of Latin and rhetoric, 
one of Greek, one of oriental languages, one 
of history, five of medicine, one of agriculture, 
and one of statistics. They enjoy a salary of 
from 1000 to 1500 rixdollars, and are well 
lodged in the university. The University of 
Copenhagen is extremely rich, and enjoys an 
income of 3,000,000 rixdollars. Even Mr. 
Catteau admits that it has need of reform. In 
fact, the reputation of universities is almost 
always short-lived, or else it survives their 
merit. If they are endowed, professors be- 
come fat-witted, and never imagine that the 
arts and sciences are any thing else but in- 
comes. If universities, slenderly endowed, 
are rendered famous by the accidental occur- 
rence of a few great teachers, the number of 
scholars attracted there by the reputation of 
the place, makes the situation of a professor 
worth intriguing for. The learned pate is not 
fond of ducking to the golden fool. He who 
has the best talents for getting the office, has 
most commonly the least for filling it; and 

* The Jews, however, are still prohibited from enter- 
ing the kingdom of Norway. 
3 A 



278 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



men are made moral and mathematical teach- 
ers by the same trick and filthiness with which 
they are made tide-waiters, and clerks of the 
kitchen. 

The number of students in the University 
of Copenhagen is about 700 : they come not 
only from Denmark, but from Norway and 
Iceland : the latter are distinguished as well 
for the regularity of their manners, as for the 
intensity of their application; the instruments 
of which application are furnished to them by 
a library containing 60,000 volumes. The 
Danes have primary schools established in 
the towns, but which have need of much re- 
form, before they can answer all the beneficial 
ends of such an institution. We should have 
been happy to have learned from Mr. Catteau, 
the degree of information diffused among the 
lower orders in the Danish dominions ; but 
upon this subject he is silent. In the Univer- 
sity of Keil there is an institution for the in- 
struction of schoolmasters ; and in the list of 
students in the same university, we were a 
good deal amused to fmd only one student 
dedicating himself to belles lettres. 

The people of Holstein and Sleswick are 
Dutch in their manners, character, and ap- 
pearance. Their language is in general the 
low German ; though the better sort of peo- 
ple in the towns begin to speak high German.* 
In Jutland and the isles, the Danish language 
is spoken : within half a century this language 
has been cultivated with some attention : be- 
fore that period, the Danish writers preferred to 
make use of the Latin or the German language. 
It is in the island of Finland that it is spoken 
with the greatest purity. The Danish charac- 
ter is not agreeable. It is marked by silence, 
phlegm, and reserve. A Dane is the excess 
and extravagance of a Dutchman ; more 
breeched, more ponderous, and more satur- 
nine. He is not often a bad member of society 
in the great points of morals, and seldom a 
good one in the lighter requisites of manners. 
His understanding is alive only to the useful 
and the profitable ; he never lives for what is 
merely gracious, courteous, and ornamental. 
His faculties seem to be drenched and slack- 
ened by the eternal fogs in which he resides ; 
he is never alert, elastic, nor serene. His state 
of animal spirits is so low, that what in other 
countries would be deemed dejection, proceed- 
ing from casual misfortune, is the habitual 
tenour and complexion of his mind. In all 
the operations of his understanding, he must 
have time. He is capable of undertaking 
great journeys; but he travels only a foot 
pace, and never leaps nor runs. He loves 
arithmetic better than lyric poetry, and aff'ects 
Cocker rather than Pindar. He is slow to 
speak of fountains and amorous maidens ; but 
can take a spell at porisms as well as another ; 
and will make profound and extensive com- 
binations of thought, if you pay him for it, 
and do not insist thai he shall either be biisk 
or brief. There is somethiujr, on the contrarv. 



* Mr. Catteau's description of Heligoland is entertain- 
ing. In an island containing a population of 2000, there 
is neither honse, cart, nor plough. We could not have 
imagined the possibility of such a fact in any part of 
Europe. 



extremely pleasing in the Norwegian style of 
character. The Norwegian expresses firra 
ness and elevation in all that he says and does. . 
In comparison with the Danes, he has always 
been a free man ; and you read his history in 
his looks. He is not apt, to be sure, to for- 
give his enemies ; but he does not deserve 
any ; for he is hospitable in the extreme, and 
prevents the needy in their wants. It is not 
possible for a writer of this country to speak 
ill of the Norwegians ; for, of all strangers, 
the people of Norway love and admire the 
British the most. In reading Mr. Catteau's 
account of the congealed and blighted Lap- 
landers, we were struck with the infinite de- 
light they must have in dying ; the only cir- 
cumstance in which they can enjoy any supe- 
rioritjr over the rest of mankind; or which 
tends, in their instance, to verify the theory 
of the equality of human condition. 

If we pass over Tycho Brahe, and the well 
known history of the Scaldes, of the chronicles 
of Isleif, Saemunder, Hiinfronde, Snorro, Sturle- 
son, and other Islandic worthies, the list of 
Danish literati will best prove that they have 
no literati at all. Are there twenty persons in 
Great Britain who have ever heard of Longo- 
montanus, Nicholas Stenaonis, Sperling Lau- 
renburg, Huitfeild, Gramn, Holberg, Lange- 
beck, Carstens, Suhm, Kofod, Anger 1 or of 
the living Wad, Fabricius, Hanch, Tode, and 
Zasga 1 We do not deny merit to these various 
personages ; many of them may be much ad- 
mired by those who art more conversant in 
Danish literature than we can pretend to be : 
but they are certainly not names on which the 
learned fame of any country can be built very 
high. They have no classical celebrity and 
diflusion : they are not an universal language ;. 
they have not enlarged their original dominion,, 
and become the authors of Europe instead of 
the authors of Denmark. It would be loss of 
lime to speak of the fine arts in Denmark : 
they hardly exist. 

We have been compelled to pass over many 
parts of Mr. Catteau's book more precipitately 
than we could have wished; but we hope we 
have said and exhibited enough of it, to satisfy 
the public that it is, upon the whole, a very 
valuable publication. The two great requisites 
for his undertaking, moderation and industry, 
we are convinced this gentleman possesses in 
an eminent degree. He represents every thing 
without prejudice, and he represents every thing 
authentically. The same cool and judicious 
disposition which clears him from the spirit 
of party, makes him perhaps cautious in excess. 
We are convinced that every thing he says 
is true ; but we have been sometimes induced 
to suspect that we do not see the whole truth. 
After all, perhaps, he has told as much truth 
as he could do, compatibly with the opportunity 
of telling any. A person more disposed to 
touch upon critical and offensive subjects 
might not have submitted as diligently to the 
investigation of truth, with which passion 
was not concerned. How few writers are, at 
the same time, laborious, impartial, and in- 
trepid ! 

We cannot conclude this article without 
expressing the high sense we entertain of the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



' 279 



importance of such researches as those in 
which Mr. Catteau has been engaged. They 
must form the basis of all interior regulations, 
and ought principally to influence the conduct 
of every country in its relations towards fo- 
reign powers. As they contain the best esti- 
mate of the wealth and happiness of a people, 
they bring theory to the strictest test ; and 
measure, better than all reasoning, the wisdom 
with which laws are made, and the mildness 
with which they are administered. If such 
judicious and elaborate surveys of the state 
of this and other countries in Europe, had 
been made from time to time for the last two 



centuries, they would have quickened and 
matured the progress of knowledge, and the 
art of governing by throwing light on the spi- 
rit and tendency of laws ; they would have 
checked the spirit of officious interference in 
legislation ; have softened persecution, and 
expanded narrow conceptions of national po- 
licy. The happiness of a nation would have 
been proclaimed by the fulness of its garners, 
and the multitudes of its sheep and oxen ; and 
rulers might sometimes have sacrificed their 
schemes of ambition, or their unfeeling splen- 
dour, at the detail of silent fields, empty har- 
bours, and famished peasants. 



THOUGHTS ON THE RESIDENCE OE THE CLERGY.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



This pamphlet is the production of a gen- 
tleman who has acquired a right to teach the 
duties of the clerical character by fulfilling 
them ; and who has exercised that right in the 
present instance, with honour to himself, and 
benefit to the public. From the particular 
character of understanding evinced in this 
work, we should conceive Dr. Sturges to pos- 
sess a very powerful claim to be heard on all 
questions referable to the decision of practi- 
cable good sense. He has availed himself of 
his experience to observe ; and of his observa- 
tion, to judge well: he neither loves his pro- 
fession too little, nor too much ; is alive to its 
interests, without being insensible to those of 
the community at large; and treats of those 
points where his previous habits might render 
a little intemperance venial, as well as proba- 
ble, with the most perfect good humour and 
moderation. 

As exceptions to the general and indisputa- 
ble principle of residence. Dr. Sturges urges 
the smallness of some livings ; the probability 
that their incumbents be engaged in the task 
of education, or in ecclesiastical duty, in situa- 
tions where their talents may be more appro- 
priately and importantly employed. Dr. Stur- 
ges is also of opinion, that the power of en- 
forcitig residence, under certain limits, should 
be invested in the bishops ; and that the acts 
prohibiting the clergy to hold or cultivate land 
should be in a great measure repealed. 

We sincerely hope that the two cases sug- 
gested by Dr. Sturges, of the clergyman who 
may keep a school, or be engaged in the duty 
of some parish not his own, will be attended 
to in the construction of the approaching bill, 
and admitted as pleas for non-residence. It 
certainly is better that a clergyman should do 
ihe duty of his own benefice, rather than of 
any other. But the injury done to the com- 
munity, is not commensurate with the vexa- 
tion imposed upon the individual. Such a 
measure is either too harsh, not to become 



* Tneughts en the Residence of tke Clergy. By John 
Stcboes, LL. D. 



obsolete; or, by harassing the clergy with a 
very severe restriction, to gain a very dispro- 
portionate good to the community, would bring 
the profession into disrepute, and have a ten- 
dency to introduce a class of men into the 
church, of less liberal manners, education, and 
connection ; points of the utmost importance, 
in our present state of religion and wealth. 
Nothing has enabled men to do wrong with 
impunity so much as the extreme severity of 
the penalties with which the law has threatened 
them. The only method to insure success to 
the bill for enforcing ecclesiastical residence, 
is to consult the convenience of the clergy in 
its construction, as far as is possibly consist- 
ent with the object desired, and even to sacri- 
fice something that ought to be done, in order 
that much may be done. Upon this principle, 
the clergyman should not be confined to his 
parsonage-house, but to the precincts of his 
parish. Some advantage would certainly at- 
tend the residence of the clergy in their official 
mansions ; but, as we have before obsenred, 
the good one party would obtain, bears no sort 
of proportion to the evil the other would 
suffer. 

Upon the propriety of investing the bench 
of bishops with a power of enforcing resi- 
dence, we confess ourselves to entertain very 
serious doubts. A bishop has frequently a 
very temporary interest in his diocese : he has 
favours to ask; and he must grant them. 
Leave of absence will be granted to powerful 
intercession ; and refused, upon stronger pleas, 
to men without friends. Bishops are frequently 
men advanced in years, or immersed in stud;/. 
A single person who compels many others to 
their duty, has much odium to bear, and much 
activity to exert. A bishop is subject to ca- 
price, and enmity, and passion, in common 
with other individuals ; there is some danger, 
also, that his power over the clergy may be 
converted to a political purpose. From innu- 
merable causes, which might be reasoned 
upon to great length, we are apprehensive the 
object of the legislature will be entirely frus- 



280 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



trated in a few years, if it be committed to 
espiscopal superintendence and care ; though, 
upon the first view of the subject, no other 
scheme can appear so natural and so wise. 

Dr. Sturges observes, that after all the con- 
ceivable justifications of non-residence are 
enumerated in the act, many others must from 
time to time occur, and indicate the propriety 
of vesting somewhere a discretionary power. 
If this be true of the penalties by which the 
clergy are governed, it is equally true of all 
other penal laws ; and the law should extend 
to every oflfence the contingency of discre- 
tionary omission. The objection to this sys- 
tem is, that it trusts too much to the sagacity 
and the probity of the judge, and exposes a 
country to the partial, lax, and corrupt admi- 
nistration of its laws. It is certainly incon- 
venient, in many cases, to have no other guide 
to resort to but the unaccommodating man- 
dates of an act of Parliament : yet, of the two 
inconveniences, it is the least. It is some pal- 
liation of the evils of discretionary power, 
that it should be exercised (as by the court 
of chancery) in the face of day, and that the 
•moderator of law should himself be moderated 
by the force of precedent and opinion. A 
•bishop will exercise his discretionary power 
in the dark ; he is at full liberty to depart to- 
morrow from the precedent he has established 
to-day; and to apply the same decisions to 
different, or different decisions to the same cir- 
cumstances, as his humour or interest may 
dictate. Such power may be exercised well 
under one judge of. extraordinary integrity; 
^ but it is not very probable he will find a pro- 
per successor. To suppose a series of men 
so much superior to temptation, and to con- 
struct a system of church government upon 
such a supposition, is to build upon sand, with 
materials not more durable than the founda- 
tion. 

Sir William Scott has made it very clear, by 
his excellent speech, that it is not possible, in 
the present state of the revenues of the En- 
glish church, to apply a radical cure to the 
evil of non-residence. It is there stated, that 



out of 11,700 livings, there are 6000 under 
80/. per annum ,- many of those, 20/., 30/., and 
some 2LS low as 2/. or 3/. per annum. In such 
a state of endowment, all idea of rigid resi- 
dence is out of the question. Emoluments 
which a footman would spurn, can hardly re- 
compense a scholar and a gentleman. A mere 
palliation is all that can be applied ; and these 
are the ingredients of which we wish such a 
palliation should be composed : — 

1. Let the clergymen have the full liberty of 
farming, and be put in this respect exactly upon 
a footing with laymen. 

2. Power to reside in any other house in 
the parish, as well as the parsonage-house, and 
to be absent five months in the year. 

3. Schoolmasters, and ministers bona fide 
discharging ministerial functions in another 
parish, exempt from residence. 

4. Penalties in proportion to the value of 
livings, and number of times the offence has 
been committed. 

5. Common informers to sue as at present; 
though probably it might be right to make the 
name of one parishioner a necessary addition; 
and a proof of non-residence might be made to 
operate as a nonsuit in an action for tithes. 

6. No action for non-residence to lie where 
the benefice was less than 80/. per annum; 
and the powers of bishops to remain precisely 
as they are. 

These indulgences would leave the clergy 
without excuse, would reduce the informations 
to a salutary number, and diminish the odium 
consequent upon them, by directing their ef- 
fects against men who regard church prefer- 
ment merely as a source of revenue, not as an 
obligation to the discharge of important duties. 

We venture to prognosticate, that a bill of 
greater severity either will not pass the House 
of Commons, or will fail of its object Con- 
sidering the times and circumstances, we are 
convinced we have stated the greatest quan- 
tum of attainable good ; which of course will 
not be attained, by the customary error, of at- 
tending to what is desirable to be done, rather 
than to what it is practicable to do. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



381 



TRAVELS FEOM PALESTINE/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1807/ 



Ibt the year 1432, many great lords in the 
dominions of Burgundy, holding offices under 
Duke Philip le Bon, made a pilgrimage to Je- 
rusalem. Among them was his first esquire- 
carver La Brocquiere, who, having performed 
many devout pilgrimages in Palestine, re- 
turned sick to Jerusalem, and during his con- 
valescence, formed the bold scheme of return- 
ing to France over land. This led him to 
traverse the western parts of Asia, and East- 
ern Europe ; and, during the whole journey, 
except towards the end of it, he passed through 
the dominions of the Musselmen. The execu- 
tion of such a journey, even at this day, 
would not be without difficulty; and it was 
then thought to be impossible. It was in vain 
that his companions attempted to dissuade 
him ; he was obstinate ; and, setting out, over- 
came every obstacle ; returned in the course 
of the year 1433, and presented himself to the 
Duke in his Saracen dress, and on the horse 
■which had carried him during the whole of 
his journey. The duke, after the fashion of 
great people, conceiving that the glory of his 
esquire-carver was his own, caused the work 
to be printed and published. 

The following is a brief extract of this va- 
liant person's peregrinations. " After perform- 
ing the customary pilgrimages, we went," says 
La Brocquiere, " to the mountain where Jesus 
fasted forty days ; to Jordan, where he was 
baptized ; to the church of St. Martha, where 
Lazarus was raised from the dead ; to Bethle- 
hem, where he was born ; to the birth-place of 
St. John the Baptist; to the house of Zacha- 
riah ; and, lastly, to the holy cross, where the 
tree grew that formed the real cross." From 
Jerusalem the first gentleman-carver betook 
himself to Mount Sinai, paying pretty hand- 
somely to the Saracens for that privilege. 
These infidels do not appear to have ever pre- 
vented the Christian pilgrims from indulging 
their curiosity and devotion in visiting the 
most interesting evangelical objects in the 
Holy Land ; but, after charging a good round 
price for this gratification, contented them- 
selves with occasionally kicking them, and 
spitting upon them. In his way to Mount Si- 
nai, the esquire-carver passed through the Val- 
ley of Hebron, where he tells us, Adam was 
created ; and from thence to Gaza, where they 
showed him the columns of the building which 
Samson pulled down; though, of the identity 
of the building, the esquire seems to entertain 
some doubts. At Gaza five of his companions 
fell sick and returned to Jerusalem. The se- 
cond day's journey in the desert the carver 
fell ill also, — returned to Gaza, where he was 



* The Travels of Bertravdon de la Brocquiere. First Es- 
(fuire- Carver to Philip le Bon. I'ukc if Burffiindy. during 
the years 1432, 1433.— Translated from the French, by 
Thomas Johnks, Esq. 

;^6 



cured by a Samaritan, — and finding his way 
back to Jerusalem, hired some pleasant lodg- 
ings on Mount Sion. 

Before he proceeded on his grand expedi- 
tion over land, he undertook a little expedition 
to Nazareth, hearing, first of all, divine service 
at the Cordeliers, and imploring, at the tomb 
of our lady, her protection for his journey. 
From Jerusalem their first stage was Acre, 
where they gave up their intended expedition, 
and repaired to Baruth, whence Sir Samson 
de Lalaing and the author sallied afresh, un- 
der better auspices, to Damascus. He speaks 
with great pleasure of the valley where Noah 
built the ark, through which valley he passed 
in his way to Damascus ; upon entering which 
town he was knocked down by a Saracen for 
wearing an ugly hat, — as he probably would 
be in London for the same offence in the year 
1807. At Damascus, he informs us the Chris- 
tians are locked up every night, — as they are 
in English workhouses, night and day, when 
they happen to be poor. The greatest misfor- 
tune attendant upon this Damascene incarce- 
ration, is the extreme irregularity with which 
the doors are opened in the morning, their 
janitor having no certain hour of quitting his 
bed. At Damascus, he saw the place where 
St. Paul had a vision. " I saw also," says he, 
" the stone from which St. George mounted his 
horse, when he went to combat the dragon. 
It is two feet square ; and they say that, when 
formerly the Saracens attempted to carry it 
away, in spite of all the strength they em- 
ploj'ed, they could not succeed." After hav- 
ing seen Damascus, he returns with Sir Sam- 
son to Baruth ; and communicates his inten- 
tions of returning over land to France to his 
companions. They state to him the astonish- 
ing difficulties he will have to overcome in the 
execution of so extraordinary a project; but 
the admirable carver, determined to make no 
bones, and to cut his way through every ob- 
stacle, persists in his scheme, and bids them a 
final adieu. He is determined, however, not 
to be baffled in his subordinate expedition to 
Nazareth ; and, having now got rid of his timid 
companions, accomplishes it with ease. We 
shall here present our readers with an extract 
from this part of his journal, requesting them 
to admire the naif manner in which he speaks 
of the vestiges of ecclesiastical history. 

"Acre, though in a plain of about four 
leagues in extent, is surrounded on three sides 
by mountains, and on the fourth by the sea. 
I made acquaintance there with a Venetian 
merchant called Aubert Franc, v.'ho received 
me well, and procured me much useful infor- 
mation respecting mv two pilgrimages, by 
which I profited. " With the aid of his advice, 
I took the road to Nazareth; and, having 
crossed an extensive plain, came to the foun- 
2*2 



282 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tain, the water of which our Lord changed into ! 
wine at the marriage of Archetreclin ; it is 
near a village where St. Peter is said to have 
been born. 

" Nazareth is another large village, built 
between two mountains ; but the place where 
the angel Gabriel came to announce to the 
Virgin Mary that she would be a mother, is in 
a pitiful state. The church that had been there 
built is entirely destroyed ; and of the house 
wherein our lady was when the angel pp- 
peared to her, not the smallest remnant exibts. 

"From Nazareth I went to Mount Tabor, 
the place where the transfiguration of our Lord, 
and many other miracles took effect. These 
pasturages attract the Arabs who come thither 
with their beasts ; and I was forced to engage 
four additional men as an escort, two of whom 
were Arabs. The ascent of the mountain is 
rugged, because there is no road; I performed 
it on the back of a mule, but it took me two 
hours. The summit is terminated by an al- 
most circular plain of about two bow-shots in 
length, and one in width. It was formerly en- 
closed with walls, the ruins of which, and the 
ditches, are still visible : within the wall, and 
around it, were several churches, and one es- 
pecially, where, although in ruins, full pardon 
for vice and sin is gained. 

".We went to lodge at Samaria, because I 
wished to see the lake of Tiberias, where it is 
said St. Peter was accustomed to fish ; and, 
by so doing, some pardons may be gained, for 
it was the ember week of September. The 
Moucre left me to myself the whole day. Sa- 
maria is situated on the extremity of a moun- 
tain. We entered at the close of day, and left 
it at midnight to visit the lake. The Moucre 
had proposed this hour to evade the tribute 
exacted from all who go thither; but the 
night hindered me from seeing the surround- 
ing country. 

"I went first to Joseph's Well, so called 
from his being cast into it by his brethren. 
There is a handsome mosque near it, which I 
entered with my Moucre, pretending to be a 
Saracen. 

"Further on is a stone bridge over the Jar- 
don, called Jacob's Bridge, on account of a 
house hard by, said to be the residence of that 
patriarch. The river flows from a gentle lake 
situated at the foot of a mountain to the north- 
west, on which Namcardin has a very hand- 
some castle." — (pp. 122 — 128.) 

From Damascus, to which he returns after 
his expedition to Nazareth, the first carver of 
Philip le Bon sets out with the caravan for 
Bursa. Before he begins upon his journey, 
he expatiates with much satisfaction upon the 
admirable method of shoeing horses at Damas- 
cus, — a panegyric which certainly gives us 
the lowest ideas of that art in the reign of 
Philip le Bon ; for it appears that, out of fifty 
days, his horse was lame for twenty-one, owing 
to this ingenious method of shoeing. As a 
mark of gratitude to the leader of the caravan, 
the esquire presents him with a pot of green 
ginger; and the caravan proceeds. Before it 
has advanced one day's j-ourney, the esquire, 
however, deviates from the road, to pay his 
devoirs to a miraculous image of our Lady of 



Serdenay, which always sweats — not ordinary 
sudorific matter — but an oil of great ecclesias- 
tical efficacy. While travelling with the cara- 
van, he learnt to sit cross-legged, got drunk 
privately, and was nearly murdered by some 
Saracens, who discovered that he had money. 
In some parts of Syria, M. de la Brocquiere 
met with an opinion, which must have been 
extremely favourable to the spirit of proselyt- 
ism, in so very hot a country — an opinion 
that the infidels have a very bad smell, and that 
this is only to be removed by baptism. But as 
the baptism was according to the Greek ritual, 
by total immersion, Bertrandon se«ms to have 
a distant suspicion that this miracle may be 
resolved into the simple phenomenon of wash- 
ing. He speaks well of the Turks, and repre- 
sents them, to our surprise, as a very gay, 
laughing people. We thought Turkish gravity 
had been almost proverbial. The natives of 
the countries through which we passed pray 
(says he) for the conversion of Christians ; 
and especially request that there may be never 
sent among them again such another terrible 
man as Godfrey of Boulogne. At Couhongue 
the caravan broke up ; and here he quitted a 
Mameluke soldier, who had kept him company 
during the whole of the journey, and to whose 
courage and fidelity Europe, Philip le Bon, and 
Mr. Johnes of Hafod, are principally indebted 
for the preservation of the first esquire-carver. 

"I bade adieu," he says, " to my Mameluke. 
This good man, whose name was Mohammed, 
had done me innumerable services. He was 
very charitable, and never refused alms when 
asked in the name of God. It was through 
charity he had been so kind to me ; and I must 
confess that, without his assistance, I could 
not have performed my journey without in- 
curring the greatest danger; and that had it 
not been for his kindness, I should often have 
been exposed to cold and hunger, and much 
embarrassed with my horse. 

" On taking leave of him, I was desirous of 
showing my gratitude ; but he would not ac- 
cept of any thing except a piece of our fine 
European cloth to cover his head, which seem- 
ed to please him much. He told me all the 
occasions that had come to his knowledge, on 
which, if it had not been for him, I should have 
run risks of being assassinated, and warned 
me to be very circumspect in my connections 
with the Saracens, for that there were among 
them some as wicked as the Franks. I write 
this to recall to my reader's memory, that the 
person who, from his lote to God, did me so 
many and essential kindnesses, was a man 
not of our faith."— (pp. 196, 197.) 

For the rest of the journey, he travelled with 
the family of the leader of the caravan, without 
any occurrence more remarkable than those 
we have already noticed ; — arrived at Con- 
stantinople, and passed through Germany to 
the court of Philip le Bon. Here his narrative 
concludes. Nor does the carver vouchsafe to 
inform us of the changes which time had made 
in the appetite of that great prince, — whether 
veal was more pleasing to him than lamb, — if 
his favourite morsels were siiiJ in request, — 
if animal succulence were as grateful to him 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



283 



as before the departure of the carver, — or if 
this semisanguineous partiality had given way 
to a taste for cinereous and torrefied meats. 
All these things the first esquire-carver might 
have said, — none of them he does say, — nor 
does Mr. Johnes of Hafod supply, by any 
antiquarian conjectures of his own, the dis- 
tressing silence of the original. Saving such 



omissions, there is something pleasant in the 
narrative of this arch-divider of fowls. He is 
an honest, brave, liberal man; and tells his 
singular story with great brevity and plainness. 
We are obliged to Mr. Johnes for the amuse- 
ment he has afibrded us ; and we hope he will 
persevere in his gentlemanlike, honourable, 
and useful occupations. 



LETTER* ON THE CURATFS SALARY BILL.t 



[Edinburgh Review, 1808.] 



Tub poverty of curates has long been a 
favourite theme with novelists, sentimental 
tourists, and elegiac poets. But notwith- 
standing the known accuracy of this class of 
philosophers, we cannot help suspecting that 
there is a good deal of misconception in the 
popular estimate of the amount of the evil. 

A very great proportion of all the curacies 
in England are filled with men to whom the 
emolument is a matter of subordinate import- 
ance. They are filled by young gentlemen 
who have recently left college, who of course 
are able to subsist as they had subsisted for 
seven years before, and who are glad to have 
an opportunity, on any terms, of acquiring a 
practical familiarity with the duties of their 
profession. They move away from them to 
higher situations as vacancies occur ; and 
make way for a new race of ecclesiastical 
apprentices. To those men, the smallness of 
the appointment is a grievance of no very 
great magnitude ; nor is it fair with relation to 
them, to represent the ecclesiastical order as 
degraded by the indigence to which some of 
its members are condemned. With regard, 
again, to those who take curacies merely as a 
means of subsistence, and with the prospect 
of remaining permanently in that situation, it 
is certain that by far the greater part of them 
are persons born in a very humble rank in 
society, and accustomed to no greater opulence 
than that of an ordinary curate. There are 
scarcely any of those persons who have taken 
a degree in an university, and not very many 
who have resided there at all. Now the son 
of a small Welsh farmer, who works hard 
every day for less than 40/. a year, has no 
great reason to complain of degradation or 
disappointment, if he get from 50/. to 100/. 
for a moderate portion of labour one day in 
seven. The situation, accordingly, is looked 
upon by these people as extremely eligible ; 
and there is a great competition for curacies, 
even as they are now provided. The amount 



* A Letter to the Right Honourable Spencer Perceval, on 
a Subject connected with his Bill, now under Discussion in 
Parliament, for improving the Situation of Stipendiarii 
Curates. 8vo. Hatchard, London. 1808. 

I Now we are all dead, it may be amusing to state 
that I was excited to this article by Sir William Scott, 
who brought me the book in his pocket; and begged I 
would attend to it, caref\illy concealing his name: my 
I wn opinions happened entirely to agree with bis. 



of the evil, then, as to the curates themselves, 
cannot be considered as very enormous, when 
there are so few who either actually feel, or 
are entitled to feel, much discontent on the 
subject. The late regulations about residence, 
too, by diminishing the total number of cu- 
rates, will obviously throw that office chiefly 
into the hands of the well educated and com- 
paratively independent young men, who seek 
for the situation rather for practice than pro- 
fit, and do not complain of the want of emolu- 
ment. 

Still we admit it to be an evil, that the resi- 
dent clergyman of a parish should not be ena- 
bled to hold a respectable rank in society from 
the regular emoluments of his office. But it 
is an evil which does not exist exclusively 
among curates ; and which, wherever it exists, 
we are afraid is irremediable, without the de- 
struction of the Episcopal church, or the aug- 
mentation of its patrimony. More than one- 
half of the livings in England are under 80/. 
a year ; and the whole income of the church, 
including that of the bishops, if thrown into a 
common fund, would not afibrd above ISO/, for 
each living. Unless Mr. Perceval, therefore, 
will raise an additional million or two for the 
church, there nmst be poor curates, — and poor 
rectors also ; and unless he is to reduce the 
Episcopal hierarchy to the republican equality 
of our Presbyterian model, he must submit to 
very considerable inequalities in the distribu- 
tion of this inadequate provision. 

Instead of applying any of these remedies, 
however, — instead of proposing to increase 
the income of the church, or to raise a fund 
for its lowest servants by a general assess- 
ment upon those who are more opulent, — in- 
stead of even trying indirectly to raise the pay 
of curates, by raising their qualifications in 
respect of regular education, Mr. Perceval has 
been able, after long and profound study, to 
find no better cure for the endemic poverty of 
curates, than to ordain all rectors of a certain 
income to pay them one-fifth part of their 
emoluments, and to vest certain alarming 
powers in the bishops for the purpose of con- 
trolling their appointment. Now this scheme, 
it appears to us, has all the faults which it is 
possible for such a scheme to have. It is 
unjust and partial in its principle, — it is evi- 
dently altogether and utterly inefficient for the 



284 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



correction of the evil in question, — and it in- 
troduces other evils infinitely greater than that 
■which it vainly proposes to abolish. 

To this project, hovi^ever, for increasing the 
salary of curates, Mr. Perceval has been so 
long and so obstinately partial, that he re- 
turned to the charge in the last session of Par- 
liament, for the third time ; and experienced, 
in spite of his present high situation, the same 
defeat which had baffled him in his previous 
attempts. 

Though the subject is gone by once more 
for the present, we cannot abstain from be- 
stowing a little gentle violence to aid its 
merited descent into the gulf of oblivion, and 
to extinguish, if possible, that resurgent prin- 
ciple which has so often disturbed the serious 
business of the country, and averted the atten- 
tion of the public from the great scenes that 
are acting in the world — to search for some 
golden medium between the selfishness of the 
sacred principal, and the rapacity of the sacred 
deputy. 

If church property is to be preserved, that 
precedent is not w^ithout danger which dis- 
poses at once of a fifth of all the valuable 
livings in England. We do not advance this 
as an argument of any great importance 
against the bill, but only as an additional rea- 
son why its utility should be placed in the 
clearest point of view, before it can attain the 
assent of well-wishers to the English establish- 
ment- 

Our first and greatest objection to such a 
measure, is the increase of power which it 
gives to the bench of bishops, — an evil which 
may produce the most serious effects, by 
placing the whole body of the clergy under the 
absolute control of men who are themselves 
so much under the influence of the crown. 
This, indeed, has been pretty effectually ac- 
complished, by the late residence bill of Sir 
William Scott; and our objection to the pre- 
sent bill is, that it tends to augment that ex- 
cessive power before conferred on (he prelacy. 

If a clergyman lives in a situation which is 
destroying his constitution, he cannot ex- 
change with a brother clergyman without the 
consent of the bishop ; in whose hands, under 
such circumstances, his life and death are 
actually placed. If he wishes to cultivate a 
little land for his amusement or better sup- 
port, — he cannot do it without the license of 
the bishop. If he wishes to spend the last 
three or four months with a declining wife or 
child at some spot where better medical assist- 
ance can be procured — he cannot do so with- 
out permission of the bishop. If he is struck 
with palsy, or "tacked with stone — the bishop 
can confine him in the most remote village in 
England. In short, the power which the 
bishops at present possess over their clergy 
is so enormous, that none but a fool or a mad- 
man would think of compromising his future 
happiness, by giving the most remote cause 
of offence to his diocesan. We ought to re- 
collect, however, that the clergy constitute a 
body of 12 or 15,000 educated persons; that 
the whole concern of education devolves upon 
them ; that some share of the talents and in- 
formation which exist in the country mu?t 



naturally fall to their lot ; and that the com- 
plete subjugation of such a body of men can- 
not, in any point of view, be a matter of in- 
difference to a free country. 

It is in vain to talk of the good character 
of bishops. Bishops are men ; not always the 
wisest of men ; not always preferred for emi- 
nent virtues and talents, or for any good rea- 
son whatever known to the public. They are 
almost always devoid of striking and indeco- 
rous vices ; but a man may be very shallow, 
very arrogant, and very vindictive, though a 
bishop ; and pursue with unrelenting hatred a 
subordinate clergyman, whose principles he 
dislikes,* and whose genius he fears. Bishops, 
besides, are subject to the infirmities of old age, 
like other men ; and in the decay of strength 
and understanding, will be governed as other 
men are, by daughters and wives, and who- 
ever ministers to their daily comforts. We 
have no doubt that such cases sometimes oc- 
cur ; and produce, whenever they do occur, a 
very capricious administration of ecclesiasti- 
cal affairs.f As the power of enforcing resi- 
dence must be lodged somewhere, why not 
give the bishop a council, consisting of two- 
thirds ecclesiastics, and one-third laymen: and 
meeting at the same time as the sessions and 
deputy sessions ; — the bishop's license for non- 
residence to issue, of course, upon their re- 
commendation. Considering the vexatious 
bustle of a new, and the laxity of an aged 
bishop, we cannot but think that a diocese 
would be much more steadily administered 
under this system than by the present means. 

Examine the constitutional effects of the 
power now granted to the bench. What hin- 
ders a bishop from becoming in the hands of 
the court a very important agent in all county 
elections 1 what clergyman would dare to re- 
fuse him his vote 1 But it will be said that no 
bishop will ever condescend to such sort of 
intrigues : — a most miserable answer to a most 
serious objection. The temptation is admit- 
ted, — the absence of all restraint ; the danger- 
ous consequences are equally admitted ; and 
the only preservative is the personal charac- 
ter of the individual. If this style of reason- 
ing were general, what would become of law, 
constitution, and every wholesome restraint 
which we have been accumulating for so 
many centuries'? We have no intention to 
speak disrespectfully of constituted authori- 
ties ; but when men can abuse power with 
impunity, and recommend themselves to their 
superiors by abusing it, it is but common 
sense to suppose that power will be abused; 
if it is, the country will hereafter be convulsed 
to its very entrails, in tearing away that power 
from the prelacy which has been so improvi- 
dently conferred upon them. It is useless to 
talk of the power they anciently possessed. 
They have never possessed it since England 
has been what it now is. Since we have en- 
joyed practically a free constitution, the 
bishops have, in point of fact, possessed little 
or no power of oppression over their clergy. 



* Bold language for the year 1608. 

+ I have seen in the course of my life, as the mind of 
the prelate decayed, wife bishops, daughter bishops, but> 
ler bishops, and even cook and housekeeper bishops. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



285 



It must be remembered, however, that we 
are speaking only of probabilities : the fact 
may turn out to be quite the reverse ; the 
power vested in the bench may be exercised 
for spiritual purposes only, and with the great- 
est moderation. We shall be extremely happy 
to find that this is the case; and it will reflect 
great honour upon those who have corrected 
the improvidence of the legislature by their 
own sense of propriety. 

It is contended by the friends of this law, 
that the respectability of the clergy depends in 
some measure on their wealth ; and that, as 
the rich bishop reflects a sort of worldly con- 
sequence upon the poor bishop, and the rich 
rector upon the poor rector ; — so, a rich class 
of curates could not fail to confer a greater 
degree of importance upon that class of men 
in general. This is all very well, if you in- 
tend to raise up some new fund in order to 
enrich curates : but you say that the riches 
of some constitute the dignity of the whole ; 
and then you immediately take away from the 
rector the superfluous wealth which, according 
to your own method of reasoning, is to deco- 
rate and dignify the order of men to whom 
he belongs! The bishops constitute the first 
class in the church ; the beneficed clergy the 
second; the curates the last. Why are you 
to take from the second to give to the last? 
Why not as well from the first* to give to the 
second — if you really mean to contend that 
the first and second are already too rich 1 

It is not true, however, that the class of rec- 
tors is generally either too rich, or even rich 
enough. There are 6000 livings below 80/. 
per annum, which is not very much above the 
average allowance of a curate. If every rec- 
tor, however, who has more than 500/. is 
obliged to give a fifth part to a curate, there 
seems to be no reason why every bishop who 
has more than 1000/. should not give a fifth 
part among the poor rectors in his diocese. It 
is in vain to say this assessment upon rectors 
is reasonable and right, because they may re- 
side and do duty themselves, and then they 
will not need a curate ; — that their non-resi- 
dence, in s?iort, is a kind of delinquency for 
which they compound by this fine to the 
parish. If more than half of the rectories in 
England are under 80/. a year, and some thou- 
sands of them under 40/., pluralities are abso- 
lutely vecessary ; and clergymen, who have not 
the gift of ubiquity, must be non-resident at 
some of them. Curates, therefore, are not the 
deputies of negligent rectors ; — they are an 
order of priests absolutely necessary in the 
present form of the Church of England : and 
a rector incurs no shadow of delinquency by 
employing one, more than the king does by 
appointing a lord-lieutenant of Ireland, or a 
commissioner to the General Assembly of the 
Church of Scotland, instead of doing the duty 
of these offices in person. If the legislature, 
therefore, is to interfere to raise the natural, 
i. e. the actual wages of this order of men, at 
the expense of the more opulent ministers of 
the Gospel, there seems to be no sort of reason 
for exempting the bishops from their share in 



* The first unfortunately make tbe laws. 



this pious contribution, or for refusing to make 
a similar one for the benefit of all I'ectors who 
have less than lOOZ. per annum. 

The true reason, however, for exempting 
my lords the bishops from this imposition is, 
that they have the privilege of voting upon all 
bills brought in by Mr. Perceval, and of ma- 
terially affecting his comfort and security by 
their parliamentary control and influence. 
This, however, is to cure what you believe to 
be unjust, by means which you must know to 
be unjust ; to fly out against abuses which 
may be remedied without peril, and to con- 
nive at them when the attempt at a remedy is 
attended with political danger; to be mute and 
obsequious towards men who enjoy church pro- 
perty to the amount of 8 or 19,000/. per an- 
num ; and to be so scandalized at those who 
possess as many hundreds, that you must melt 
their revenues down into curacies, and save 
to the eye of political economy the spectacle 
of such flagrant inequality! 

In the same style of reasoning, it may be 
asked why the lay improprietors are not com- 
pelled to advance the salary of their perpetual 
curacies, up to a fifth of their estates ] The 
answer, too, is equally obvious — Many lay im- 
proprietors have votes in both houses of Par- 
liament; and the only class of men this 
cowardly reformation attacks, is that which 
has no means of saying any thing in its own 
defence. 

Even if the enrichment of curates were the 
most imperious of all duties, it might very 
well be questioned, whether a more unequal and 
pernicious mode of fulfilling it could be devised 
than that enjoined by this bill. Curacies are 
not granted for the life of the curate ; but for 
the life or incumbency or good-liking of the 
rector. It is only rectors worth 500/. a-year 
who are compelled by Mr. Perceval to come 
down with a fifth to their deputy ; and these 
form but a very small proportion of the whole 
non-resident rectors ; so that the great multi- 
tude of curates mnist remain as poor as for- 
merly, — and probably a little more discontented. 
Suppose,however, that one has actually entered 
on the enjoyment of 250/. per annum. His 
wants, and his habits of expense, are enlarged 
by this increase of income. In a year or two 
his rector dies, or exchanges his living ; and 
the poor man is reduced, by the effects of com- 
parison, to a much worse state than before the 
operation of the bill. Can any person say that 
this is a wise and eflfectual mode of ameliorat- 
ing the condition of the lower clergy 1 To us 
it almost appears to be invented for the express 
purpose of destroying those habits of economy 
and caution, which are so indispensably neces- 
sary to their situation. If it is urged that the 
curate, knowing his wealth only to be tempo- 
rary, will make use of it as a means of laying 
up a fund for some future day, — we admire the 
good sense of the man : but what becomes of 
all the provisions of the billT what becomes 
of that opulence which is to confer respecta- 
bility upon all around it, and to radiate even 
upon the curates of Wales ? The money was 
expressly given to blacken his coat, — to render 
him convex and rosy, — to give him a sort of 
pseudo-rectorial appearance, and to dazzle the 



286 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



parishioners at the rate of 250/. per annum. 
The poor man, actuated by those principles of 
common sense which are so contrary to all the 
provisions of the bill, chooses to make a good 
thing of it, because he knows it will not last; 
wears his old coat, rides his lean horse, and 
defrauds the class of curates of all the advan- 
tages which they were to derive from the sleek- 
ness and splendour of his appearance. 

It is of some importance to the welfare of a 
parish, and thfi credit of the church, that the 
curate and his rector should live upon good 
terms together. Such a bill, however, throws 
between them elements of mistrust and hatred, 
which must render their agreement highly im- 
probable. The curate would be perpetually 
prying into every little advance which the 
rector made upon his tithes, and claiming his 
proportionate increase. No respectable man 
could brook such inquisition ; some, we fear, 
would endeavour to prevent its effects by clan- 
destine means. The church would be a per- 
petual scene of disgraceful animosities ; and 
the ears of the bishop never free from the 
clamours of rapacity and irritation. 

It is some slight defect in such a bill, that it 
does not proportion reward to the labour done, 
but to the wealth of him for whom it is done. 
The curate of a parish containing 400 persons, 
may be paid as much as another person who 
has the care of 10,000 ; for, in England, there 
is very little proportion between the value of a 
living, and the quantity of duty to be performed 
by its clergyman. 

The bill does not attain its object in the best 
way. Let the bishop refuse to allow of any cu- 
rate upon a living above 500/. per annum, who is 
not a Master of Arts of one of the universities. 
Such curates will then be obtained at a price 
which will render it worth the while of such 
men to take curacies ; and such a degree and 
situation in society will secure good curates 
much more effectually than the complicated 
provisions of this bill : for, prima facie, it ap- 
pears to us much more probable, that a curate 
should be respectable, who is a Master of Arts 
in some English university, than if all that we 
knew about him was, that he had a fifth of the 
profits of the living. The object is, to fix a 
good clergyman in a parish. The law will not 
trust the non-resident rector to fix both the price 
and the person; but fixes the price, and then 
leaves him the choice of the person. Our plan 
is, to fix upon the description of person, and 
then to leave the price to find its level ; for the 
good price by no means implies a good person, 
but the good person will be sure to get a good 
price. 

Where the living will admit of it, we have 
commonly observed that the English clergy are 
desirous of putting in a proper substitute. If 
this is so, the bill is unnecessary; for it pro- 
ceeds on the very contrary supposition, that 
the great mass of opulent clergy consult no- 
thing but economy in the choice of their 
curates. 

It is very galling and irksome to any class 
of men to be compelled to disclose their pri- 
vate circumstances; a provision contained in, 
and absolutely necessary to this bill, under 
which the diocesan can always compel the 



minister to disclose the full value of his 
living. 

After all, however, the main and conclusive 
objection to the bill is, that its provisions are 
drawn from such erroneous principles, and 
betray such gross ignorance of human nature, 
that though it would infallibly produce a 
thousand mischiefs foreseen and not foreseen, 
it would evidently have no effect whatsoever 
in raising the salaries of curates. We do not 
put this as a case of common buyer and seller; 
we allow that the parish is a third party, having 
an interest ;* we fully admit the right of the le- 
gislature to interfere for their relief. We only 
contend, that such interference would be neces- 
sarily altogether ineffectual, so long as men 
can be found capable of doing the duty of cu- 
rates, and willing to do it for less than the 
statutory minimum. 

If there is a competition of rectors for cu- 
rates, it is quite unnecessary and absurd to 
make laws in favour of curates. The demand 
for them will do their business more effectually 
than the law. If, on the contrary (as the fact 
plainly is), there is a competition of curates for 
employment, is it possible to prevent this order 
of men from labouring under the regulation 
price 1 Is it possible to prevent a curate from 
pledging himself to his rector, that he will 
accept only half the legal salary, if he is so 
fortunate as to be preferred among an host of 
rivals, who are willing to engage on the same 
terms 1 You may make these contracts illegal : 
What then 1 Men laugh at such prohibitions ; 
and they always become a dead letter. In nine 
instances out of ten, the contract would be 
honourably adhered to ; and then what is the 
use of Mr. Perceval's law? Where the con- 
tract was not adhered to, whom would the law 
benefit? — A man utterly devoid of every par- 
ticle of honour and good faith. And this is 
the new species of curate, who is to reflect dig- 
nity and importance upon his poorer brethren! 
The law encourages breach of faith between 
gambler and gambler ; it arms broker against 
broker : — but it cannot arm clergyman against 
clergyman. Did any human being before, ever 
think of disseminating such a principle among 
the teachers of Christianity? Did any eccle- 
siastic law, before this, ever depend for its 
success upon the mutual treachery of men who 
ought to be examples to their fellow-creatures 
of every thing that is just and upright. 

We have said enough already upon the ab- 
surdity of punishing all rich rectors for non- 
residence, as for a presumptive delinquency. 
A law is already passed, fixing what shall be 
legal and sufficient causes for non-residence. 
Nothing can be more unjust, then, than to 
punish that absence which you admit to be 
legal. If the causes of absence are too nume- 
rous, lessen them; but do not punish him who 
has availed himself of their existence. We 
deny, however, that they are too numerous. 
TheVe are 6000 livings out of 11,000 in the 
English church under SOL per annum ; many 

* We remember Horace's description of the misery of 
a parish where there is no resident clergyman. 

" Illacrymabiles 

Urgentur, ignotique long4 
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro." 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



287 



of these 20^., many 301. per annum. The whole 
task of education at the university, public 
schools, private families, and in foreign travel, 
devolves upon the clergy. A great part of the 
literature of their country is in their hands. 
Residence is a very proper and necessary mea- 
sure ; but, considering all these circumstances, 
it requires a great deal of moderation and 
temper to carry it into effect, without doing 
more mischief than good. At present, how- 
ever, the torrent sets the other way. Every 
lay plunderer, and every fanatical coxcomb, is 
forging fresh chains for the English clergy; 
and we should not be surprised, in a very little 
time, to see them absenting themselves from 
their benefices by a kind of day-rule, like 
prisoners in the king's bench. The first bill, 
■which was brought in by Sir William Scott, 
always saving and excepting the power granted 
to the bishops, is full of useful provisions, and 
characterized throughout by great practical 
wisdom. We have no doubt but that it has, 
upon the whole, improved the condition of the 
English church. Without caution, mildness, 
or information, however, it was peculiarly un- 



fortunate to follow such a leader. We are 
extremely happy the bill was rejected. We 
have seldom witnessed more of ignorance and 
error stuffed and crammed into so very narrow 
a compass. Its origin, we are confident, is 
from the Tabernacle ; and its consequences 
would have been, to have sown the seeds of 
discord and treachery in an ecclesiastical con- 
stitution, which, under the care of prudent and 
honest men, may always be rendered a source 
of public happiness. 

One glaring omission in this bill we had 
almost forgotten to mention. The chancellor 
of the exchequer has entirely neglected to 
make any provision for that very meritorious 
class of men, the laxj curates, who do all the 
business of those offices, of which lazy and 
non-resident placemen receive the emoluments. 
So much delicacy and conscience, however, 
are here displayed on the subject of pocketing 
unearned emoluments, that we have no doubt 
the moral irritability of this servant of the 
crown will speedily urge him to a species of 
reform, of which he may be the object as well 
as the mover. 



PEOCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE 
SUPPRESSION OF VICE,* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1809.] 



A SOCIETY that holds out as its object the 
suppression of vice, must at first sight con- 
ciliate the favour of ever)^ respectable person; 
and he who objects to an institution calculated 
apparently to do so much good, is bound to 
give very clear and satisfactory reasons for 
his dissent from so popular an opinion. We 
certainly have, for a long time, had doubts of 
its utility; and now think ourselves called 
upon to state the grounds of 'our distrust. 

Though it were clear that individual inform- 
ers are useful auxiliaries to the administration 
of the laws, it M'ould by no means follow that 
these informers should be allowed to com- 
bine, — to form themselves into a body, — to 
make a public purse, — and to prosecute under 
a common name. An informer, whether he 
is paid by the week, like the agents of this 
society — or by the crime, as in common cases — 
is, in general, a man of a very indiflerent 
character. So'much fraud and deception are 
necessary for carrying on his trade — it is so 
odious to his fellow subjects, — that no man of 
respectability will ever undertake it. It is 
evidently impossible to make such a character 
otherwise than odious. A man who receives 



* Statement of the Proceedings of the Society for the 
Suppression of Vice, from July 9 to J^ovemher 12, read at 
■ Iheir General Meetipn-. held J^orember i% 1804. With an 
Jtppendix, euntainin<r the Plan of the Society, lf;c. ^e. S^c. 
London. 1804. 

An Address to the Public from the Societii for the Sup- 
pression of Vice, instituted in London. 1802. Part the 
Second. Containing an Account of the Proceedin/rs of the 
Society from its original Institution. London. 1804. 



weekly pay for prying into the transgressions 
of mankind, and bringing them to conse- 
quent punishment, will always be hated by 
mankind; and the office must fall to the lot of 
some men of desperate fortunes and ambigu- 
ous character. The multiplication, therefore, 
of such officers, and the extensive patronage 
of such characters, may, by the management 
of large and opulent societies, become an evil 
nearly as great as the evils they would sup- 
press. The alarm which a private and dis- 
guised accuser occasions in a neighbourhood, 
is known to be prodigious, not only to the 
guilty, but to those who may be at once inno- 
cent, and ignorant, and timid. The destruction 
of social confidence is another evil, the conse- 
quence of information. An informer gets 
access to my house or family, — worms my 
secret out of me, — and then betrays me to the 
magistrate. Now, all these evils may be 
tolerated in a small degree, while, in a greater 
degree, they would be perfectly intolerable. 
Thirty or forty informers roaming about the 
metropolis, may frighten the mass of offenders 
a little, and do some good: ten thousand in- 
formers would either create an insurrection, 
or totally destroy the confidence and cheerful- 
ness of private life. Whatever may be said, 
therefore, of the single and insulated informer, 
it is quite a new question when we come to a 
corporation of informers supported by large 
contributions. The one may be a good, the 
other a very serious evil; the one legal, the 
other wholly out of the contemplation of law, — 



288 



WOKKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



which often, and very wisely, allows individu- 
als to do what it forbids to many individuals 
assembled. 

If once combination is allowed for the sup- 
pression of vice, where are its limits lo be 1 
Its capital may as well consist of 100,0001. per 
annum, as of a thousand: its numbers may 
increase from a thousand subscribers, which 
this society, it seems, had reached in its 
second year, to twenty thousand : and, in that 
case, what accused persons of an inferior 
condition of life would have the temerity to 
stand against such a society 7 Their man- 
dates would very soon be law ; and there is 
no compliance into which they might not 
frighten the common people, and the lower 
orders of tradesmen. The idea of a society 
of gentlemen, calling themselves an associa- 
tion for the suppression of vice, would alarm 
any small offender to a degree that would 
make him prefer any submission to any re- 
sistance. He would consider the very fact of 
being accused by them, as almost sufficient to 
ruin him. 

An individual accuser accuses at his own 
expense ; and the risk he runs is a good 
security that the subject will not be harassed 
by needless accusations, — a security which, 
of course, he cannot have against such a 
society as this, to whom pecuniary loss is an 
object of such little consequence. It must 
never be forgotten, that this is not a society 
for punishing people who have been found to 
transgress the law; but for accusing persons of 
transgressing the law ; and that before trial, 
the accused person is to be considered as 
innocent, and is to have every fair chance of 
establishing his innocence. He must be no 
common defendant, however, who does not 
contend against such a society with very fear- 
ful odds ; — the best counsel engaged for his 
opponents, — great practice in the particular 
court, and particular species of cause, — wit- 
nesses thoroughly hackneyed in a court of 
justice, — and an unlimited command of money. 
It by no means follows, that the legislature, in 
allowing individuals to be informers, meant 
to subject the accused person to the superior 
weight and power of such societies. The 
very influence of names must have a con- 
siderable weight with the jury. Lord Dart- 
mouth, Lord Radstock, and the Bishop of 
Durham, versus a Whitechapel butcher or a 
publican ! Is this a fair contest before a jury 1 
It is not so even in London ; and what must it 
be in the country, where a society for the sup- 
pression of vice may consist of all the prin- 
cipal persons in the neighbourhood 1 These 
societies are now established in York, in 
Reading, and in many other large towns. 
Wherever this is the case, it is far from 
improbable that the same persons, at the 
Quarter or Town Sessions, may be both 
judges and accusers; and still more fatally 
so, if the offence is tried by a special jury.' 
This is already most notoriously the case in 
societies for the preservation of game. They 
prosecute a poacher; — the jury is special; 
and the poor wretch is found guilty by the 
very same persons Avho have accused him. 

If it is lawful for respectable men to com- 



bine for the purpose of turning informers, it 
is lawful for the lowest and most despicable 
race of informers to do the same thing ; and 
then it is quite clear that every species of 
wickedness and extortion would be the conse- 
quence. We ■ are rather surprised that no 
society of perjured attorneys and fraudulent 
bankrupts has risen up in this metropolis, for 
the suppression of vice. A chairman, deputy- 
chairman, subscriptions, and an annual ser- 
mon would give great dignity to their proceed- 
ings ; and they would soon begin to take some 
rank in the world. 

It is true that it is the duty of grand juries 
to inform against vice ; but the law knows the 
probable number of grand jurymen, the times 
of their meeting, and the description of per- 
sons of whom they consist. Of voluntary 
societies it can know nothing, — th^ir numbers, 
their wealth, or the character of their mem- 
bers. It may therefore trust to a grand jury 
what it would by no means trust to an un- 
known combination. A vast distinction is to 
be made, too, between official duties and 
vohmtary duties. The first are commonly 
carried on with calmness and moderation ; 
the latter often characterized, in their execu- 
tion, by rash and intemperate zeal. 

The present society receives no members 
but those who are of the Church of England. 
As we are now arguing the question generally, 
we have a right to make any supposition. Ii 
is equally free, therefore, upon general princi- 
ples, for a society of sectarians to combine 
and exclude members of the Church of Eng- 
land; and the suppression of vice may thus 
come in aid of Methodism, Jacobinism, or 
of any set of principles, however perilous, 
either to church or state. The present society 
may, perhaps, consist of persons whose senti- 
ments on these points are rational and respecta- 
ble. Combinations, however, of this sort may 
give birth to something far different ; and such a 
supposition is the fair way of trying the question. 

We doubt if there be not some mischief in 
averting the fears and hopes of the people 
from the known and constituted authorities of 
the country to those self-created powers ; — a 
society that punishes in the Strand, — another 
which rewards at Lloyd's Coffee-house ! If 
these things get to any great height, they throw 
an air of insignificance over those branches 
of the government to whom these cares pro- 
perly devolve, and whose authority is by 
these means assisted, till it is superseded. It 
is supposed that a project must necessarily be 
good, because it is intended for the aid of law 
and government. At this rate, the're should be 
a society in aid of the government, for pro- 
curing intelligence from foreign parts, with 
accredited agents all over Europe. There 
should be a voluntary transport board, and a 
gratuitous victualling office. There should be 
a duplicate, in short, of every department of 
the state, — the one appointed by the king, the 
other by itself. There shoitld be a real Lord 
Glenbervie in the woods and forests, — and with 
him a monster, a voluntary Lord Glenbervie, 
serving without pay, and guiding gratis, with 
secret counsel, the axe of his prototype. If it 
be asked, who are the constituted authorities 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



289 



who are legally appointed to watch over morals, 
and whose functions the society usurp 1 our an- 
swer is, that there are in England about 12,000 
clergy, not unhandsomely paid for persuading 
the people, and about 4000 justices, 30 grand 
juries, and 40,000 constables, whose duty and 
whose inclination it is to compel them to do 
right. Under such circumstances, a voluntary 
moral society does indeed seem to be the purest 
result of volition ; for there certainly is not the 
smallest particle of necessity mingled with its 
existence. 

It is hardly possible that a society for the 
suppression of vice can ever be kept within 
the bounds of good sense and moderation. If 
there are many members who have really be- 
come so fi'om a feeling of duty, there will ne- 
cessarily be some who enter the society to 
hide a bad character, and others whose object 
it is to recommend themselves to their betters 
by a sedulous and bustling inquisition into the 
immoralities of the public. The loudest and 
noisiest suppressors will always carry it against 
the more prudent part of the community ; the 
most violent will be considered as the most 
moral ; and those who see the absurdity will, 
from the fear of being thought to encourage 
vice, be reluctant to oppose it. 

It is of great importance to keep public 
opinion on the side of virtue. To their autho- 
rized and legal correctors, mankind are, on 
common occasions, ready enough to submit ; 
but there is something in the self-erection of 
a voluntary magistracy which creates so much 
disgust, that it almost renders vice popular, 
and puts the offence at a premium. We have 
no doubt but that the immediate effect of a 
voluntary combination for the suppression of 
vice, is an involuntary combination in favour 
of the vices to be suppressed ; and this is a 
very serious drawback from any good of 
which such societies may be the occasion ; 
for the state of morals, at any one period, de- 
pends much more upon opinion than law ; 
and to bring odious and disgusting auxiliaries 
to the aid of virtue, is to do the utmost possi- 
ble good to the cause of vice. We regret that 
mankind are as they are ; and we sincerely 
wish, that the species at large were as com- 
pletely devoid of every' vice and infirmity as 
the president, vice-president, and committee of 
the suppressing society ; but, till they are thus 
regenerated, it is of the greatest consequence 
to teach them virtue and religion in a manner 
which will not make them hate both the one 
and the other. The greatest delicacy is re- 
quired in the application of violence to moral 
and religious sentiment. We forget that the 
object is, not to produce the outward compli- 
ance, but to raise up the inward feeling, which 
secures the outward compliance. You may 
drag men into church by main force, and pro- 
secute them for buying a pot of beer, — and cut 
them off from the enjoyment of a leg of mut- 
ton ; — and you may do all this, till you make 
the common people hate Sunday, and the 
clergy, and religion, and every thing which re- 
lates to such subjects. There are mapy crimes, 
indeed, where persuasion cannot be waited for, 
and where the untaught feelings of all men go 
along with the violence of the law. A robber 
37 



and a murderer must be knocked on the head 
like mad dogs ; but we have no great opinion 
of the possibility of indicting men into piety, 
or of calling in the quarter sessions to the aid 
of religion. You may produce outward con- 
formity by these means ; but you are so far from 
producing (the only thing worth producing) 
the inward feeling, that you incur a great risk 
of giving birth to a totally opposite sentiment. 

The violent modes of making men good, 
just alluded to, have been resorted to at pe- 
riods when the science of legislation was not so 
well understood as it now is ; or when the 
manners of the age have been peculiarly 
gloomy or fanatical. The improved know- 
ledge, and the improved temper of later times, 
push such laws into the back ground, and 
silently repeal them. A suppressing society, 
hunting every where for penalty and informa- 
tion, has a direct tendency to revive ancient 
ignorance and fanaticism, — and to re-enact 
laws, which, if ever they ought to have existed 
at all, were certainly calculated for a very dif- 
ferent style of manners, and a veiy different 
degree of information. To compel men to go 
to church, under a penalty, appears to us to be 
absolutely absurd. The bitterest enemy of 
religion will necessarily be that person who 
is driven to a compliance with its outward 
ceremonies, by informers and justices of the 
peace. In the same manner, any constable 
who hears another swear an oath, has a right 
to seize him, and carry him before a magistrate, 
where he is to be fined so much for each exe- 
cration. It is impossible to carry such laws 
into execution ; and it is lucky that it is im- 
possible, — for their execution would create an 
infinitely greater evil than it attempted to 
remed)^ The common sense and common 
feeling of mankind, if left to themselves, would 
silently repeal such laws ; and it is one of the 
evils of these societies, that they render ab- 
surdity eternal, and ignorance indestructible. 
Do not let us be misunderstood : upon the ob- 
ject to be accomplished, there can be but one 
opinion ; — it is only upon the means employed, 
that there can be the slightest difference of 
sentiment. To go to church is a duty of the 
greatest possible importance ; and on the blas- 
phemy and vulgarity of swearing, there can 
be but one opinion. But such duties are not 
the objects of legislation ; they must be left to 
the general state of public sentiment; which 
sentiment must be influenced by example, by 
the exertions of the pulpit and the press, and, 
above all, by education. The fear of God can 
never be taught by constables, nor the plea- 
sures of religion be learnt from a common in- 
former. 

Beginning with the best intentions in the 
world, such societies must, in all probability, 
degenerate into a receptacle for every species 
of tittle-tattle, impertinence, and malice. Men, 
whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats ; 
the bug-destroyer seizes on his bug with de- 
light ; and the suppressor is gratified by find- 
ing his vic^. The last soon becomes a mere 
tradesman like the others ; none of them mo- 
ralize, or lament that their respective evils 
should exist in the world. The public feeling 
is swallowed up in the pursuit of a daily occu- 
2B 



290 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pation, and in the display of a technical skill. 
Here, then, is a society of men, who invite 
accusation, — who receive it (almost unknown 
to themselves) withpleasure, — and who, if they 
hate dulness and inoccupation, can have very 
little pleasure in the innocence of their fellow- 
creatures. The natural consequence of all 
this is, that (besides that portion of rumour 
which every member contributes at the weekly 
meeting), their table must be covered with 
anonymous lies against the character of indi- 
viduals. Every servant discharged from his 
master's service, — every villain wlip hates the 
man he has injured, — every cowardly assassin 
of character, — now knows where his accusa- 
tions will be received, and where they cannot 
fail to produce some portion of the mischievous 
effects which he wishes. The very first step 
of such a society should be, to declare, in the 
plainest manner, that they would never receive 
any anonymous accusation. This would be 
the only security to the public, that they were 
not degrading themselves into a receptacle for 
malice and falsehood. Such a declaration 
would inspire some species of confidence ; and 
make us believe that their object was neither 
the love of power, nor the gratification of un- 
charitable feelings. The society for the sup- 
pression, however, have done no such thing. 
They request, indeed, the signature of the in- 
formers whom they invite ; but they do not (as 
they ought) make that signature an indispen- 
sable condition. 

Nothing has disgusted us so much in the 
proceedings of this society, as the control 
which they exercise over the amusements of 
the poor. One of the specious titles under 
which this legal meanness is gratified is, Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals. 

Of cruelty to animals, let the reader take the 
following specimens : — 

Running an iron hook in the intestines of 
an animal ; presenting this first animal to 
another as his food; and then pulling this se- 
cond creature up, and suspending him by the 
barb in his stomach. 

Riding a horse till he drops, in order to see 
an innocent animal torn to pieces by dogs. 

Keeping a poor animal upright for many 
weeks, to communicate a peculiar hardness to 
his flesh. 

Making deep incisions into the flesh of 
another animal, while living, in order to make 
the muscles more firm. 

Immersing another animal, while living, in 
hot water. 

Now we do fairly admit, that such abomi- 
nable cruelties as these are worthy of the inter- 
ference of the law : and that the society should 
have punished them, cannot be matter of sur- 
prise to any feeling mind. — But stop, gentle 
reader ! these cruellies are the cruelties of the 
suppressing committee, not of the poor. You 
must not think of punishing these. — The first 
of these cruelties passes under the pretty 
name of angling , — and therefore there can be 
no harm in it — the more particularly as the 
president himself has one of the best preserved 
trout streams in England. — The next is hunt- 
ing ; — and as many of the vice-presidents and 
of the committee hunt, it is not possible there 



can be any cruelty in hunting.* The next is, 
a process for making brawn — a dish never 
tasted by the poor, and therefore not to be dis- 
turbed by indictment. The fourth is the mode 
of crimping cod ; and the fifth of boiling lob- 
sters ; all high-life cruelties, with which a jus- 
tice of the peace has no business to meddle. 
The real thing which calls forth the sympa- 
thies, and harrows up the soul, is to see a 
number of boisterous artisans baiting a bull, 
or a bear ; not a savage hare, or a carnivorous 
stag, — but a poor, innocent, timid bear ; — not 
pursued by magistrates, and deputy lieutenants, 
and men of education, — but by those who 
must necessarily seek their relaxation in noise 
and tumultuous merriment, — by men whose 
feelings are blunted, and whose understanding 
is wholly devoid of refinement. The society 
detail, with symptoms of great complacency, 
their detection of a bear-beating in Black-boy 
Alley, Chick Lane, and the prosecution of the 
offenders before a magistrate. It appears to 
us, that nothing can be more partial and un- 
just than this kind of proceedings. A man of 
ten thousand a year may worry a fox as much 
as he pleases, — may encourage the breed of a 
mischievous animal on purpose to worry it; 
and a poor labourer is carried before a ma- 
gistrate for paying sixpence to see an exhibi- 
tion of courage between a dog and a bear ! 
Any cruelty may be practised to gorge the 
stomachs of the rich, — none to enliven the 
holidays of the poor. We venerate those 
feelings which really protect creatures sus- 
ceptible of pain, and incapable of complaint. 
But heaven-born pity, now-a-days, calls for 
the income tax, and the Court Guide ; and 
ascertains the rank and fortune of the tor- 
mentor before she weeps for the pain of the 
sufferer. It is astonishing how the natural 
feelings of mankind are distorted by false 
theories. Nothing can be more mischievous 
than to say, that the pain inflicted by the dog 
of a man of quality is not (when the strength 
of the two animals is the same) equal to that 
produced by the cur of a butcher. Haller, in 
his Pathology, expressly says, that the animal 
bitten knows no difference in the quality of the 
biting animal's master; and it is now the uni- 
versal opinion among all enlightened men, 
that the misery of the brawner would be very 
little diminished, if he could be made sensible 
that he was to be eaten up only by persons of 
the first fashion. The contrary supposition 
seems to us to be absolute nonsense; it is the 
desertion of the true Baconian philosophy, and 
the substitution of mere unsupported conjec- 
ture in its place. The trespass, however, 
which calls forth all the energies of a sup- 
pressor, is the sound of a fiddle. That the 



*"How reasonable creatures" (says the society) 
" can enjoy a pastime which is the cause of such suffer- 
ings to brute animals, or how they can consider them- 
selves entitled, for their own amusement, to stimulate 
those animals, by means of the antipathies which Pro- 
vidence has thought proper to place between them, to 
worry and tear, and often to destroy each other, it is 
difficult to conceive. So inhuman a practice, by a retri- 
bution peculiarly just, tends obviously to render the 
human character brutal and ferocious," &c. &c. 
(Mdress, p. 71, 72.) We take it for granted, that the 
reader sees clearly that no part of this description can 
possibly apply to the case o( hunting. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



291 



'Common people are really enjoying them- 
selves, is now beyond all doubt: and away 
rush secretary, president, and committee, to 
clap the cotillon into the compter, and to bring 
back the life of the poor to its regular standard 
of decorous gloom. The gambling houses of 
St James's remain untouched. The peer 
ruins himself and his family with impunity ; 
while the Irish labourer is privately whipped 
for not maiking a better use of the excellent 
moral and religious education which he ha-s 
received in the days of his youth ! 

It is not true, as urged by the society, that 
the vices of the poor are carried on in houses 
of public resort, and those of the rich in their 
own houses. The society cannot be ignorant 
of the innumerable gambling houses resorted 
to by men of fashion. Is there one they have 
suppressed, or attempted to suppress 1 Can 
any thing be more despicable than such dis- 
tinctions as these 1 Those who make them 
seem to have for other persons' vices all the 
rigour of the ancient Puritans — without a par- 
ticle of their honesty, or their courage. To 
suppose that any society will ever attack the 
vices of people of fashion, is wholly out of the 
question. If the society consisted of trades- 
men, they would infallibly be turned off by the 
vicious customers whose pleasures they inter- 
rupted : and what gentlemen so fond of sup- 
pressing, as to interfere with the vices of good 
company, and inform against persons who 
were really genteel"? He knows very well 
that the consequence of such interference 
would be a complete exclusion from elegant 
society ; that the upper classes could not and 
would not endure it ; and that he must imme- 
diately lose his rank in the world, if his zeal 
subjected fashionable offenders to the slightest 
inconvenience from the law. Nothing, there- 
fore, remains, but to rage against the Sunday 
dinners of the poor, and to prevent a brick- 
layer's labourer from losing, on the seventh 
day, that beard which has been augmenting 
the other six. We see at the head of this 
society the names of several noblemen, and of 
other persons moving in the fashionable world. 
Is it possible they can be ignorant of the in- 
numerable offences against the law and mo- 
rality which are committed by their own 
acquaintances and connections 1 Is there one 
single instance where the)' have directed the 
attention of the society to this higher species 
of suppression, and sacrificed men of consi- 
deration to that zeal for virtue which watches 
so acutely over the vices of the poor 1 It 
would give us very little pleasure to see a 
duchess sent to the Poultry compter ; but if we 
saw the society frying at such high game, we 
should at least say they were honest and 
courageous, whatever judgment we might 
form of their good sense. At present they 
should denominate themselves a society for 
suppressing the vices of persons whose income 
does not exceed 5001. per annum ; and then, to 
put all classes upon an equal footing, there 
must be another society of barbers, butchers, 
and bakers, to return to the higher classes that 
moral character, by which they are so highly 
benefited. 
To show how impossible it is to keep such 



societies within any kind of boimds, we shall 
quote a passage respecting circulating' libra- 
ries, from their proceedings. 

"Your committee have good reasons for 
believing, that the circulation of their notices 
among the printsellers, warning them against 
the sale or exhibition of indecent representa- 
tions, has produced, and continues to produce, 
the best effects. 

" But they have to lament that the extended 
establishments of circulating libraries, how- 
ever useful they may be, in a variety of 
respects, to the easy and general diffusion of 
knowledge, are extremely injurious to morals 
and religion, by the indiscriminate admission 
which they give to works of a prurient and 
immoral nature. It is a toilsome task to any 
virtuous and enlightened mind, to wade through 
the catalogues of these collections, and much 
more to select such books from them as have 
only an apparent bad tendency. But your 
committee being convinced that their attention 
ought to be directed to those institutions which 
possess such powerful and numerous means 
of poisoning the minds of young persons, and 
especially of the female youth, have therefore 
begun to make some endeavours towards their 
better regulation." — Statement of the Proceedings 
for 1804, pp. 11, 12. 

In the same spirit, we see them writing to a 
country magistrate in Devonshire, respecting 
a wake advertised in the public papers. No- 
thing can be more presumptuous than such 
conduct, or produce, in the minds of impartial 
men, a moi'e decisive impression against the 
society. 

The natural answer from the members of 
the society (the only answer they have ever 
made to the enemies of their institution) will 
be, that we are lovers of vice, — desirous of 
promoting indecency, of destroying the Sab- 
bath, and of leaving mankind to the unre- 
strained gratification of their passions. We 
have only very calmly to reply, that we are 
neither so stupid nor so wicked as not to con- 
cur in every scheme which has for its object 
the preservation of rational religion and sound 
morality ; — but the scheme must be well con- 
certed, — and those wljo are to carry it into 
execution must deserve our confidence, from 
their talents and their character. Upon reli- 
gion and morals depends the happiness of 
mankind; — but the fortune of knaves and the 
power of fools are sometimes made to rest on 
the same apparent basis ; and we will never 
(if we can help it) allow a rogue to get rich, 
or a blockhead to get powerful, under the 
sanction of these awful words. We do not by 
any means intend to apply these contemptuous 
epithets to the Society for the Suppression. 
That there are among their number some verj' 
odious hypocrites, is not impossible; that 
many men who believe they come there from 
the love of virtue, do really join the society 
from the love of power, we do not doubt: but 
we see no reason to doubt that the great mass 
of subscribers consists of persons who have 
very sincere intentions of doing good. That 
they have, in some instances, done a great 
deal of good, we admit with the greatest 



292 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pleasure. We believe, that in the hands of 
truly hoaest, intrepid, and above all, discreet 
men, such a society might become a valuable 
institution, improve in some degree the public 
morals, and increase the public happiness. 
So many qualities, however, are required to 
carry it on well, — the temptations to absurdity 
and impertinence are so very great, — that we 
ever despair of seeing our wishes upon this 
subject realized. In the present instance, our 
object has been to suppress the arrogance of 
suppressors, — to keep them within due bounds, 



— to show them that to do good requires a 
little more talent and reflection than they are 
aware of, — and, above all, to impress upon 
them that true zeal for virtue knows no dis- 
tinction between the rich and the poor; and 
that the cowardly and the mean can never be 
the true friends of morality, and the promoters 
of human happiness. If they attend to these 
rough doctrines, they will ever find in the 
writers of this journal their warmest ad- 
mirers, and their most sincere advocates and 
friends. 



CHAEACTEHS OF FOX; 

[Edinburgh Review, 1809.] 



This singular work consists of a collection 
of all the panegyrics passed upon Mr. Fox, 
after his decease, in periodical publications, 
speeches, sermons, or elsewhere, — in a pane- 
gyric upon Mr. Fox by Philopatris himself, — 
and in a volume of notes by the said Philo- 
patris upon the said panegyric. 

Of the panegyrics, that by Sir James Mack- 
intosh appears to us to be by far the best. It 
is remarkable for good sense, acting upon a 
perfect knowledge of his subject, for simpli- 
city, and for feeling. Amid the languid or 
turgid efforts of mediocrity, it is delightful to 
notice the skill, attention, and resources, of a 
superior man, — of a man, too, who seems to 
feel what he writes, — who does not aim at 
conveying his meaning hi rhetorical and orna- 
mental phrases, but who uses plain words to 
express strong sensations. We cannot help 
wishing, indeed, that Sir James Mackintosh 
had been more diffuse upon the political cha- 
racter of Mr. Fox, the great feature of whose 
life was the long and unwearied opposition 
which he made to the low cunning, the profli- 
gate extravagance, the sycophant mediocrity, 
and the stupid obstinacy of the English court. 

To estimate the merit and the difficulty of 
this opposition, we must remember the enor- 
mous influence which the crown, through the 
medium of its patronage, exercises in the re- 
motest corners of the kingdom, — the number 
of subjects whom it pays, — the much greater 
number whom it keeps in a state of expecta- 
tion, — and the ferocious turpitude of those 
mercenaries whose present profits and future 
hopes are threatened by honest, and exposed 
by eloquent men. It is the easiest of all things, 
too. in this country, to make Englishmen be- 
lieve that those who oppose the government 
wish to ruin the country. The English are a 
very busy people ; and, with all the faults of 
their governors, they are still a very happy 
people. They have, as they ought to have, a 
perfect confidence in the administration of 
justice. The rights which the different classes 



* Characters of the late Charles James Fox. By Phi- 
lopatris Varvicensis. 2 vols. 8vo. 



of mankind exercise the one over the other 
are arranged upon equitable principles. Life, 
liberty, and property are protected from the 
violence and caprice of power. The visible 
and immediate stake, therefore, for which 
English politicians play, is not large enough 
to attract the notice of the people, and to call 
them off from their daily occupations, to in- 
vestigate thoroughly the characters and mo- 
tives of men engaged in the business of legis- 
lation. The people can only understand, and 
attend to the last results of a long series of 
measures. They are impatient of the details 
which lead to these results ; and it is the 
easiest of all things to make them believe that 
those who insist upon such details are actuated 
only by factious motives. We are all now 
groaning under the weight of taxes : but how 
often was Mr. Fox followed by the curses of 
his country for protesting against the two 
wars which have loaded us with these taxes ? 
— the one of which wars has made America 
independent, and the other rendered France 
omnipotent. The case is the same with all 
the branches of public liberty. If the broad 
and palpable question wei'e, whether every 
book which issues from the press should be 
subjected to the license of a general censor, 
it would be impossible to blacken the charac- 
ter of any man who, so called upon, defended 
the liberty of publishing opinions. But, when 
the attorney-general for the time being ingra- 
tiates himself with the court, by nibbling at 
this valuable privilege of the people, it is very 
easy to treat hostility to his measures as a 
minute and frivolous opposition to the govern- 
ment, and to persuade the mass of mankind 
that it is so. In fact, when a nation has be- 
come free, it is extremely difficult to persuade 
them that their freedom is only to be preserved 
by perpetual and minute jealousy. They do 
not observe that^ there is a constant, perhaps 
an unconscious, effort, on the part of their 
governors, to diminish, and- so ultimately to 
destroy, that freedom. They stupidly imagine 
that what is, will always be; and, contented 
with the good they have already gained, are 
easily persuaded to suspect and vilify thosfr 



i 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



393 



friends — the object of whose life it is to pre- 
serve that good, and to increase it. 

It was the lot of Mr. Fox to fight this battle 
for the greater part of his life ; in the course 
of which time he never was seduced by the 
love of power, wealth, or popularity, to sacri- 
frce the happiness of the many to the interest 
of the few. He rightly thought, that kings, and 
all piiblic officers, were instituted only for the 
good of those over whom they preside ; and 
. he acted as if this conviction was always 
. present to his mind; disdaining and with- 
standing that idolatrous tendency of mankind, 
by which they so often not only suffer, but 
invite ruin from that power which they them- 
selves have wisely created for their own hap- 
piness. He loved, too, the happiness of his 
countrymen more than their favour; and while 
others were exhausting the resources, by flat- 
tering the ignorant prejudices and foolish 
passions of the country, Mr. Fox was content 
to be odious to the people, so long as he could 
be useful also. It will be long before we wit- 
ness again such pertinacious opposition to the 
alarming power of the crown, and to the fol- 
lies of our public measures, the necessary 
consequence of that power. That such oppo- 
sition should ever be united again with such 
extraordinary talents, it is, perhaps, in vain 
to hope. 

One little exception to the eulogium of Sir 
James Mackintosh upon Mr. Fox, we cannot 
,^ help making. We are no admirers of Mr. 
. Fox's poetry. His Vers de Societe appears to 
us flat and insipid. To write verses was the 
only thing which Mr. Fox ever attempted to 
do, without doing it well. In that single in- 
stance he seems to have mistaken his talent. 

Immediately after the collection of panegy- 
rics which these volumes contain, follows tlie 
eulogium of Mr. Fox by Philopatris himself; 
and then a volume of notes upon a variety of 
topics which this eulogium has suggested. Of 
the laudatory talents of this Warwickshire 
patriot, we shall present our readers with a 
specimen. 

" Mr. Fox, though not an adept in the use 
of political wiles, was very unlikely to be the 
dupe of them. He was conversant in the 
ways of man, as well as in the contents of 
books. He was acquainted with the peculiar 
language of states, their peculiar forms, and 
the grounds and effects of their peculiar 
usages. From his earliest youth, he had in- 
vestigated the science of politics in the greater 
and the smaller scale ; he had studied it in 
the records of history, both popular and rare 
— in the conferences of ambassadors — in the 
archives of royal cabinets — in the minuter 
detail of memoirs — and in collected or strag- 
■^ling anecdotes of the wrangles, intrigues, and 
cabals, which, springing up in the secret re- 
cesses of courts, shed their baneful influence 
on the determinations of sovereigns, the for- 
tune of favourites, and the tranquillity of king- 
doms. But that statesmen of all ages, like 
priests of all religions, are in all respects 
alike, is a doctrine the propagation of which 
iie left, as an inglorious privilege, to the misan- 
thrope, to the recluse, to the factious incen- 
•diary, and to the unlettered multitude. For 



himself he thought it no very extraordinary 
stretch of penetration or charity, to admit that 
human nature is everywhere nearly as capable 
of emulation in good, as in evil. He boasted 
of no very exalted heroism, in opposing the 
calmness and firmness of conscious integrity 
to the shuflJing and slippery movements, the 
feints in retreat, and feints in advance, the 
dread of being over-reached, or detected in 
attempts to over-reach, and all the other humi- 
liating and mortifying anxieties of the most 
accomplished proficients in the art of diplo- 
macy. He reproached himself for no guilt, 
when he endeavoured to obtain that respect 
and confidence which the human heart una- 
voidably feels in its intercourse with persons 
who neither wound our pride, nor take aim at 
our happiness, in a war of hollow and ambi- 
guous words. He was sensible of no weak- 
ness in believing that politicians, who, after 
all, 'knew only as they are known,' may, like 
other human beings, be at first the involuntary 
creatures of circumstances, and seem incor- 
rigible from the want of opportunities or in- 
citements to correct themselves; that, bereft 
of the pleas usually urged in vindication of 
deceit, by men who are fearful of being de- 
ceived, they, in their official dealings with him, 
would not wantonly lavish the stores they had 
laid up for huckstering in a traffic, which, 
ceasing to be profitable, would begin to be 
infamous ; and that, possibly, here and there, 
if encouraged by example, they might learn 
to prefer the shorter process, and surer results 
of plain dealing, to the delays, the vexations, 
and the uncertain or transient success, both of 
old-fashioned and new-fangled chicanery." — 
(1.209—211.) 

It is impossible to read this singular book 
without being everywhere struck with the 
lofty and honourable feelings, the enlightened 
benevolence, and sterling honesty with which 
it abounds. Its author is everywhere the cir- 
cumspect friend of those moral and religious 
principles upon which the happiness of so- 
ciety rests. Though he is never timid, nor 
prejudiced, nor bigoted, his piety, not prudish 
and full of antiquated and affected tricks, pre- 
sents itself with an earnest aspect, and in a 
manly form; obedient to reason, prone to in- 
vestigation, and dedicated to honest purposes 
The writer, a clergyman, speaks of himself as 
a very independent man, who has always ex- 
pressed his opinion without any fear of con- 
sequences, or any hope of bettering his con- 
dition. We sincerely believe he speaks the 
truth; and revere him for the life he has led. 
Political independence — discouraged enough 
in these times among all classes of men — is 
sure, in the timid profession of the church, to 
doom a man to eternal poverty and obscurity. 

There are occasionally, in Philopatris, a 
great vigour of style and felicity of expres- 
sion. His display of classical learning is 
quite unrivalled — his reading various ana 
good; and we may observe, at intervals, a 
talent for wit, of which he might have availea 
himself to excellent purpose, had it been com- 
patible with the dignified style in which he 
generally conveys his sentiments. With ah 
these excellent qualities of head and heart, we 
2b2 



294 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



have .seldom met with a writer more full of 
faults than Philopatris. There is an event re- 
corded in the Bible, which men who write 
books should keep constantly in their remem- 
brance. It is there set forth, that many cen- 
turies ago, the earth was covered with a great 
flood, by which the whole of the human race, 
with the exception of one family, were de- 
stroyed. It appears also, that from thence, a 
great alteration was made in the longevity of 
mankind, who, from a range of seven or eight 
hundred years, which they enjoyed before the 
flood, were confined to their present period of 
seventy or eighty years. This epoch in the 
history of man gave birth to the twofold divi- 
sion of the antediluvian and postdiluvian style 
of writing, the latter of which naturally con- 
tracted itself into those inferior limits which 
were better accommodated to the abridged du- 
ration of human life and literary labour. Now, 
to forget this event, — to write without the fear 
of the deluge before his eyes, and to handle a 
subject as if mankind could lounge over a 
pamphlet for ten years, as before their sub- 
mersion, — is to be guilty of the most grievous 
error into which a writer can possibly fall. 
The author of this book should call in the aid 
of some brilliant pencil, and cause the dis- 
tressing scenes of the deluge to be portrayed 
in the most lively colours for his use. He 
should gaze at Noah and be brief. The ark 
should constantly remind him of the little time 
there is left for reading ; and he should learn, 
as they did in the ark, to crowd a great deal 
of matter into a very little compass. 

Philopatris must not only condense what he 
says into a narrower compass, but he must 
say it in a more natural manner. Some per- 
sons can neither stir hand nor foot without 
making it clear that they are thinking of them- 
selves, and laying little traps for approbation. 
In the course of two long volumes, the Patriot 
of Warwick is perpetually studying modes 
and postures : — the subject is the second con- 
sideration, and the mode of expression the 
first. Indeed, whole pages together seem to 
be mere exercises upon the English language, 
to evince the copiousness of our synonymes, 
and to show the various methods in which 
the parts of speech can be marshalled and 
arrayed. This, which would be tiresome 
in the ephemeral productions of a newspa- 
per, is intolerable in two closely printed 
volumes. 

Again, strange as it may appear to this au- 
thor to say so, he must not fall into the fre- 
quent mistake of rural politicians, by sup- 
posing that the understandings of all Europe 
are occupied Avith him and his opinions. His 
ludicrous self-importance is perpetually de- 
stroying the efiect of virtuous feeling and just 
observation, leaving his readers with a dispo- 
sition to laugh, where they might otherwise 
learn and admire. 

" I have been asked, why, after pointing out 
by name the persons who seemed to me most 
qualified for reforming our penal code, I de- 
clined mentioning such ecclesiastics as might 
with propriety be employed in preparing for 
the use of the churches a grave and impres- 
sive discourse on the authority of human laws ; 



and as other men may ask the same question, 
which my friend did, I have determined, after 
some deliberation, to insert the substance of 
my answer in this place. 

" If the public service of our church should' 
ever be directly employed in giving effect to 
the sanctions of our penal code, the office of 
drawing up such a discourse as I have ven- 
tured to recommend would, I suppose, be as- 
signed to more than one person. My eccle- 
siastical superiors will, I am sure, make a 
wise choice. But they will hardly condemn 
me for saying, that the best sense expressed in 
the best language may be expected from the 
Bishops of Landaff, Lincoln, St. David's,. 
Cloyne, and Norwich, the Dean of Christ 
Church, and the President of Magdalen Col- 
lege, Oxford. I mean not to throw the slightest 
reproach upon other dignitaries whom I have 
not mentioned. But I should imagine that 
few of my enlightened contemporaries hold an 
opinion different from my own, upon the mas- 
culine understanding of a Watson, the sound 
judgment of a Tomlin, the extensive erudition 
of a Burgess, the exquisite taste and good na- 
ture of a Bennet, the calm and enlightened 
benevolence" of a Bathurst, the various and 
valuable attainments of a Cyril Jackson, or 
the learning, wisdom, integrity, and piety of a 
Martin Roulh."— (pp. 524, 525.) 

In the name of common modesty, what 
could it have signified whether this author had 
giv^n a list of ecclesiastics whom he thought 
qualified to preach about human laws ? what 
is his opinion worth 1 who called for it 1 who 
wanted ill how many millions will be influ- 
enced by it 1 — and who, oh gracious Heaven ! 
who are a Burgess, — a Tomlin, — a Bennet, — a 
Cyril Jackson, — a Martin Routh 1 — A Tom, — a 
Jack, — a Harry, — a Peter? All good men 
enough in their generation doubtless they are. 
But what have they done for the broad o.? 
what has any one of them perpetrated, which 
will make him be remembered, out of the 
sphere of his private virtues, six months after 
his decease 1 Stirely, scholars and gentlemen 
can drink tea with each other, and eat bread 
and butter, withotit all this laudatory crack- 
ling. 

Philopatris has employed a great deal of 
time upon the subject of capital punishments, 
and has evinced a great deal of very laudable 
tenderness and humanity in discussing it. We 
are scarcely, however, converts to that system 
which would totally abolish the punishment 
of death. That it is much too frequently in- 
flicted in this country, we readily admit ; but 
we suspect it will be always necessary to re- 
serve it for the most pernicious crimes. Death 
is the most terrible punishment to the Common 
people, and therefore the most preventive. It 
does not perpetually outrage the feelings of 
those who are innocent, and likely to remain 
innocent, as would be the case from the spec- 
tacle of convicts working in the highroads 
and public places. Death is the most irrevo- 
cable punishment, which is in some sense a 
good ; for, however necessary it might be to 
inflict labour and imprisonment for life, it 
would never be done. Kings and legislatures 
would take pity after a great lapse of years ; 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



295 



the punishment would be remitted, and its pre- 
ventive efficacy, therefore, destroyed. We 
agree with Philopatris, that the executions 
should be more solemn ; but still the English 
are not of a very dramatic turn, and the thing 
must not be got up too finely. Philopatrist 
and Mr. Jeremy Bentham before him, lay a 
vast stress upon the promulgation of laws, 
and treat the inattention of the English govern- 
ment to this point as a serious evil. It may 
be so — but we do not happen to remember any 
man punished for an offence which he did not 
know to be an offence ; though he might not 
know exactly the degree in which it was 
punishable. Who are to read the laws to the 
people 1 who would listen to them if they 
were readl who would comprehend them if 
they listened 1 In a science like law there 
must be technical phrases known only to pro- 
fessional men : business could not be carried 
on without them : and of w^hat avail would it 
be to repeat such phrases to the people ? 
Again, what laws are to be repeated, and in 
what places 1 Is a law respecting the number 
of threads on the shuttle of a Spitalfields 
weaver to be read to the corn-growers of the 
Isle ofThanetl If not, who is to make the 
selection 1 If the law cannot be comprehended 
by listening to the viva voce repetition, is the 
reader to explain it, and are there to be law 
lectures all over the kingdom ! The fact is, 
that the evil does not exist. Those who are 
most likely to commit the offence soon scent out 



the newly devised punishments, and have been 
long thoroughly acquainted with the old ones. 
Of the nice applications of the law they are 
indeed ignorant ; but they purchase the requi- 
site skill of some man whose business it is to 
acquire it ; and so they get into less mischief 
by trusting to others than they would do if 
they pretended to inform themselves. The 
people, it is true, are ignorant of the laws ; 
but they are ignorant only of the laws that do 
not concern them. A poacher knows nothing 
of the penalties to which he exposes himself 
by stealing ten thousand pounds from the pub- 
lic. Commissioners of public boards are 
unacquainted with all the decretals of our 
ancestors respecting the wiring of hares ; but 
the one pockets his extra per centage, and the 
other his leveret, with a perfect knowledge of 
the laws — the particular laws which it is his 
business to elude. Philopatris will excuse us 
for differing from him upon a subject where 
he seems to entertain such strong opinions. 
We have a real respect for all his opinions: — 
no man could form them who had not a good 
heart and a sound understanding. If we have 
been severe upon his style of writing, it is be- 
cause we know his weight in the common- 
wealth : and we wish that the many young 
persons who justly admire and imitate him 
should be turned to the difficult task of imi- 
tating his many excellences, rather than the 
useless and easy one of copying his few de- 
fects. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE HISTORICAL WORK OF THE 
RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES JAMES FOX.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1809.] 



This is an extraordinary performance in 
itself; — but the reasons assigned for its publi- 
cation are still more extraordinary. A per- 
son of Mr. Rose's consequence — incessantly 
occupied, as he assures us, " with official du- 
ties, which take equally," according to his ele- 
gant expression, " from the disembarrassment 
of the mind and the leisure of time," — thinks it 
absolutely necessary to explain to his country 
the motives which have led him to do so idle 
a thing as to write a book. He would not 
have it supposed, however, that he could be 
tempted to so questionable an act by any light 
or ordinary consideration. Mr. Fox and other 
literary loungers may write from a love of 
fame, or a relish for literature ; but the official 
labours of Mr. Rose can only be suspended by 
higher calls. All his former publications, he 
informs us, originated in a "sense of public 
duty -," and the present, in " an impulse of pri- 

* Observations on the Historical Work of the Ri^kt 
Honourable Charles James Fox. By the Right Honourable 
George Rose. pp. 215. mtk a J^arrative of the Events 
which occurred in the Enterprise of the Earl of Jlrgyle in 
1685. By Sir Patrick Hume. London. 1809. 



vate friendship." An ordinary reader may, 
perhaps, find some difficulty in comprehending 
how Mr. Rose could be " impelled by private 
friendship," to publish a heavy quarto of po- 
litical observations on Mr. Fox's history: — and 
for our own part, we must confess, that after 
the most diligent perusal of his long explana- 
tion, we do not in the least comprehend it yet. 
The explanation, however, which is very cu- 
rious, it is our duty to lay before our readers. 

Mr. Rose was much patronised by the late 
Earl of Marchmont, who left him his family 
papers, with an injunction to make use of 
them, " if it should ever become necessary." 
Among these papers was a narrative by Sir 
Patrick Hume, the earl's grandfather, of the 
occurrences which befell him and his associ- 
ates in the unfortunate expedition undertaken 
by the Earl of Argyle in 1685. Mr. Fox, in 
detailing the history of that expedition, has 
passed a censure, as Mr. Rose thinks, on the 
character of Sir Patrick ; and, to obviate the 
effects of that censure, he now finds it "ne- 
cessary" to publish this volume. 

All this sounds very chivalrous and affec- 



296 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tionate ; but we have three little remarks to 
make. In the first place, Mr. Fox passes no 
censure on Sir Patrick Hume. In the second 
place, this publication does by no means obvi- 
ate the censure of which Mr. Rose complains. 
And, thirdly, it is utterly absurd to ascribe Mr. 
Rose's part of the volume, in which Sir Pat- 
rick Hume is scarcely ever mentioned, to any 
anxiety about his reputation. 

In the first place, it is quite certain that Mr. 
Fox passes no censure on Sir Patrick Hume. 
On the contrary, he says of him, that " he had 
early distinguished himself in the cause of 
liberty;" and afterwards rates him so very 
highly as to think it a sufficient reason for 
construing some doubtful points in Sir John 
Cochrane's conduct favourably, that " he had 
always acted in conjunction with Sir Patrick 
Hume, who is proved by the subsequent events, 
and, indeed, by the whole tenour of his life and con- 
duct, to have been uniformly sincere and zealous tn 
the cause of his country." Such is the deliberate 
and unequivocal testimony which Mr. Fox has 
borne to the character of this gentleman ; and 
such the historian, whose unjust censures have 
compelled the Right Honourable George Rose 
to indite 250 quarto pages, out of pure regard 
to the injured memory of this ancestor of his 
deceased patron. 

Such is Mr. Fox's opinion, then, of Sir Pat- 
rick Hume ; and the only opinion he anywhere 
gives of his character. With regard to his cow- 
duct, he observes, indeed, in one place, that he 
and the other gentlemen engaged in the enter- 
prise appear to have paid too little deference 
to the opinion of their noble leader ; and nar- 
rates, in another, that, at the breaking up of 
their little army, they did not even stay to rea- 
son with him, but crossed the Clyde with such 
as would follow them. Now, Sir Patrick's 
own narrative, so far from contradicting either 
of these statements, confirms them both in the 
most remarkable manner. There is scarcely 
a page of it that does not show the jealous and 
controlling spirit which was exercised towards 
their leader ; and, with regard to the conclud- 
ing scene, Sir Patrick's own account makes 
infinitely more strongly against himself and 
Sir John Cochrane, than the general state- 
ment of Mr. Fox. So far from staying to argue 
with their general before parting with him, it 
appears that Sir Patrick did not so much as 
see him ; and that Cochrane, at whose sugges- 
tion he deserted him, had in a manner ordered 
that unfortunate nobleman to leave their com- 
pany. The material words of the narrative 
are these : — 

" On coming down to Kilpatrick, I met Sir 
John (Cochrane), with others accompanieing 
him ; who takeing mee by the hand, turned mee, 
■ saying. My heart, goe you with mee 1 Whither 
goe you, said 1 1 Over Clide by boate, said 
he. — I : Wher is Argyle ] I must see him. — 
He : He is gone away to his owne countrey, 
you cannot see him. — I : How comes this 
change of resolution, and that wee went not 
together to Glasgow 1 — He : It is no time to 
ansv.'er questions, but- 1 shall satisfy you after- 
ward. To the boates wee came, filled 2, and 
rowed over," &c. — " An honest gentleman who 



was present, told mee afterward the manner 
of his parting with the Erie. Argyle being in 
the roome with Sir John, the gentleman com- 
ing in, found confusion in the Erie's counte- 
nance and speach. In end he said, Sir John, I 
pray adviser mee what shall I doe ; shall I goe 
over Clide with you, or shall I goe to my owne 
countrey? Sir John answered. My Lord, I 
have told you my opinion ; you have some High- 
landers here about you; it is best you goe to your 
owne countrey with them, for it is to no purpose for 
you to go over Clide. My lord, faire you well. 
Then call'd the gentleman. Come away. Sir; 
who followed him when I met with him." — Sir P. 
Hume's Narrative, pp. 63, 64. 

Such are all the censures which Mr. Fox 
passes upon this departed worthy; and such 
the contradiction which Mr. Rose now thinks it 
necessary to exhibit. It is very true that Mr. 
Fox, in the course of his narrative, is under 
the necessity of mentioning, on the credit of 
all the historians who have treated of the sub- 
ject, that Argyle, after his capture, did express 
himself in terms of strong disapprobation both 
of Sir Patrick Hume and of Sir John Cochrane; 
and said, that their ignorance and misconduct 
were, though not designedly, the chief cause of 
his failure. Mr. Fox neither adopts nor rejects 
this sentiment. He gives his own opinion, as 
we have already seen, in terms of the highest 
encomium, on the character of Sir Patrick 
Hume, and merely repeats the expressions of 
Argyle as he found them in Wodrow and the 
other historians, and as he was under the ne- 
cessity of repeating them, if he was to give 
any account of the last words of that unfortu- 
nate nobleman. It is this censure of Argyle, 
then, perhaps, and not any censure of Mr. Fox's, 
that Mr. Rose intended to obviate by the publi- 
cation before us. But, upon this supposition, 
how did the appearance of Mr. Fox's book con- 
stitute that necessity which compelled the tender 
conscience of Lord Marchmont's executor to 
give to the world this long-lost justification of 
his ancestor? The censure did not appear for 
the first time in Mr. Fox's book. It was re- 
peated, during Sir Patrick's own life, in all the 
papers of the time, and in all the historians 
since. Sir Patrick lived nearly forty good 
years after this accusation of Argyle was made, 
public ; and thirty-six of those years in great 
credit, honour, and publicity. If he had 
thought that the existence of such an accusa- 
tion constituted a kind of moral necessity for 
the publication of his narrative, it is evident 
that he would himself have published it ; and 
if it was not necessary then, while he was 
alive, to suffer by the censure of his leader, or 
to profit by its refutation, it is not easy to un- 
derstand how it should be necessary now, when 
130 years have elapsed from the date of it, and 
the bones of its author have reposed for nearly 
a century in their peaceful and honoured 
monument. 

That the narrative never was published be- 
fore, though the censure, to which it is supposed 
to be an antidote, had been published for more 
than a century, is a pretty satisfactory proof 
that those who were most interested and best 



WORKS OF THE REV.' SYDNEY SMITH. 



297 



qualified to judge, either did not consider the 
censure as very deadly, or the antidote as ve_ry 
effectual. We are very well- contented to leave 
it doubtful which of these was the case ; and 
we are convinced that all the readers of Mr. 
Rose's book will agree that it is still very 
doubtful. Sir Patrick, in his narrative, no 
doubt, says that Afgyle was extremely arrogant, 
self-willed, and obstinate ; but it is equally cer- 
tain, that the earl said to him that he was 
jealous, disobedient, and untractable. Both 
-were men of honour and veracity; and, we 
. doubt not, believed what they said. It is even 
possible that both may have said truly; but, at 
this distance of time, and with no new evidence 
. but the averment of-one of the parties, it would 
^he altogether ridiculous to pretend to decide 
which may have come nearest to an impartial 
statement. Before the publication of the pre- 
sent narrative, it is plain from Wodrow, Bur- 
net, and other writers, that considerable blame 
was generally laid on Argyle for his perempto- 
riness and obstinacy; and, now that the narra- 
tive is published, it is«still more apparent than 
• ever that he had some ground for the charges 
he made against his officers. The whole 
^tenour of it shows that they were constantly in 
.ithe habit of checking and thwarting him; and 
we have already seen that it gives a very lame 
and unsatisfactory account of their strange 
desertion of him^when their fortunes appeared 
to be desperate. 

It is perfectly ^jlain, therefore, we conceive, 
that the publication of Mr. Fox's book consti- 
tuted neither a necessity nor an intelligible in- 
ducement for the publication of this narrative; 
and that the narrative, now that it is published, 
has no tendency to remove any slight shade 
of censure that history may have thrown over 
the temper or prudence of Sir Patrick Hume. 
But, even if all this had been otherwise — if 
Mr. Fox had, for the first time, insinuated a 
censure on this defunct whig, and if the narra- 
tive had contained the most complete refuta- 
tion of such a censiire, — this might, indeed, 
have accounted for the publication of Sir 
Patrick's narrative ; but it could not "have ac- 
counted at all for the publication of Mr. Rose's 
book — the only thing to be accounted for. The 
narrative is given .as an appendix of 65 pages 
to a volume of upwards of 300. In publishing 
the narrative, Mr. Rose did not assume the 
character of "an author," and was not called 
upon, by the responsibility of that character, 
to explain lo the world his reasons for " sub- 
mitting himself to their judgment." It is only 
for his book, then, exclusive of the narrative, 
that Mr. Rose can be understood to be^ offering 
any apohigy; and the apology he offers is, that 
it sprung from the impulse of private friend- 
ship. When the matter is looked into, how- 
ever, it turns out, that though private friendship 
may, by a great stretch, be supposed to have 
dictated the publication of the appendix, it can 
by no possibility account, or help to account, 
for the composition of the book. Nay, the ten- 
dency and tenour of the book are' such as this 
ardent and romantic friendship must necessa- 
rily condemn. It contains nothing whatever 
in praise or in defence of Sir Patrick Hume; 
but it contains a verv keen, and not a very 
'38 



candid, attack upon his party and his principles. 
Professing to be published from anxiety to vin- 
dicate and exalt the memory of an insurgent 
revolution whig, it consists almost entirely of 
an attempt to depreciate whig principles, and 
openly to decry and vilify such of Mr. Fox's 
opinions -as Sir Patrick Hume constantly ex- 
emplified in his actions. There never was an 
effect, we believe, imputed to so improbable a 
cause. 

Finally, we may ask, if Mr. Rose's view, in 
this publication, was merely to vindicate the 
memory of Sir Patrick Hume, why he did not 
put into Mr. Fox's hands the information which 
would have rendered all vindication unneces- 
sary ? It was known to all the world, for 
several years, that Mr. Fox was engaged in the 
history of that period; and if Mr. Rose really 
thought that the papers in his custody gave a 
different view of Sir Patrick's conduct from 
that exhibited in the printed authorities, was it 
not his duty to plat Mr. Fox upon his guard 
against being misled by them, and to commu- 
nicate to him those invaluable documents to 
which he could have access in no other way 1 
Did he doubt that Mr. Fox would have candour 
to state the truth, or that he would have stated 
with pleasure any thing that could exalt the 
character of a revolution whigl Did he 
imagine that any statement of his could ever 
obtain equal notoriety and effect with a state- 
ment in Mr. Fox's history 1 Or did he poorly 
withhold this information, that he might detract 
from the value of that history> and have to 
boast to the public that there was one point 
upon which he was better informed than that 
illustrious statesman 1 As to the preposterous 
apology which seems to be hinted at in the 
book itself, viz., that it was Mr. Fox's business 
to have asked for these papers, and not Mr. 
Rose's to have offered them, we shall only 
observe, that it stands on a point of etiquette, 
which would scarcely be permitted to govern 
the civilities of tradesmen's wives ; and that it 
seems not a little unreasonable to lay Mr. Fox 
under the necessity of asking for papers, the 
very existence of which he could have no 
reason to expect. This narrative of Sir Pat- 
rick Hume has now lain in the archives of 
his family for 130 years, unknown and unsus- 
pected to all but its immediate proprietor; and, 
distinguished as Sir Patrick was in his day in 
Scotland, it certainly does not imply any extra- 
ordinary stupidity in Mr. Fox, not to know, by 
intuition, 'that there were papers of his in exist- 
ence which might afford him some light on the 
subject of his history. 

We may appear to have dwelt too long on 
these preliminary considerations, since the 
intrinsic value of Mr. Rose's observations cer- 
tainly will not be affected by the truth or the 
fallacy of the motives Tie has assigned for pub- 
lishing them. It is impossible, however, not 
to see that, when a writer assigns a false 
motive for his coming forward, he is commonly 
conscious that the real one is discreditable: 
and that to expose the hollowness of such a 
pretence, is to lay the foundation of a whole- 
some distrust of his general fairness and tem- 
per. Any bo.dv certainly had a right to publish 
remarks on Mr. Fox's work— and nobody a 



298 



WORKS OF THfc REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



better right than Mr. Rose % and if he had stated- 
openly, that all the habits and connections of 
his life had led him to wish to see that work 
discredited, no one would have been entitled to 
complain of his exertions in the cause. When 
he chooses to disguise this motive, however, 
and to assign -another, which does not at all 
account for the phenomenon, we are so far 
from forgetting the existence of the other, that 
we are internally convinced of its being much 
stronger than we should otherwise have sus- 

' pected; and that it is only dissembled, because 
it exists in a degree that could not have been 
decently avowed. For the same reason, there- 
fore, of enabling our readers more distinctly 
to appreciate the intellect and temper of 
this right honourable author, we must say 
a word or two more of his Introduction, 
before proceeding to the substance of his 
remarks. 

Besides the edifying history of his motive 
for writing, we are favoured, in that singular 
piece, with a number of his opinions upon 
points no way connected with Mr. Fox or his 
history ; and with a copious account of his 
labours and studies in all kinds of juridical 
and constitutional learning. In order to con- 

■firm an opinion that a minute knowledge of our 
ancient history is not necessary to understand 
our actual constitution, he takes an unintelligi- 
ble survey of the progress of our government, 
from the days of King Alfred, — and quotes 
Lord Coke, Plowden, Doomsday Book, Lord 
Ellesmere, Rymer's Fosdera, Dugdale's Ori- 
gines, the Rolls of Parliament, Whitelock, and 
Abbot's Records ; but, above all, " a report 
which / made several years ago on the state 
of the records in my custody." He then goes 
on, in the most obliging manner, to inform his 
readers that " Vertot's Account of the Revolu- 
tions of Rome has been found very useful by 
persons who have read the Roman History; 
but the best model that I have met with for 
such a work as appears to me to be much 
wanted, is a short History of Poland, which I 
translated nearly forty years ago, but did not 
publish ; the manuscript of which his majesty 
at the time did me the honour to accept; and 
it probably is still in his majesty's library." — 
Introduction, pp. xxiv. xxv. 

Truly all this is very interesting, and very 
much to the purpose: — but scarcely more so 
than eight or nine pages that follow, containing 
a long account of the conversations which 
Lord Marchmont had with Lord Bolingbroke, 
about the politics of Queen Anne's ministers, 
and which Mr. Rose now gives to the world 
from his recollection of various conversations 
between himself and Lord Marchmont. He 
tells us, moreover, that, " accustorped as he has 
been to official accuracy in statement," he had 
naturally a quick eye for mistakes in fact or 
in dediiction ; — that "having long enjoyed the 
confidence and aifectionate iT-iendship of Mr. 
Pitt," he has been more scrupulous than he 
would otherwise have been in ascertaining the 
grounds of his animadversions on the work of 
his great rival ; — and that, notwithstanding all 
this anxiety, and the want of "disembarrass- 
ment of mind" and "leisure of. time,'/ he has 
compiled this volume in about as many icceks 



as Mr. Fox took years to the work on which it 
fomments ! 

For the Observations themselves, we must 
say that we have perused them with conside- 
rable pleasure — not certainly from any extra- 
ordinary gratification which we derived from 
the justness of the sentiments, or the elegance 
of the style, but from a certain agreeable sur- 
prise which we experienced on finding how 
few parts of Mr. Fox's doctrine were considered 
as vulnerable, even by Mr. Rose ; and in how 
large a proportion of his freest and strongest 
observations that jealous observer has ex- 
pressed his most cordial concurrence. The 
Right Honourable George Rose, we rather be- 
lieve, is commonly considered as one of the 
least whiggish or democratical of all the pub- 
lic characters who have lived in our times ;. 
and he has himself acknowledged, that a long 
habit of political opposition to Mr. Fox had 
perhaps given him a stronger bias against his 
favourite doctrines than he might otherwise 
have entertained. It was, therefore, no slight 
consolation to us to filid that the true princi- ^ 
pies of English liberty had made so great a 
progress in the opinions of all men in upper 
life, as to extort such an am^le admission of 
them, even from a person of Mr. Rose's habits 
and connections. As we fear, however, that 
the same justness and liberality of thinking 
are by no means general among the more ob- 
scure retainers of party throughout the country, 
we think it may not be without its use to quote 
a few of thfe passages to which we have 
alluded, just to let the vulgar tories in the 
provinces see how much of their favourite, 
doctrines has been abjui'ed by their more en- . 
lightened chief and leaders in the seat of go- 
vernment. 

In the first place, there are all the passages 
(which it would be useless and tedious to re- 
cite) in which the patriotism and public virtue 
of Sir P. Hume are held up to the admiration 
of posterity. Now, Sir P. Hume, that true and 
sincere lover of his country, whose " talents 
and virtues his sovereign acknowledged and» 
rewarded," and " whose honours have been 
attended by the suffrage of his country and the 
approbation of good men," was, even in the 
reign of Charles, concerned in desigris analo- 
gous to those of Russell and Sydney ; — and, 
very soon after the accession of James, and 
(as Mr. Rose thinks) before that monarch had 
done any thing in the least degree blameablie, 
rose up openly in arms, and endeavoured to 
stir up the people to overthrow the existing 
government. Even Mr. Fox hesitated as to 
the wisdom and the virtue of those engaged in 
such enterprises ; — and yet Mr. Rose, profess- 
ing to see danger in that writer's excessive 
zeal for liberty, writes a book to extol the pa- 
triotism of a premature insurgent. 

After this we need not quote our author's 
warm panegyrics on the Revolution — "that 
gloiious event to which the measures of JameS 
necessarily led," — or on the character df Lord 
Sommers, " whose wisdom, talents, political 
coi(,rnge and mrlue, would alone have been sufli- 
cient to insure the success of that measure." 
It may surprise some of his political admirers 
a little more, however, to find him professing 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



399 



that he "concurs with Mr. Fox as to the expe- 
diency of the bill of exclusion," (that boldest 
and most decided of all whig measures) ; and 
thinks " that the events which took place in 
the next reign aflord a strong justification of 
the conduct of the promoters of that measure." 
When his tory friends have digested that sen- 
timent, they may look at his patriotic invec- 
tives against the degrading connection of the 
two last of the Stuart princes with the court 
of France ; and the " scandalous profligacy by 
which Charles and his successor betrayed the 
best interests of their country for miserable 
stipends." There is something very edifying, 
indeed, th'ough we should fear a little alarm- 
ing to courtly tempers, in the warmth with 
which our author winds up his diatribe on 
this interesting subject. " Every one,". he ob- 
serves, " who carries on a clandestine corre- 
spondence with a foreign power, in matters 
touching the interests of Great Britain, is pru 
ma facie guilty of a great moral, as well as po- 
litical, crime. If a subject, he is a traitor to 
his king and his country ; and if a monarch, 
he is a traitor to the crown which he wears, and to 
the empire which he governs. There may, by 
possibility, be circumstances to extenuate the 
former; there can be none to lessen our de- 
testatipn of the latter."— (pp. 149, 1.50.) 

Conformably to these sentiments, Mr. Rose 
expresses his concurrence with all that Mr. 
Fox says of the arbitrary and oppressive mea- 
sures which distinguished the latter part of 
Charles's reign ; — declares that " he has mani- 
fested great temperance and forbearance in 
the character which he gives of Jefieries ; — 
and understated the enormity of the cruel and 
detestable proceedings of the Scottish govern- 
ment, in its unheard of acts of power, and the 
miseries and persecutions which it inflicted ;" 
'admits that Mr. Fox's work treated of a period, 
"in which the tyranny of the sovereign at home 
was not redeemed by any glory or success 
abroad ;" — and speaks of the Revolution as the 
era " when the full measure of the monarches 
tyrannical usurpations made resistaiice a duty para- 
mount to every consideration of personal or public 
danger." 

It is scarcely possible, 'we conceive, to read 
these, and many other passages which might 
be quoted from the work before us, without 
taking the author for a whig ; and it certainly 
is not easy to comprehend how the writer of 
. them could quarrel with any thing in Mr. 
Fox's history, for want of deference and vene- 
ration for the monarchical part of our consti- 
tutions To say the truth, we have not always 
.been able to satisfy ourselves of the worthy 
author's consistency ; and holding, as we are 
inclined to do, that his natural and genuine 
sentiments are liberal and manly, we can only 
account for the narrowness and unfairness of 
some of his I'emarks, by supposing them to 
Originate from the habits of his practical poli- 
tics, and of that long course of opposition, in 
which he learned to consider it a duty to his 
party to discredit every thing that came from 
the advocate of the people. We shall now say 
•a word or two on the remarks themselves, 
wTiich, as we have already noticed, will be 
found to be infinitely fewer, and more insigni- 



ficant, than any one, looking merely at the 
Ijulk'of the volume, could possibly have con- 
jectured. 

The first, of any sort of importance, is made 
on those passages in which Mr. Fox calls the 
execution pf the king " a far less violent mea- 
sure than that of Lord Straflx)rd;" and says, 
" that there was something in the splendour and 
magnanimity of the act, which has served to 
raise. the character of the nation in the opinion 
of Europe in general." Mr. Rose takes great 
offence at both these remarks ; and says, that 
the constitution itself was violated by the exe- 
cution of the king, while the case of Lord 
Strafford was but a private iiyury. We are 
afraid Mr. Rose does not perfectly understand 
Mr. Fox, — otherwise it would be difficult not 
to agree with him. The grossness of Lord 
Strafford's case consisted in this, that a bill of 
attainder was brought in, after a regular pro- 
ceeding by impeachment had been tried against 
him. He was substantially acquitted, by the 
most unexceptionable process known in our 
law, before the bill of attainder came to declare 
him guilty, and to punish him. There was 
here, therefore, a most flagrant violation of all 
law and justice, and a preoedent for endless 
abuses and oppressions. In the case of the 
king, on the other hand, there could be no vio- 
lation of settled rules or practice ; because the 
case itself was necessarily out of the purview 
of every rule, and could be drawn into no pre- 
cedent. The constitution, no doubt, was ne- 
cessarily destroyed or suspended by the trial ; 
but Mr. Rose appears to forget that it had been 
destroyed or suspended before, by the war, or 
by the acts of the king which brought on the 
war. If it was lawful to fight against the king, 
it must have been lawful to take him prisoner: 
after he was a prisoner, it was both lawful and 
necessary to consider what should be done 
with him ; and every deliberation of this sort 
had all the assumption, and none of the fair- 
ness of a trial. Yet Mr. Rose has himself 
told us, that " there are cases in which resist- 
ance becomes a paramount duty;" and pro- 
bably is not prepared to say, that it was more 
violent and criminal to drive King James from 
the throne in 1688, than to wrest all law and 
justice to take the life of Lord Straflxjrd in 
1641. Yet the constitution was as much 
violated by the forfeiture of the oae sove- 
reign, as by the trial and execution of the 
other. It was impossible that the trial of King 
Charles might have terminated in a sentence 
of mere deprivation ; and if James had fought 
against his people, and been conquered, he 
might have been tried and.executed. The con- 
stitution was gone for the time, in both cases, 
as soon as force was mutually appeS.led to ; 
and the violence that followed thereafter, to 
the person of the monarch, can receive no ag- 
gravation from any view of that nature. 

With regard, again, to the loyal horror which 
Mr. Rose expresses, when Mr. Fox speaks of 
the splendour and magnanimity of the pro- 
ceedings against the king, it is probable that 
this zealous observer was not awa,re, that his 
favourite " prerogative writer," Mr. Hume, hai 
used the same, or still loftier expressions, Ir^ 
relation to the same event. Some of the words 



300 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



of that loyal and unsuspected historian arQ as 
follows :-^" the pomp, the dignity, th% cere- 
mony of this transaction, correspond to the 
greatest conceptions that are suggested in the 
annals of human kind ; — the delegates of a 
great people sitting in judgment upon their 
supreme magistrate, and trying him for his 
mismanagement and breach of trust."* Cor- 
dially as we agree with Mr. Fox in the unpro- 
fitable severity of this example, it is impossi- 
ble, we conceive, for anyone to 'consider the 
great, grave, and solemn movement of the 
nation that led to it, or the stern and dispas- 
sionate temper in which it was conducted, 
without feeling that proud contrast between 
this execution and that of aM other deposed 
sovereigns in history, — which led Mr. Fox, in 
common with Mr. Hume, and every other 
writer on the subject, to make use of the ex- 
pressions which have been alluded to. 

When Mr. Rose, in the close of his remarks 
upon this subject, permits himself to insinu- 
ate, that if Mr. Fox thought such high praise 
due to the publicity, «&c., of King Charles's 
trial, he must have felt unbounded admiration 
•at that of Lewis XVI., he has laid himself open 
to a charge of *uch vulgar and uncandid un- 
fairness, as was not to -have been at all ex- 
pected from a person of his rank and descrip- 
tion. If Lewis XVI. had been openly in arms 
against his people, — if the Convention had 
required no other victim — and had settled into 
a regular government as soon as he was re- 
moved, — there might have been more room 
for a parallel, — to which, as the fact actually 
.stands, every Briton must listen with indigna- 
tion. Lewis XVI. was wantonly sacrificed to 
the rage of an insane and bloodthirsty faction, 
and tossed to the executioner among the com- 
mon supplies for the . guillotine. The publi- 
city and parade of his trial were assumed from 
no love of justice, 'or sense of dignity; but 
from a low principle of profligate and clamo- 
rous defiance to every thing that had become 
displeasing: and ridiculous and incredible as 
it would appear of any other nation, we have 
not the least doubt that a certain childish emu- 
lation of the avenging liberty of the English 
had its share in producing this paltry copy of 
our grand and original daring. The insane 
coxcombs who blew out their brains, after a 
piece «f tawdry declamation, in some of the 
provincial assemblies, were about as like Cato 
or Hannibal, as the trial and execution of 
Lewis was like the condemnation of King 
Charles. Our regicides were serious and ori- 
ginal at least, in the bold, bad deeds which 
they committed. The regicides of France 
were jpoor theatrical imitators, — intoxicated 
with blood and with power, and incapable even 
of forming a sober estimate of the guilt or the 
consequences of their actions. Before leav- 
ing this subject, we must remind our readers 
that Mr. Fox unequivocally condemns the exe- 
cution of the king ; and spends some time in 
showing that it was excusable neither on the 
ground of present expediency nor future warn- 
ing. After he had finished that statement, he 
proceeds to say, that notwithstanding what the 
more reasonable part of mankind may think. 



♦ Hume's History, vol. vii. p. HI. 



it is to be doubted, whether that proceeding 
has not served to raise the national character 
in the eyes of foreigners, &c. ; and then goes 
on to refer to the conversations he had liira- 
self witnessed on that subject abroad. A man 
must be a very zealous royalist, indeed, to dis- 
believe or be offended with this. " 

Mr. Rose's next observation is in favour of 
General Monk; upon whom he is of opinion 
that Mr. Fox has been by far too severe, — at 
the same time that he fails utterly in obviating 
any of the grounds upon which that severity 
is justified. Monk was not responsible alotie, 
indeed, for restoring the king, without taking 
any security for the people ; but as wielding 
the whole power of the army, by which that 
restoration was effected, he is certainly chiefly 
responsible for that most criminal omission. 
As to Ijis indifference to the fate of his com- 
panions in arms, Mr. Rose does, indeed; quote 
the testimony of his chaplain, who wrote a 
complimentary life of his patron, to prove 
that, on the trial of the regicides, he behaved 
with great moderation. We certainly do not 
rate this testimony very highly ; and do think 
it far more than compensated by that of Mrs. 
Hutchinson, who, in the life of her husband, 
says, that on the first proceedings against the 
regicides in the House of Commons, "Monk 
sate still, and had not one word to interpose 
for any man, but was as forward to set vengeance 
on foot as any one."* And a little afterwards 
she adds, apparently from her own personal 
knowledge and observation, that "before the 
prisoners were brought to the Tower, Mouk 
and his wife came one evening to the garden, 
and caused them to be brought down, only to 
stare at them, — which was such a behaviour 
for that man, who had betrayed so many of 
those that had honoured and trusted him, &c., 
as no story can parallel the inhumanity of."-)- 

With regard again to Mr. Fox's charge of 
Monk's tamely acquiescing in the insults so 
meanly put on the illustrious corps of his old 
commander Blake, it is perfectly evident, even 
from the authorities referred to by Mr. Rose, 
that Blake's body was dug up by the king's 
order, among others, and removed out of the 
hallowed precincts of Westminster, to be re- 
interred, with twenty more, in one pit at St. 
Margaret's. 

But the chief charge is, that on the trial of 
Argyle, Monk spontaheously sent down some 
confidential letters, which turned the scale of 
evidence against that unfortunate nobleman. 
This statement, to which Mr. Fox is most ab- 
surdly blamed for giving credit, is made on 
the authority of the three historians who lived 
nearest to the date of the transaction, and who 
all report it as quite certain and notorious. 
These historians are Burnet, Baillie, and Cun- 
ningham ; not are they contradicted by any 
one writer on the subject, except Dr. Camp- 
bell, who, at a period comparatively recent, 
and without pretending to have discovered any 
new document on the subject, is pleased to dis- 
believe them upon certain hypothetical and ar- 
gumentative reasons of his own. These rea- 
sons Mr. Laing has examined and most satis- 
factorily obviated in his history; and Mr. Rose . 



* Life of Colonel Hutcbinson, p. 372. f Ibid. p. 378. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



301 



has exerted incredible industry to defend. The 
Scottish records for that period have perished ; 
and for this reason, and because a collection 
of pamphlets and newspapers of that age, in 
Mr- Rose's possession, make no mention of the 
circumstance, he thinks fit to discredit it alto- 
gether. If this kind of scepticism were to be 
indulged, there would be an end of all reliance 
on history. In this particular case, both Bur- 
net and Baillie speak quite positively, from 
the information of contemporaries ; and state a 
circumstance that would very well account 
for the silence of the formal accounts of the 
trial, if any such had been preserved, viz., that 
Monk's letters were not produced till after the 
evidence was finished on both sides, and the 
debate begun on the result; — an irregularity, 
by the way, by much too gross to have been 
charged against a public proceeding 'without 
any foundation. 

Mr. Rose's next observation is directed ra- 
ther against Judge Blackstone than against 
Mr. Fox; and is meant to show, that this 
learned person was guilty of great inaccuracy 
in representing the year 1679 as the era of 
good laws and bad government. It is quite 
imjjDSsible to follow him through the dull de- 
tails and feeble disputations by which he la- 
bours, to make it appear that our laws were 
not very good in 1679, and tha.t they, as well 
as the administration of them, were much 
mended after the Revolution. Mr. Fox's, or 
rather Blackstone's remark is too obviously 
and strikingly true in substance, to admit of 
any argument or illustration.* 

The .next eharge against Mr. Fox is for say- 
ing, that if Charles II.'s .ministers betrayed 
him, he betrayed them in return ; keeping, 
from some of them at least, the secret of what 

. *Mr. Rose talks a great deal, and justly, about the 
advantages of the jtidges not being removable at plea- 
sure; and, with a great air of erudition, informs us, 
that after 6 Charles, all the couimissions were made 
quavidiu nobis plwuerit. Mr. Rose's researches, we fear, 
do not often eo hcyond the records in his custody. If he 
had looked into Rushworth's Collection, he would have 
found, that, in 1641, King Charles agreed to make the 
commission, quamdiu se bene a-epserint ; and that some 
of those illegally removed in the following reicn, though 
not officiating in court, still'retained certain functions in 
consequence of that appointment. The following is the 
passage, at p. 1265, vol. iii. of Rushworth : "After the 
passingof these votes (16th December, 1640J against the 
judges, and transmitting them to the House of Peers, 
and their concurring with the House of Commons therein, , 
an address was made, unto the king shortly after, that 
his majesty, for the future, would not make any judge 
by paterit during- pleasure ; but that they may hold their 
places hereafter, quamdiu se bene gesserint; and his ma- 
jesty did really grant the same. And in his speech to 
both houses of Parliament, at the time of giving his 
royal assent to two bills, one to take away the High 
Commission Court, and the other the Court of Star- 
Chaniber, and regulating the power of the council table, 
lie hath this passage; 'If you consider what I have 
done this Parliament, discontents will not sit in your 
hearts ; for I hope you remember, that I have granted, 
that the judges hereafter shall hold their places quamdiu 
se bene gesserint.' And likewise, his gracious majesty 
King Charles the Second observed the same rule and 
method in granting patents to judges, quamdiu se bene 
gesserint; as appears upon record in the Rolls ; viz., to 
Sergeant Slide to be Lord Chief .Instice of the King's 
Bench. Sir Orlando Bridgeman to be Lord Chief Baron, 
and afterwards to be Lord Chief- .Justice' of Common 
Pleas ; to Sir Robert Forster, and others. Mr. Sergeant 
Archer, now living, notwithstanding his removal, still en- 
joys his patent, being quamdiu se bene gesserint ; and re- 
ceives a share in the profits of the court, as to fees and 
other proceedings, by virtue of his said patent : and his 
name is used in those fines, &c., as a judge of that court." 



he was pleased to call his religion, and the 
state of his connections with France. After 
the furious attack which Mr. Rose has made 
in another place upon this prince and his 
French connections, it is rather surprising to 
see with what zeal he undertakes his defence 
against this very venial sort of treachery, of 
concealing his shame from some of his more 
respectable ministers. The attempt, however, 
is at least as unsuccessful as it is unaccount- 
able. Mr. Fox says only, that some of the 
ministers were not trusted with the secret ; 
and both Dalrymple and Macpherson say, that 
none but the Catholic counsellors were admit- 
ted to this confidence. Mr. Rose mutters, that 
there is no evidence "of this ; and himself pro- 
duces an abstract of the secret treaty between 
Lewis and Charles, of May, 1670, to which the 
subscriptions of four Catholic ministers of the 
latter are affixed ! 

Mr. Fox is next taxed with great negligence 
for saying, that he does not know what 
proof there is of Clarendon's being priyy to 
Charles receiving money from France ; and 
very long quotations are inserted from the 
correspondence printed by Dalrymple and 
Macpherson — which do not prove Clarendon's 
knowledge of any mohey being teceiv»d, though 
they do s5em to establish that he must have 
known of its being stipulated for. 

After this comes Mr. Rose's grand attack; 
in which he charges the historian with his 
whole heavy artillery of argument and quota- 
tion, and makes a vigorous effort to drive him 
from the position, that the. early and primary 
object of James's reign was not to establish 
popery in this country, but in the first place 
to render himself absolute : and that, for a 
considerable time, he does not appear to have 
aimed at any thing more than a complete tole- 
ration for his own religion. The grounds 
upon which this opinion is maintained by Mr. 
Fox are certainly very probable. There is, in 
the first place, his zeal for the Church of Eng- 
land during his brother's life, and the violent 
oppressions by which he enforced a Protestant 
test in Scotland ; secondly, the fact of his carry- 
ing on the government and the persecution of 
nonconformist's by Protestant ministers; and, 
tj;iirdly, his addresses to his Parliament, and 
the tenour of much of his correspondence with 
Lewis. In opposition to this, Mr. Rose quotes 
an infinite variety of passages from Barillon's 
correspondence, to show in general the un- 
feigned zeal of this unfortunate prince for his 
religion, and his constant desire to glorify and 
advance it. Nbw, it is perfectly obvious, in 
the first place, that Mr. Fox never intended to . 
dispute James's zeal for popery ; and, in the 
second place, it is very remarkable, that in the 
first seuew passages quoted by Mr. Rose, nothing 
more is said to be in the king's contemplation 
than the complete toleration of that religion. 
" The free exercise of the Catholic religion in 
their own houses," — the abolition of the penal 
laws against Catholics, — "the free exercise 
of that religion," &c. &c., are the only objects 
to which the zeal of the king is said to be 
directed ; and it is not till after the suppression 
of Monmouth's rebellion, that these phrases 
are exchanged for "a resolution to establish the 
2C 



302 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Catholic religion," or " to get that religion esta- 
blished ;" though it would be fair, perhaps, to 
interpret some even of these phrases with re- 
ference to those which precede them in the 
correspondence ; especially as, in a letter from 
Lewis to Barillon, so late as 20th August, 
1685, he merely urges the great expediency 
of James establishing "the free exercise" of that 
religion. " 

After all, in reality, there is not much sub- 
stantial difference as to this point between the 
historian and his observer. Mr. Fox admits 
most explicitly, that James was zealous in the 
cause of popery; and that after Monmouth's 
execution, he made attempts equally violent 
and undisguised to restore it. Mr. Rose, on 
the other hand, admits that he was exceeding- 
ly desirous to render himself absolute ; and 
that one ground of his attachment to popery 
probably was, its natural affinity with an arbi- 
trary government. Upon which of these two 
objects he set the chief value, and which of 
them be wished to make subservient to the 
other, it is not perhaps now very easy to de- 
termine. In addition to the authorities referred 
to by Mr. Fox, however, there are many more 
which tend directly to show that one great 
ground of his antipathy to* the reformed reli- 
gion was, his conviction that it led to rebellion 
and republicanism. There are very many 
passages in Barillon to this effect; and, in- 
deed, the burden of all Lewis's letters is to 
convince James that "the existence of mo- 
narchy" in England depended on the protec- 
tion of the Catholics. Barillon says (Fox, 
App. p. 125), that " the king often declares 
publicly, that all Calvinists are naturally ene- 
mies to royalty, and above all, to royalty in 
England." And Burnet observes (vol. i. 
p. 73), that the king told him, "that among 
other prejudices he had against the Protestant 
religion, this was one, that his brother and 
himself being in many companies in Paris 
incognito (during the Commonwealth), where 
ther6 were Protestants, he found they were all 
alienated from them, and great admirers of 
Cromwell; so-he believed they were all rebels in 
their hearts." It will not be forgotten either, 
that in his first address to the council, on his 
accession, he made use of those memorable 
words : — "I know the principles of the Church 
,of England are for monarchy, and therefore I 
shall always take care to defend and support 
it." While he retained this opinion of its 
loyalty, accordingly, he did defend and sup- 
port it; and did persecute all dissidents from 
its doctrine, at least as violently as he after- 
wards did those who opposed popery. It was 
only when he found that the orthodox doc- 
trines of non-resistance and fus divinvm would 
not go all lengths, and that even the bishops 
would not send his proclamation to their 
clergy, that he came to class them with the 
rest of the heretics, and to rely entirely upon 
the slavish votaries of the Roman supersti- 
tion. 

The next set of remarks is introduced for 
the purpose of showing that Mr. Fox has gone 
rather too far, in stating that the object both 
of Charles and James in taking money from 
Lewis was to render themselves independent 



of Parliament, and to enable them to govern 
without those assemblies. Mr. Rose admits 
that this was the point which both monarchs 
were desirous of attaining; and merely says, 
that it does not appear thai either of them ex- 
pected that the calling of Parliaments could 
be entirely dispensed with. There certainly 
is not here any worthy subject of contention. 

The next point is, as to the sums of money 
which Barillon says he distributed to the 
whig leaders, as well as to the king's minis- 
ters. Mr. Rose is very liberal and rational on 
this subject; and thinks it not unfair to doubt 
the accuracy of the account which this minis- 
ter renders of his disbursements. He even 
quotes two passages from Mad. de Sevigne, to 
show that it was the general opinion that he 
had enriched himself greatly by his mission 
to Englahd. In a letter written during the 
continuance of that mission, she says, " Baril- 
lon s'en va, &c. ; son emploi est admirable cette 
Q-nnee ; it mangei'a cinquante mille francs ; mais 
il sait bien oil les prendre." And after his final 
return, she says he is old and rich, and looks 
without envy on the brilliant situation of M. 
D'Avaus. The only inference he draws from 
the discussion is, that it should have a little 
shaken Mr. Fox's confidence in his accuracy. 
The answer to which obviously is, that his 
mere dishonesty, Avhere his private interest 
was concerned, can afford no reason for doubt- 
ing his accuracy where it was not affected. 

In the concluding section of his remarks, 
Mr. Rose resumes his eulogium on Sir Patrick 
Hume, — introduces a splendid encomium on 
the Marquis "of Montrose, — brings authority 
to show that torture was used to extort con- 
fession in Scotland even after the Revolu- 
tion, — and then breaks out into a high tory 
rant against Mr. Fox, for supposing that the 
councillors who condemned Argyle might not 
be very easy in their consciences, and for call- 
ing those who were hunting down that noble- 
man's dispersed followers "authorized assas- 
sins." James, he says, was their lauful sove- 
reign; and the parties in question having been 
in open rebellion, it was the evident duty of 
all who had not joined with them (o suppress 
them. We are not very fond of arguing gene- 
ral points of this nature; and the question 
here is fortunately special and simple. If the 
tyranny and oppression of James in Scotland — 
the unheard-of enormity of \^hich Mr. Rose 
owns that Mr. .Fox has understated — had al- 
ready given that country a far juster title to 
renounce him than England had in 1688; then 
James was not " their lawful sovereign" in any 
sense in which that phrase can be understood 
by a fiee people ; and those whose cowardice 
or despair made them submit to be the instru- 
ments of the tyrant's vengeance on one who 
had armed for their deliverance, may very in- 
nocently be presumed to have suffered some 
remorse for their compliance. With regard, 
again, to the phrase of "authorized assassins," 
it is plain, from thf context of Mr. Fox, that 
it is not applied to the regular forces acting 
against the remains of Argyle's orwcrf follow- 
ers, but to those individuals, whether military 
or not, who pursued the disarmed and soli- 
tary fugitives, for the purpose of butchering 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



303 



them in cold blood, in their caverns and moun- 
■ tains. 

Such is the substance of Mr. Rose's obser- 
vations ; which certainly do not appear to us 
of any considerable value — though they indi- 
cate, throughout, a laudable industry, and a 
still more laudable consciousness of infe- 
riority, — together with (what we are deter- 
mined to believe) a natural disposition to 
liberality and moderation, counteracted by the 
littleness of party jealousy and resentment. 
We had noted a great number of petty m'is- 
representations and small inaccuracies ; but 
in a work which is not likely either to. be 
much read, or long remembered, these things 
are not worth the trouble of correction. 

Though the book itself is very dull, how- 
ever, we must say that the Appendix is very 
entertaining. Sir Patrick's narrative is clear 
and spirited; but what delights us far more, is 
another and more domestic and miscellaneous 
narrative of the adventures of his family, from 
the period of Argyle's discomfiture till Uieir 
return in the train of King William. This is 
from the hand of Lady Murray, Sir Patrick's 
grand-daughter ; and is mostly furnished from 
the informationr of her mother, his favourite 
and exemplary daughter. There is an air of 
cheerful magnanimity and artless goodness 
about this little history, which is extremely 
engaging : and a variety of traits of Scottish 
simplicity and 'homeliness of character, which 
recommend it, in a peculiar manner, to our 
national feelings. Although we have already 
enlarged this article beyond its proper .limits, 
we must give our readers a few specimens of 
this singular chronicle. 

After Sir Patrick's escape, he made his way 
to his own castle, and was concealed for some 
time in a vault* under the church, where his 
daughter, then a girl under twenty, went alone, 
every night, with an heroic fortitude, to com- 
fort and feed him. The gaiety, however, 
which lightejied this perilous intercourse, is to 
us still more admirable than its heroism. 

" She went every night by herself, at mid- 
night, to carry him victuals and drink ; and 
stayed with him as long as she could to get 
home before day. In all this time, my grand- 
father showed the same constant composure, 
and cheerfulness of mind, that he continued to 
possess to his death, which was at the age of 
eighty-four; all which good qualities she in- 
herited from him in a high degree. Often did 
they laugh heartily in that doleful habitalion, at 
different accidents that happened. She at that 
time had a terror for a churchyard, especially 
in the dark, as is not uncommon at her age, 
by idle nursery stories ; but when engaged by 
concern for her father, she stumbled over the 
graves every night alone, without fear of any 
kind entering her "thoughts, but .for soldiers 
and parties in search of him, which the least 
noise or motion of a leaf put her in terror for. 
The minister's house was near the church. 
The first night she went, his dogs kept fTlich a 
barking as put her in the utmost fear of a dis- 
covery. My grandmother sent for the minister 
next day, and, upon pretence of a mad dog, 
got him to hang all his dogs. There was also 
dit^culty of getting victuals to carry him, with- 



out the servants suspecting : the only way it 
was done, was by stealing it off her plate at 
dinner, into her lap. Many a diverting story 
she has told about this, and other things of the 
like nature. Her father liked sheep's head ; 
and, while the children were eating their broth, 
she had conveyed most of one into her lap. 
When her brother Sandy (the late Lord March- 
mont) hjd done, he looked up with astonish- 
ment and said,_ ' Mother, will you look at 
Grizzel ; while we have been eating our broth, 
she has eat up the whole sheep's head.'' This 
occasioned so much mirth among them, that her 
father, at night, was greatly entertained, by it : and 
desired Sandy might have a share in the next." — 
App. p. [v.] 

They then tried to secrete him in a low room 
in his own house ; and, for this purpose, to con- 
trive a bed concealed under the floor, which 
this atffectionate and light-hearted girl secretly 
excavated herself, by scratching up the earth 
with her nails, " till she left not a nail on her 
fingers," and carrying it into the garden at 
night in bags. At last, however, they all got 
over to Holland, where they seem to have lived 
in great poverty, — but in the same style of 
magnanimous gaiety and cordial affection, of 
which some instances have been recited. This 
admirable young woman, who livedafterwards 
with the same simplicity of character in the 
first society in England, seems to have exerted 
herself in a way that nothing but affection 
could have rendered tolerable, even to one bred 
up to drudgery. 

"All the time they were there" (says his 
daughter), " there was not a week my mother 
did not sit up two nights, to do the business 
that was necessary. She went to market ; 
went to the mill to have their corn ground, 
which, it seems, is the way with good mana- 
gers there ; dressed the linen ; cleaned the 
house ; made ready dinner; mended the child- 
ren's, stockings, and other clothes ; made what 
she could for them ; and, in short, did every 
thing. Her sister Christian, who was a year 
or two younger, diverted her father and mother, 
and the rest, who were fond of music. Out of 
their small income they bought a harpsichord 
for little money (but is a Rucar*), now in my 
custody, and most valuable. My aunt played 
and sung well, and had a great deal of life and 
humour, but no turn to business. Though my 
mother had the same qualifications, and liked 
it as well as she did, she was forced to drudge ; 
and many jokes used to pass betwixt the sisteis 
about their different occupatiotis." — p. [ix.] 

"Her brother soon afterwards entered intq 
the Prince of Orange's guards : and her con- 
stant attention was to have him appear right in 
his linen and dress. They wore little point 
cravats and cuffs, which many a night she sat 
up to have in as "good order for him as any in 
the place ; and one of their greatest expenses 
was in dressing him as he ought to be. As 
their house was always full of the unfortunate 
banished people like themselves, they seldom 
went to dinner, without three, or four, or five 
of them, to share with them ; and many a hun- 
dred times I. have heard her say, she could 



♦ An eminent maker of tbfct time. 



3«i. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



never look back upon their manner of living 
there, without thinking it a miracle. They had 
no want, but plenty of every thing they desired, 
and much contentment; and always declared 
it the most pleasing part of her life, though 
they were not without their little distresses ; 
but to (hem they were rather jokes than grievances. 
The professors, and men of learning in the 
place, came (jften to see my grandfathef. The 
best entertainment he could give them was a 
glass of alabast beer, which wa? a belter kind 
of ale than common. He sent his son An- 
drew, the late Lord Kimmerghame, a boy, to 
draw some for them in the cellar : he brought 
ft up with great diligence ; but in the other 
hand the spigot of the barrel. My grandfather 
said, 'Andrew, what is that in your hand 1' 
When he saw it he run down with speed; "but 
the beer was all run out before he got there. 
This occasibned much mirth; though, perhaps, 
they did not well know where to get more." — 
pp. [X. xi.] 



Sir Patrick, we are glad to hear, retained this 
kindly cheerfulness of character to the last; 
and, after he was an earl and chancellor of 
Scotland, and unable to stir with gout, had 
himself carried to the room where his children 
and grandchildren were dancing, and insisted 
on beating time with his foot. Nay, when 
dying at the j^dvanced age of eighty-four, he 
could not resist his old propensity to joking, 
but uttered various pleasantries on the disap- 
pointment the worms would meet with, when, 
after boring through his thick cofTm, they 
would find little but bones. 

There is, in the Appendix, besides these 
narrations, a fierce attack upon_ Burnet, which 
is full of inaccuracies and ill temper; and 
some interesting particulars of Monmouth's 
imprisonment and execution. We dare say 
Mr. Rose could publish a volume or two of 
very interesting tracts; and' can venture to 
predict that his collections will be much more 
popular than his observations. 



DISTURBANCES AT MADRAS/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1810.] 



The disturbances which have lately taken 
place in our East Indian possessions, would, 
at any period, have excited a considerable de- 
gree of alarm ; and those feelings are, of 
course, not a little increased by the ruinous 
aspect' of our European affairs. The revolt 
of an army of eighty thousand men is an event 
which seems to threaten so nearly the ruin of 
the country in which it happens, that no com- 
mon curiosity is excited as to the causes which 
could have led to it, and the means by which 
its danger was averted. On these points, we 
shall endeavour to exhibit to our readers the 
information afforded to us by the pamphlets 
whose titles we have cited. The first of these 
is understood to be written by an agent of Sir 
George Barlow, sent over for the express pur- 
pose of defending his measures ; the second is 
most probably the production of some one of 
the dismissed officers, or, at least, founded upon 
their representations ; the third statement is by 
Mr. Petrie, — and we most cordially recommend 
it to the perusal of our readers. It is charac- 
terized, throughout, by moderation, good sense, 
and a feeling of duty. We have seldom read 
a narrative, which, on the first face of it, look- 
ed so much like truth. It has, of course, pro- 
duced the ruin and dismissal of this gentleman, 
though we have not the shadow of doubt, that 
if his advice had been followed, every unplea- 

* Jfarrative of the Origin and Progress of the Dissen- 
sions at the Presidency of Madras, founded on Oritrinal 
Papers and Correspondence. Lloyd, London, 1810. 

.Account of the Origin and Progress of the late Discon- 
tents of the Srmy on the Madras Establishment,. Cadell 
and Davies, London, 1810. 

Statement of Pacts delivered to the Right honourable 
Lord Minto:) By William Petrie Esq. Stockdale, 
London, 1810. t 



sant occurrence which has happened in India 
might have been effectually prevented. 

In the year 1802, a certain monthly allow- 
ance, proportioned to their respective ranks, 
was given to each officer of the coast army, to 
enable him to provide himself with camp 
equipage; and a monthly'allo\^ance was also 
made to the commanding officers of the native 
corps, for the provision of the camp equipage 
of these corps. This arrangement was com- 
monly called the tent contract. Its intention (as 
the pamphlet of Sir George Barlow's agent 
very properly states) was to combine facility 
of movement in military operations with views 
of economy. In the general revision of its 
establishments, set on foot for the purposes of 
economy by the Madras government, this con- 
tract was considered as entailing upon them a 
very unnecessary expense ; and the then com- 
mander-in-chief. General Craddock, directed 
Colonel Munro, the' quartermaster-general, to 
make a report to him upon the subject. The 
report, which was published almost as soon as 
it was made up, recommends the abolition of 
this contract; and, among other passages for 
the support of this opinion, has the following 
one: — 

"Six years' experience of the practical 
effects of the existing system of the camp 
equipage equipment of the native. army, has 
afforded means of forming a judgment relative 
to its advantages and efficiency which were 
not pos'sessed by the persons who proposed 
its introduction ; and an attentive examination 
of its operations during that period of time 
has suggested the following observations, re- 
garding it : — " 

After stating that the contract is needlessly 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



305 



expensive — that it subjects the Company to 
the same charges for troops in garrison as for 
those in the field — the report proceeds to state 
the following observation, made on the autho- 
rity of six years' experience and attentive examina- 
tion. 

" Thirdly. By granting the same allowances 
in peace and war for the equipment of native 
corps, while the .expenses incidental to that 
charge are unavoidably much greater in war 
than peace, it places the interest and duty of 
officers commanding native corps in direct 
opposition to one another. It makes it their 
interest that their corps should not be in a 
state of efficiency fit for field service, and 
therefore furnishes strong inducements to 
neglect their most important duties." — Accurate 
and Authentic Narrative, pp. 117, 118. 

Here, then, is not only a proposal for re- 
ducing the emoluments of the principal offi- 
cers of the Madras army, but a charge of the 
most flagrant nature. The first they might 
possibly have had some right to consider as a 
hardship ; but, when severe and unjust invec- 
tive was superadded to strict retrenchment — 
■when their pay and their reputation were 
diminished at the same time — it cannot be 
considered as surprising, that such treatment, 
on the part of the government, should lay the 
foundation for a spirit of discontent in those 
troops who had recently made such splendid 
additions to the Indian empire, and establish- 
ed, in the progress of these actjuisitions, so 
high a character for discipline and courage. 
It must be remembered, that an officer' on 
European and one on Indian service are in 
very different situations, and propose to them- 
selves ve^y different objects. The one never 
thinks of making a fortune by his profession, 
while the hope of ultimately gaining an inde- 
pendence is the principal motive for which 
the Indian officer banishes himself from his 
country. To diminish the emoluments of his 
profession is to retard the period of his return, 
and to frustrate the purpose for which he ex- 
poses his life and health i«i a burning climate, 
on the other side of the world. We make 
these observations, certainly, without any idea 
of denying the right of the East India Com- 
pany to make any retrenchments they may 
think proper, but to show that it is a right 
.which ought to be exercised with great deli- 
cacy and with sound discretion — that it should 
only be exescised when the retrenchment is of 
real importance — and above all, that it should 
always be accompanied with every mark of 
suavity and conciliation. Sir George Barlow, 
on thje contrary, committed the singular im- 
prudence of stigmatizing the honour, and 
wounding the feelings of the Indian officers. 
At the same moment that he diminishes their 
emolnmeftts he tells them, that the India Com- 
pany take away their allowances for tents, 
because those allowances have been abused 
jn the meanest, most profligate, and most un- 
soldier-like manner; for this and more than 
{his is conveyed in the report of Colonel 
Munro, published by order of Sir George Bar- 
low. If it was right, in the first instance, to 
diminish the emoluments of so vast an army, 
39 



it was certainly indiscreet to give such reasons 
for it. If any individual had abused the ad- 
vantages_of the tent-contract, he might have 
been brought to a court-martial; and, if his 
guilt had been established, his punishment, we 
will venture to assert, would not have occa- 
sioned a moment of complaint or disaffection 
in the army ; but that a civilian, a gentleman 
accustomed only to the details of commerce, 
should begin his government, over a settle- 
ment with which he was utterly unacquainted,, 
by telling one of the bravest set of officers in 
the world, that, for six years past, they had 
been, in the basest manner, sacrificing their 
duty to their intarest, does ap.pear to us an in- 
stance of indiscretion which, if frequently 
repeated, would soon supersede the necessity 
of any further discussion upon Indian affairs. 

The whole transaction, indeed, appears to 
have been gone into with a disregard to the 
common professional feelings of an army, 
which is. to us utterly inexplicable. The 
opinion of the commander-in-chief. General 
Macdowall, was never asked upon the sub- 
ject ; not a single w^itness was examined; the 
whole seems to have depended upon the 
report of Colonel Munro, the youngest staff- 
officer of the army, published in spite of the 
earnest remonstrance of Colonel Capper, the 
adjutant-general, and before three days had 
been given him to substitute his own plan, 
which Sir George Barlow had promised to 
read before the publication of Colonel Munro's 
report. Nay, this great plan of reduction was 
never even submitted to the military board, by 
whom all subjects of that description were, 
according to the orders of the court of directors, 
and the usage of the service, to be discussed 
and digested, previous to their coming before 
government. 

Shortly after the promulgation of this very 
indiscreet paper, the commander-in-chief. Ge- 
neral Macdowall, received letters from almost 
all the officers commanding native corps, 
representing, in terms adapted to the feelings 
of each, the stigma which was considered to 
attach to them individually, and appealing to 
the authority of the commander-in-chief for 
redress against such charges, and to his per- 
sonal experience for their falsehood. To these 
letters the general replied, that the orders in 
question had been prepared without any refer- 
ence to his opinion, and that, as the matter was 
so far advanced, he deemed it. inexpedient to 
interfere. The officers commanding corps, 
finding that no steps were taken to remove the 
obnoxious insinuations, and considering that, 
while they remained, an indelible disgrace was ^ 
cast upon their characters, prepared charges ' 
against Colonel Munro. These charges were | 
forwarded to General Macdowall, referred by 
him to the judge advocate general, and re- 
turned, with his objections to them, to the 
officers who had preferred -the charges. For 
two months after this period, General Mac- 
dowall appears to have remained in a state of 
uncertainty, as to whether he would or would 
not bring Colonel Munro to a court-martial 
upon the charges preferred against him by the 
commanders of corps. At last, urged by the 
discontents of the army, he deterrhined in the 
2 c 2 



306 



WORKS OF THE JIEV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



affirmative ; and Colonel Muhro was put in 
arrest, preparatory to his trial. Colonel Munro 
then appealed directly to the governor, Sir 
George Barlow ; and was released by a posi- 
tive order froiti him. It is necessary to state, 
that all appeals of officers to the government 
in India always pass through the hands of the 
, commandsr-in-chief ; and this appeal, there- 
fore, of Colonel Munro, directed to the govern- 
ment, was considered by General Macdowall 
as a great infringement of military discipline. 
We have very great doubts whether Sir George 
Barlow was not guilty of another great mistake 
m preventing this court-martial from taking 
place. It is undoubtedly true, that no servant 
of the public is amenable to justice for doing 
what the government orders him to do ; but 
he is not entitled to protection under the pre- 
. tence of that order, if he has done something 
which it evidently did not require of him. If 
Colonel Munro had been ordered to report 
upon the conduct of an individual officer, — 
and it, could be proved that, in gratification of 
private malice, he had taken that opportunity 
of stating the most infamous and malicious 
falsehoods, — could it be urged that his conduct 
might not be fairly scrutinized in a court of 
justice, or a court-martial 1 If this were other- 
wise, any duty delegated by government to an 
individual Avould become the most intolerable 
source of oppression : he might gratify every 
enmity and antipathy — indulge in every act of 
malice — vilify and traduce every one whom 
he hated — and then shelter himself under the 
plea of public service. Every body has a 
right- to do what the supreme power orders 
him to do; but he does not thereby acquire a 
right to do what he has not been ordered to do. 
Colonel Munro was directed to make a report 
upon the state of the army : the officers whom 
he has traduced accuse him of reporting 
something utterly different from the state of 
the army — something which he and every 
body else knew to be different — and this'for 
the malicious purpose of calumniating their 
reputation. If this was true. Colonel Munro 
could not plead the authority of government ; 
for the authority of government was afforded 
to him for a very different purpose. In this 
view of the case, we cannot see how the dig- 
nity of government was attacked by the pro- 
posal of the court-martial, or to what other 
remedy those who had suffered from his abuse 
of his power could have had recourse. Colonel 
Munro had been promised, by General Mac- 
dowall, that the court-martial should consist 
of king's officers : there could not, therefore, 
|j have been any rational suspicion that his trial 
would have been unfair, or his judges unduly 
influenced. 

Soon after Sir George Barlow had shown 
this reluctance to give the complaining officers 
an opportunity of re-establishing their injured 
character, General Macdowall sailed for Eng- 
land, and left behind him, for publication, an 
order, in which Colonel Munro was repri' 
manded for a violent breach in military disci- 
pline, in appealing to the governor otherwise 
than through the customary and prescribed 
channel of tlje commander-in-chief. As this 
paper is very short, and at the same time very 



necessary to the right comprehension of this 
case, we shall lay it before our readers. 

" G. O. by the Commander-in-chief. 

"The immediate departure of Lieutenant 
General Macdowall from Madras will prevent 
his pursuing the design of bringing Lieutenant- 
Colonel Munro, quartermaster-general, to trial, 
for disrespect to the commander-in-chief, for 
disobedience of orders, and for contempt of 
military authority, in having resorted to the 
power of the civil government, in defiance of 
the judgment of the officer at the head of the 
army, who had placed him under arrest, on 
charges preferred against him by a number 
of officers commanding native corps, in conse- 
quence of which appeal direct to the honourable 
the president in council. Lieutenant-General 
Macdowall has received positive orders from 
the chief secretary to liberate Lieutenant- 
Colonel Munro from arrest. 

" Such conduct on the part of Lieutenant- ' 
Colonel Munro, being destructive of subordi- 
nation, subversive of military discipline, a 
violation of the sacred rights of the com- 
mander-in-chief, and holding out a most dan- 
gerous example to the service, Lieutenant- 
General Macdowall, in support of the dignity 
of the profession, and his own station and 
character, .feels it incumbent on him to express 
his strong disapprobation of Lieutenant-Colonel 
Munro's unexampled proceedings, and con- - 
siders it a solemn duty imposed upon him to 
reprimand Lieutenant-Colonel Munro in gene- 
ral orders ; and he is hereby reprimanded 
accordingly. (Signed) ,T. Boles, r. a. g." — 
Jccur. ^ Juth. Nar. pp. 68, 69. 

Sir George Ba,rlow, in consequence of this 
paper, immediately deprived General Mac- 
dowall of his situation of commander-in-chief, 
which he had not yet resigned, though he had 
quitted the settlement ; and as the official sig- 
nature qf the deputy adjutant-general appeared 
to the paper, that officer also was suspended 
from his situation. Colonel Capper, the adju- 
tant-general, in the most honourable manner 
informed Sir George 'Barlow, that he was the 
culpable and responsible person ; and that the 
name of his deputy only appeared to the paper 
in consequence of his positive order, and be- 
cause he himself happened to be absent on 
shipboard with General Macdowall. This 
generous conduct on the part of Colonel Cap- 
per involved himself in punishment, without 
extricating the innocent person whom he in- 
tended to protect. The Madras government, 
always swift to condemn, doomed him to the 
same punishment as Major Boles;' and he 
was suspended from his office. 

This paper we have read over with great 
attention ; and we really cannot see wherein 
its criminality consists, or on what account it 
could have drawn down upon General Mac- 
dowall so severe a punishment as the priva- 
tion of the high and dignified office which, 
he held. The censure upon Colonel Munro 
was for a violation of the regular etiquette 
of the army, in appealing to the governor 
otherwise than through the channel of the 
commander-in-chief. This was an entirely 
new oflence on the part of Colonel Munro. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



307 



Sir George Barlow had given no opinion upon 
it; it hafl not been discussed between him 
and the commander-in-chief; and the com- 
matider-in-chief was clearly at liberty to act 
in this point as he pleased. He does not repri- 
mand Colonel Munro for obeying Sir George 
Barlow's orders ; for Sir George had given no 
orders upon the subject; but he blames him 
for transgressing a well-known and important 
rule of the service. We have great doubts if 
he was not quite right in giving this reprimand. 
But at all events, if he was wrong, — if Colonel 
Munro was not guilty of the offence imputed, 
still the erroneous punishment which the 
general had inflicted merited no such •severe 
retribution as that resorted to by Sir George 
Barlow. There are no reflections in the 
paper on the conduct of the governor or the 
government. The reprimand is grounded en- 
tirely upon the breach of that military disci- 
pline which it was undoubtedly the business 
of General Macdowall to maintain in the most 
perfect purity and vigour. Nor has the paper 
any one expression in it foreign to this pur- 
•pose. We were, indeed, not a little astonished 
at reading it. We had imagined that a 
paper, which drew after it such a long train 
of dismissals and suspensions, must have 
contained a declaration of war against the 
Madras government, — an exhortation to the 
troops to throw off their allegiance, — or an 
advice to the natives to drive their intrusive 
masters away, and become as free as their 
forefathers had left them. Instead of this, we 
find nothing more than a common reprimand 
from a commander-in-chief to a subordinate 
officer, for transgressing t^he bounds of his 
duty. If Sir George Barlow had governed 
kingdoms six months longer, we cannot help 
thinking he would have been a little more 
moderate. 

But whatever difference of opinion there 
may be respecting the punishment of General 
Macfiowall, we can scarcely 'think there can 
be any with regard to the conduct observed 
towards the adjutant-general and his deputy. 
They were the subordinates of the commander- 
in-chief, and were peremptorily bound to pub- 
lish any general orders which he might com- 
mand them to publish. They would have 
been liable to very severe punishment if they 
had not ; and it appears to us the most flagrant 
outrage against all justice to convert their 
obedience into a, fault. It is true, no suboritU- 
nate officer is bound to obey any order which 
is plainly, and to any common apprehension, 
illegal ; but then the illegality must be quite 
manifest; the order must imply such a contra- 
diction to common sense, and such a violation 
of duties superior to the duty of military 
obedience, that there can be scarcely two 
opinions on the subject. Wherever any fair 
doubt can be raised, the obedience of the 
inferior officer is to be considered as proper 
and meritorious. Upon any other principle, 
his situation is the most cruel imaginable : 
he is liable to the severest punishment, even 
to instant death, if he refuses to obey ; and if 
he does obey, he is exposed to the animadver- 
sion of the civil power, which teaches him 
that he ought to have canvassed the order, — 



to have remonstrated against it, — and, in case 
this opposition proved ineffectual, to have 
disobeyed it. We have no hesitation in pro- 
nouncing the imprisonment of Colonel Capper 
and Major Boles to have been an act of great 
severity and great indiscretion, and such as 
might very fairly give great offence to an army, 
who saw themselves exposed to the same 
punishments, for the same adherence to their 
duties. 

"The measure of removing Lieutenant- 
Colonel Capper and Major Boles," says Mr. 
Petrie, "was universally condemned by the 
most respectable oflicers in the army, and not 
more so by the officers in the Company's ser- 
vice, than by those of his majesty's regiments. 
It was felt by all as the introduction of a most 
dangerous principle, and setting a pernicious 
example of disobedience and insubordination 
to all the gradations of military rank and 
authority; teaching inferior officers to ques- 
tion the legality of the orders of their superiors, 
and bringing into discussion questions which 
may endanger the very existence of govern- 
ment. Our proceedings at the time operated 
like an electric shock, and gave rise to combi- 
nations, associations, antl discussions, preg- 
nant with danger to every constituted authority 
in India. It was observed that the removal 
of General Macdowall (admitting the expe- 
diency of the measure) sufficiently vindicated 
the authority of government, and exhibited to 
the army a memorable proof that the supreme 
power is vested in the civil authority. 

"The offence came from the general, and 
he wa.s punished for it ; but to suspend from 
the service the mere instruments of office, for 
the oi'dijiary transmission of an order (o the 
army, was universally condemned as -an act 
of inapplicable severity, which might do infi- 
nite mischief, but could not accomplish any 
good or beneficial purpose. It was to court 
unpopularity, and adding fuel to' the flame, 
which was ready to burst forth in every divi- 
sion of the army ; that tx) vindicate the mea- 
sure on the assumed illegality of the order, Is 
to resort to a principle of a most dangerous 
.tendency, capable of being extended in its ap- 
plication to purposes subversive of the foun- 
dations of all authoiity, civil as well as mili- 
tary. If subordinate officers are encouraged 
to judge of the legality of the orders of their 
superiors, we introduce a precedent of incal- 
culable mischief, neither justified by the spirit 
nor practice of the laws. Is it not better to 
have the responsibility on the head of the 
authority which issuer the order, except in 
cases so plain that the most common capacity 
can judge' of their being direct violations of 
the established and acknowledged laws? Is 
the intemperance of the Expressions, the indis- 
cretions of the opinions, the inflammatory 
tendency of the order, so eminently dangerous, 
so evidently calculated to excite to mutiny and 
disobedience, so strongly marked with features 
of criminality, as not to be mistaken 1 ' Was 
the order, I beg leave to ask, of this descrip- 
tion, of such a nature afe to justify the adjutant- 
general and his deput^v in their refusal to pub- 
lish it, to disobey the order of the commander- 
in-chief, to revolt from his authority, and to 



308« 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



' complain of him to the government 1 Such 
were the views I took of that unhappy trans- 
action ; and, as I foresaw serious mischief 
from the measure, nol only to the discipline 
of the army, but even to the security of the 
civil government, it was my duty to state my 
opinion to Sir G. Barlow, and to use every 
argument which my reason suggested, to pre- 
vent the publication of the order. In this I 
completely failed ; the suspension took effect ; 
and the match was laid that has communicated 
the flame to almost every military mind in 
India. I recorded no dissent ; for, as a formal 
opposition could only tend to exonerate myself 
from a certain degree of responsibility, with- 
out effecting any good public purpose, and 
might probably be misconstrued or miscon- 
ceived by those to whom our proceedings were 
made known, it was . a more honourable dis- 
charge of my duty to relinquish this advan- 
tage, than to comply with the mere letter of 
the order respecting dissents. I explained this 
motive of my conduct to Sir G. Barlow." — 
Statement of Facts, pp. 20 — 23. 

After these proceedings on the part of the 
Madras government,- the disaffection of the 
troops rapidly increased ; absurd and violent 
manifestoes were published by the general 
officers ; government was insulted ; and the 
army soon broke out into open mutiny. 

When the mutiny was fairly begun, the con- 
duct of the Madras government in quelling it, 
■seems nearly as objectionable as that by which 
it had been excited. The governor, in attempt- 
ing to be dignified, perpetually fell into the most 
puerile irritability ; and wishing to be firm, 
was guilty of injustice an"d violence. Invita- 
tions to dinner were made an affair of state. 
Long negotiations appear respecting whole 
corps of officers who refused to dine with Sir 
George Barlow; and the first persons in the 
settlement were employed to persuade them to 
eat the repast which his excellency had pre- 
pared for them. A whole school of military 
lads were sent away, for some trifling display 
of partiality to the cause of the army ; and 
every unfortunate measure recurred to, which 
a weak understanding and a captious temper 
could employ to bring a government into con- 
tempt. Officers were dismissed; butdismissed 
without trial, and -even without accusation. 
The object seemed to be to punish somebody: 
■w4iether it was the right or the wrong person 
was less material. Sometimes the subordinate 
was selected, where the principal was guilty ; 
sometimes the superior was sacrificed for the 
ungovernable conduct of, those who were un- 
der his charge. The blows were strong 
enough ; but they came from a man who shut 
his eyes, and struck at random ; — conscious 
that he must do something to repel the danger ; 
— but so agitated by its proximity that he could 
not look at it, or take a proper aim. 

Among other absurd measures resorted to 
by this new eastern emperor, was the notable 
expedient of imposing a test upon the officers 
of the army, expressive of their loyalty and 
attachment to the government ; and as this 
was done at a time when some officers were in 
open rebellion, others fluctuating, and many 
almost resolved to adhere to their duty, it had 



the very natural and probaWe effect of uniting 
them all in opposition to governmeilt. To 
impose a t.est, or trial of opinions, is at all 
times an unpopular species of inquisition ; and 
at a period when men were hesitating whether 
they should obey or not, was certainly a very 
dangerous and rash measure. It could be no 
security; for men who would otherwise rebel 
against their government, certainly would not 
be restrained by any verbal barriers of this' 
kind ; and, at the same time that it promised 
no effectual security, it appeared to increase 
the danger, of irritated combination. This 
very rash measure immediately produced the 
strongest, representations and remonstrances 
from king's officers of the most vmquestionable 
loyalty. 

" Lieutenant-Colonel Vesey, commanding at 
Palamcotah, apprehends the most fatal conse- 
quences to the tranquillity of the southern pro- 
vinces, if Colonel Wilkinson makes any hos- 
tile movements from Trichinopoly. In different 
letters he states, that such a step must inevi- 
tably throw the company's troops into open 
revolt. He has ventured to write in the 
strongest terms tq Colonel Wilkinson, entreat- 
ing him not to march against the southern 
troops, and pointing out the ruinous conse- 
quences which may be expected from such a 
measure. 

" Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart in Travancore, 
and Colonel Forbes in Malabar, have written, 
that they are under no apprehension for the 
tranquillity of those provinces, or for the fide- 
lity of the company's troops, if government 
does not insist on enforcing the orders for the 
signature of the test; but that, if this is at- 
tempted, the security of the country will be 
imminently endangered. These orders are to 
be enforced; and I tremble for the conse- 
quences." — Statement of Facts, pp. 53, 54. 

The following letter from the Honourable 
Colonel Stuart, commanding a king's regi- 
ment, was soon after received by Sir George 
Barlow : — 

" The late measures of government, as car- 
ried into effect at the Presidency and Trichi- 
nopoly, have created a most violent ferment 
among the corps here. At those places where 
the European force was so far superior in 
number to the native, the. measure probably 
was executed without difficulty; but here, 
whete there are seven battalions of sepoys, 
and a company and a half of artillery, to our 
one regimen*, I found it totally impossible to 
carry the business to the same length, parti- 
cularly as any tumult among our own corps 
would certainly bring, the people of Travan- 
core upon us. 

" It is in vain, therefore, for me, with the 
small force I can depend upon, to attempt to 
stem the torrent here by any acts of violence. 

"Most sincerely and anxiously do I wish 
that the present tumult may subside, without 
fatal consequences; which, if the present vio- 
lent measures are continued, I much fear will 
not be the case. If blood is once spilt in the 
cause, there is no knowing where it may end; 
and the probable consequences will be. that 
India will be lost for ever. So many officers 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



309 



•of the army have gone to such lengths, that, 
tinless a general amnesty is granted, tranquil- 
lity can never be restored. 

"The honourable the governor in council 
■will not, I trust, impute to me any other mo- 
tives for having thus given my opinion. I am 
actuated solely by anxiety for the public good 
and the benefit of my country; and I think it 
my duty, holding the responsible situation I 
now do, to express my sentimerffc at so awful 
a period. 

" Where there are any prospects of success, 
' it might be right to persevere ; but, where 
every day's experience proves, that the more 
coercive the measures adopted, the more vio- 
lent are the congequences, a different and 
more conciliatory line of conduct ought to be 
adopted. I have the honour, &c." — Statement 
of Fads, pp. 55, 56. 

"A letter from Colonel Forbes, commanding 
in Malabar, states, that to prevent a revolt in 
the province, and the probable march of the 
company's troops towards Seringapatam, he 
had accepted of a modification in the test, to 
be signed by the officers on their parole, to 
make no hostile movements until the pleasure 
" -of the government was known. — Disapproved 
by government, and ordered to enforce the 
former orders." — Statement of Facts, p. 61. 

It can scarcely be credited, that in spite of 
these repeated remonstrances from officers, 
whose loyalty and whose knowledge of the sub- 
ject could not be suspected, this test was or- 
dered to be enforced, and the severest rebukes 
inflicted upon those who had presumed to 
doubt of its propriety, or suspend its operation. 
Nor let any man say that the opinionative 
person who persevered in this measure saw 
more clearly and deeply into the consequence 
of his own measures than those who were 
about him; for unless Mr. Petrie has been 
, guilty, and repeatedly guilty, of a most down- 
right and wilful falsehood. Sir George Barlow 
"had not the most distant conception, during all 
these measures, that the army would ever 
venture upon revolt. 

" Government, or rather the head of the go- 
vernment, was never correctly informed of the 
actual state of the army, or I think he would 
have acted otherwise; he was told, and he 
was willing to believe, that the discontents 
were confined to a small part of the troops ; 
that a great majority disapproved of their 
proceedings, and were firmly and unalterably 
attached to government." — Statement of Fads, 
pp. 23, 24. ' 

. In a conversation which Mr. Petrie had with 
Sir George Barlow upon the subject of the 
army — and in the course of which he recom- 
mends to that gentleman more lenient mea- 
sures, and warns him of the increasing disaf- 
fection of the troops — he gives us the following 
account of Sir George Barlow's notions of the 
then state of the army: — 

" Sir G. Barlow assured me I was greatly 
misinformed ; that he could rely upon his in- 
telligence ; and would produce to council the 
must satisfactory and unequivocal proofs of 
the fidelity of nine-tenths of the army; that 



discontents were. confined almost exclusively 
to the southern division of the army ; that the 
troops composing the subsidiary force, those 
in the ceded districts, in the centre, and a part 
of the northern division, were all untainted 
by those principles which had misled the rest 
of the army." — Statement of Facts, pp. 27, 28. 

All those violent measures, then, the spirit 
and wisdom of which have been so much ex- 
tolled, were not measures of the consequences 
of which their author had the most distant 
suspicion. They were not the acts of a man 
who knew that he must unavoidably, in the 
discharge of his duty, irritate, but that he 
could ultimately overcome that irritatidh. 
They appear, on the contrary, to have pro- 
ceeded from a most gross and scandalous 
ignorance of the opinions of the army. He 
expected passive submission, and met with 
universal revolt. So far, then, his want of 
intelligence and sagacity are unqu(*stionably 
proved. He did not proceed with useful mea- 
sures, and run the risk of a revolt, for which 
he was fully prepared ; but he carried these 
measures into execution, firmly convinced 
that they would occasion no revolt at all.* 

The fatal nature of this mistak-e is best ex- 
emplified by the means recurred to for_ its 
correction. The grand expedient relied upon 
was to instigate the natives, men and officers, 
to disobey their European commanders; an 
expedient by which present safety was secured 
at the expense of every principle upon which 
the permanence of our Indian empire rests. 
There never was in the world a more singular 
spectacle than to see a few thousand Europeans 
governing so despotically fifty or sixty mil- 
lions of people, of different climate, religion, 
and habits — forming them into large and well- 
disciplined armies — and leading them out to 
the further subjugation of the native powers 
of India. But can any words be strong 
enough to paint the rashness of provoking a 
mutiny, which could only be got under by 
teaching these armies to act against their Eu- 
ropean commanders, and to use their actual 
strength in overpowering their officers ? — or, 
is any man entitled to the praise of firmness 
and sagacity, who gets rid of a present danger 
by encouraging a principle which renders that 
danger more frequent and more violent 1 We 
will venture to assert, that a more unwise or 
a more unstatesmanlike action' was never 
committed by any man in any country ; and 
we are grievously mistaken, if any length of 
time elapse before the evil consequences of it 
are felt and deplored by every man who deems 
the welfare of our Indian colonies of any im- 
portance to the prosperity of the mother coun- 
try. We cannot help contrasting the manage- 
ment of the discontent of the Madras army, 
with the manner in which the same difficulty 
was got over with the army at Bengal. A 
little increase of attention and emolument to 
the head of that army, under the management 
of a man of rank and talents, dissipated ap- 



* We should have been alarmed to have seen Sir 
George Barlow, junior, churchwarden of St. George's, 
Hanover Square,— an office so nobly filled by Giblet and 
Leslie : it was an huge affliction to see so incapable a 
man at the head of the Indian empire. 



310 



WORKS . OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pearances which the scepjred pomp of a mer- 
chant's clerk would have blown up into a 
rebellion in three week's ; and yet the Bengal 
army is at this moment in as good a state of 
discipline, as the English fleet to which Lord 
Howe made such abject concessions — and in 
a state to be much more permanently depended 
upon than the army which has been so effec- 
tually ruined by the inconveniently great soul 
of the present governor of Madras. 

Sir George Barlow's agent, though faithful 
to his employment of calumniating those who 
were in any degree opposed to his principal, 
seldom loses sight of sound discretion, and 
.confines his invectives to whole bodies of men, 
except where the dead are concerned. Against 
Colonel Capper, General Macdowall, and Mr. 
Roebuck, who are now no longer ' alive to 
answer for themselves, he is intrepidly severe ; 
in all these instances he givee a full loose to 
his sense of duly, and inflicts upon them the 
severest chastisement. In his attack upon the 
civilians, he is particularly careful to keep to 
generals ; and so rigidly does he adhere to this 
principle, that he does not support his asser- 
tion, that the civil service was disaffected as 
well as the military, by one single name, one 
single fact, or by any other means' whatever, 
than his own affirmation of the fact. The 
truth (as might be supposed to be the case 
from such sort of evidence) is diametrically 
opposite. Nothing could be more exemplary, 
during the whole of the rebellion, than the con- 
duct of the civil servants; and though the 
courts of justice were interfered with,— though 
the most respectable servants of the company 
were punished for the verdicts they had given 
as jurymen, — though many were dismissed for 
the slightest opposition to the pleasure of go- 
vernment, even in the discharge of official 
duties, where remonstrance was absolutely ne- 
cessary, — though the greatest provocation was 
given, and the greatest opportunity afforded to 
the civil servants for revolt, — there is not a 
single instance in which the shadow of disaf- 
fection has been proved against any civil ser- 
vant This we say, from an accurate exami- 
nation of all the papers which have been 
published on the subject; and we do not hesi- 
tate to affirm, that there never was a more 
unjust, unfounded,' and profligate charge made 
against any body of men ; nor have we 
often witnessed a more complete scene of 
folly and violence, than the conduct of the 
Madras government to its civil servants, 
exhibited during the whole period of the 
mutiny. 

Upon the whole, it appears to us, that the 
Indian army was ultimately driven into revolt 
by the indiscretion and violence of the Madras 
government; and that every evil which has 
happened might, with the greatest possible fa- 
cility, have been avoided. 

We have no sort of doubt that the governor 
always meant well; but, we are equally certain 
that he almost always acted ill ; and where in- 
capacity rises to a certain height, for all prac- 
tical purposes the motive is of very little con- 
sequence. That the late Gen. Macdowall was 
a weak man, is unquestionable. He was also 
irritated (and not without reason), because he 



was deprived of a seat in council, which the 
commanders before him had commonly en- 
joyed. A little attention, however, on the part 
of the government— the compliment of con- 
sulting him upon subjects connected with his 
profession — any of those little arts which are 
taught, not by a consummate political skill, but 
dictated by common good nature, and by the 
habit of mingling with the world, would have 
produced <he effects of conciliation, and em- 
ployed the force of General Macdowall's au- 
thority in bringing the army into a better 
temper of mind. Instead of this, it appears to 
have been almost the object, and if not the 
object, certainly the practice of the Madras 
government, to neglect aqd insult this officer.. 
Changes.of the greatest importance were made 
without his advice, and even without any com- 
munication with him ; and it was too visible 
to those whom he was to command, that he 
himself possessed no sort of credit with his 
superiors. As to the tour which General Mac- 
dowall is supposed to have made for the pur- 
pose of spreading disaffection among the 
troops, and the part which he. is represented 
by the agents to have taken in the quarrels of 
the civilians with the government, we utterly 
discredit these imputations. They are un^up- 
.ported by any kind of evidence ; and we believe 
them to be mere inventions, circulated by the 
friends of the Madras, government. General 
Macdowall appears to us to have been aweak^ 
pompous man ; extremely out of humour ; of- 
fended with the slights he had experienced ; 
and whom any man of common address might 
have managed with the greatest ease : but we 
do not see, in any part of his conduct, the 
shadow of disloyalty and disaffection; and we 
are persuaded that the assertion would never 
have been made, if he himself had been alive 
to prove its injustice. 

Besides the contemptuous treatment of Gen. 
Macdowall, we have great doubts whether the 
Madras government ought not to have suffered 
Colonel Munro to be put upon his trial ; and 
to punish the officers who solicited that trial 
for the purgation of their own characters, 
aippears to us (whatever the intention was) to 
have been an act of mere tyranny. We think, 
too, that General Macdowall was very hastily 
and unadvisedly, removed from his situation; 
and upon the unjust treatment of Colonel 
Capper and Major Boles there can scarcely be 
two opinions. In the progress of the mutiny, 
instead of discovering in the Madras govern- 
ment any appearances of temper and wisdom, 
they appear to us to have been quite as much 
irritated and heated as the army, and to have 
been betrayed into excesses nearly as crimin'al, 
and infinitely more contemptible and puerile. 
The head of a great kingdom bickering with 
his officers about invitations to dinner— the 
commander-in-chief of the forces negotiating 
that the dinner should be loyally eaten — the 
obstinate absurdity of the test — the total want 
of selection in the objects of punishment — and 
the wickedness, or the insanity, of teaching the 
Sepoy to rise against his European officer — the 
contempt of the decision of juries in civil 
cases — and the punishment of the juries them- 
selves ;*such a system of conduct as this would 



WORKS OF. THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



311 



infallibly doom any individual to punishment, 
if it did not, fortunately foe him, display pre- 
cisely that contempt of men's feelings, and that 
passion for insulting multitudes, which is so 
congenial to our present government at home, 
and which passes now so currently for wisdom 
and courage. By these means, the liberties 
of great nations are frequently destroyed — and 
destroyed with impunity to the perpetrators of 
the crime. In distant colonies, however, go- 
vernors who attempt the same system of 
tyranny are in no little danger from the indig- 



nation of their subjects ; for though men will 
often yield up their happiness to kings who- 
have been always kings, they are not inclined 
to show the same deference to men who have 
been merchants' clerks yesterday, and are 
kings to-day. From a danger of this kind, the 
governor of Madras appears to us to have very 
narrowly escaped. We sincerely hope that 
he is grateful for his good luck; and that he 
will now awake from his gorgeous dreams of 
mercantile monarchy, to good nature, modera- 
tion, and common sense. 



BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S* CHARGE.t 



[JEiiiNBURGH Review, 1813.] 



'It is a melancholy thing to see a mav, clothed in 
soft raimetU, lodged in a public palace, endowed with 
a rick portion of the product of other men's industry, 
using all the influence of his splendid situation, how- 
ever conscientiously, to deepen the ignorance, and 
inflame the fury, of his fellow-creatures. These are 
the miserable results of that policy which has been so 
frequently pursued for these fifty years past, of 
placing men of mean, or middling abilities, i>i high 
ecclesiastical stations. In ordinary times, it is of 
less importance who fills them ; but when the bitter 
period arrives, in which the people must give up some 
of their darling absurdities; — when the senseless 
clamour, which has been carefully handed down from 
father fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged ; — 
when %t is of incalculable importance to turn the 
people to a better ivay of thinking; the greatest im- 
pediments to' all amelioration are too often found 
among those to whose councils, at such periods, the 
country ought to look for ioisdom and peace. We 
will suppress, however, the feelings of indig- 
nation which such productions, from such 
men, naturally occasion. We will give the 
Bishop of Lincoln credit for being perfectly 
sincere ; — we will suppose, that every argu- 
ment he uses has not been used and refuted 
ten thousand times before ; and we will sit 
down as patiently to defend the religious liber- 
ties of mankind, as the reverend prelate has 
done to abridge them. 

We must begin with denying the main posi- 
tion upon which the Bishop of Lincoln has 
built his reasoning — The Catholic religion is not 
tolerated in England. No man can be fairly 
said to be permitted to enjoy his own worship 
who is punished for exercising that worship. 
, His lordship seems to have ho other idea of 
punishment, than lodging a man in the Poultry 
compter, or flogging him at the cart's tail, or 
fining him a sum of money ; — just as if inca- 
pacitating a man from enjoying the dignities 
and emoluments to ■rt'hich men of similar con- 



* ^ Charge delivered 1o the Clergy of the Diocese of Lin- 
coln, at the Triennial Visitation of that Diocese in'JUay, 
June, and July, 1812. By GeobgbTomline, D.D., F.R.S., 
Lord Bishop of Lincoln. London. Cadell and Co. 4to. 

t It is impospible to conceive the mischief which this 
mean and cunning prelate did at this period. 



dition, and other faith, may fairly aspire, was 
not frequently the most severe and galling of 
all punishments. This limited idea of the 
nature of punishm'ents is the more extraordi- 
nary, as incapacitation is actually one of the 
.most common punishments in some branches 
of our law. The sentence of a court-martial 
frequently purports, that a man is rendered for 
ever incapable of serving his majesty, &c. &c. ; 
and a person not in holy orders, who performs 
the functions of a clergyman, is rendered for 
ever incapable of holding any preferment in the 
church. There are, indeed, many species of 
offence for which no punishment more appo- 
site and judicious could be devised. It would 
be rather extraprdinary, however, if the court, 
in passing such a sentence, were to assure the 
culprit, " that such incapacitation' was not by 
them considered as a punishment ; that.it was 
only exercising a right inherent in all govern- 
ments, of determining who should be eligible 
for office and who ineligible." His lordship 
thinks the toleration complete, because he sees 
a permission in the statutes for the exercise of . 
the Roman Catholic worship. He sees the per- 
mission — but he does not choose to see the 
consequences to which they are exposed who 
avail themselves of this permission. It is the 
liberality of a father who says to a son, " Do as 
you please, my dear boy; follow your own ifi- 
clination. Judge for yourself; you are free as 
air. But remember, if you marry that lady, I 
will cut you off with a shilling." We have 
scarcely ever read a more solemn and frivolous 
statement than the Bishop of Lincoln's anti- 
thetical distinction between persecution and 
the denial of political power. 

" It is sometimes said, that Papists, being 
excluded from 'power, are consequently perse- 
cuted; as if exclusion from power and reli- 
gious persecution were convertible terms. But 
surely this is to confound things totally distinct 
in their nature. Persecution inflicts positive- 
punishment upon persons who hold certain 
religious tenets, and endeavours to accomplish 
the renunciation and extinction of those tenets 
by forcible nieans : exclusion from power is 
entirely negative in its operation — it only de- 



312 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Clares that those who hold certain opinions shall 
not fill certain situations ; but it acknowledges 
men to be perfectly free to hold those opinions. 
Persecution compels men to adopt a prescribed 
faith, or to suffer the loss o'f liberty, property, 
or even life : exclusion from power prescribes 
no faith ; it allows men to think and believe as 
they please, without miolestation or interfer- 
ence. Persecution requires men to worship 
God in one and in no other way : exclusion 
from power neither commands nor forbids any 
mode of divine worship — it leaves the busi- 
ness of religion, where it ought to be left, to 
every man's judgment and conscience. Per- 
secution proceeds from a bigoted and sangui- 
nary spirit of intolerance ; exclusion from 
power is founded in the natural and rational 
principle of self-protection and self-preserva- 
tion, equally applicable to nations and to indi- 
viduals. History informs us of the mischiev- 
ous and fatal effects of the one, and proves the 
expediency and necessity of the other." — (pp. 
16, 17.) 

We will venture to say, there is no one sen- 
tence in this extract which does not contain 
either a contradiction, or ^a misstatement. For 
how can that law acknowledge men to be per- 
fectly free to hold an opinion, which excludes 
from desirable situations all who do hold that 
opinion 1 How can that law be said neither 
to molest, nor interfere, which meets a man in 
every branch of industry "and occupation, to 
institute an inquisition into his religious opi- 
nions ■? And how is the business of religion 
left to every man's judgment and conscience, 
where so powerful a bo7ius is given to one set 
of religious opinions, and such a mark of in- 
famy and degradation fixed upon all other 
modes of belief? But this is comparatively a 
very idle part of the question. Whether the 
present condition of the Catholics is or is not 
to be denominated a perfect state of toleration, 
is more a controversy of words than things. 
That they are subject to some restraints, the 
bishop will admit : the important question is, 
whether or "not these restraints are necessary 1 
For his lordship will, of course, allow, that 
every restraint upon human liberty is an evil 
in itself; and can only be justified by the su- 
perior good which it can be shown to produce. 
My lord's fears upon the subject of Catholic 
emancipation are conveyed in the following 
'paragraph : — 

" It is a principle of our constitution, that the 
king should have advisers in the discharge of 
every part of his royal functions — and is it to 
be imagined that Papists would advise mea- 
sures in support of the cause of Protestantism 1 
A similar observation may be applied to the 
two Houses of Parliament : would popish peers 
or popish members of the Hoilse of Commons, 
enact laws for the security of the Protestant 
government? Would they not rather repeal 
"the whole Protestant code, and make Popery 
again the established religion of the country'" 
-(p. 14.) 

And these are the apprehensions which the 
ckrgy of the diocese have prayed my lord to 
tnake public. 



Kind Providence never sends an evil without 
a remedy : — and arithmetic is the natural cure 
for the passion of fear. If a coward can be 
made to count his enemies, his terrors may be 
reasoned with, and he may think of ways and 
means of counteraction. Now, might it not 
have been expedient that the reverend prelate, 
before he had alarmed his country clergy with 
the idea of so large a measure as the repeal 
of Protestantism, should have counted up the 
probable number of Catholics who would be 
seated in both houses of Parliament 1 Does 
he' believe that there would be ten Catholic 
peers, and thirty Catholic commoners 1 But, 
admit double that number (and more, Dr. 
Duigenan himself would not ask), — will the 
Bishop of Lincoln seriously assert, that he 
thinks the Whole Protestant code in danger of 
repeal from such an admixture of Catholic 
legislators as this 1 Does he forget, amid the 
innumerable answers which may be made to 
such sort«of apprehensions, what a picture he 
is drawing of the weakness and versatility of 
Protestant principles "? — that an handful of 
Catholics, in the bosom of a Protestant legis- 
lature, is to overpower the ancient jealousies, . 
the fixed opinions, the inveterate habits of 
twelve millions of people! — that the king is' to 
apostatize, the clergy to be silent, and the Par- 
liament be taken by surprise 1 — that the nation 
is to go to bed over night, and to see the Pope 
walking arm in arm with Lord Castlereagh the 
next morning! — One would rea'W^ suppose, 
from the bishop's fears, that the civil defences 
of mankind were, like their military bul^^'a^ks, 
transferred, by superior skill and courage> in 
a few hours, from the vanquished to the victor 
— that the destruction of a church was like the 
blowing up of a mine, — deans, prebendaries, 
churchwardens and overseers, all up in the air 
in an instant. Does his lordship really ima- 
gine, when the mere dread of the Catholics 
becoming legislators has induced him to 
charge his clergy, and his agonized clergy, to 
extort from their prelate the publication of 
the charge, that the full and mature danger 
will produce less alarm than the distant suspi- 
cion of it has done in the present instance ? — 
that the Protestant writers, whose pens are 
now up to the feather in ink, will, at any future 
period, yield up their church, without passion, 
pamphlet, or pugnacity 1 We do not blame 
the Bishop of Lincoln for being afraid; but 
we blame him for not rendering his fears in- 
telligible and tangible — for not circumscribing 
and particularizing them by some individual 
case — for not showing us how it is possible 
that the Catholics (granting their intentions to 
be as bad as possible) should ever be able to 
ruin the Church of England. His lordship 
appears to be in k fog ; and, as daylight breaks 
in upon him, he will be rather disposed to dis- 
own his panic. The noise he hears is "not 
roaring, — but braying ; the teeth and the mane 
are all imaginary; there is nothing but ears. 
It is not a lion that stops the way, but an ass. 
One method his lordship takes, in handling 
this question, is by pointing out dangers that 
are barely possible, and then treating of them as 
if they deserved the active and present atten- 
tion of serious men. But if no measure is to 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



313 



be carried into execution, and if no provision 
is safe in which the minute inspection of an 
ingenious man cannot find the possibility of 
danger, then all human action is impeded, and 
no human institution is safe or commendable. 
The king has the power of pardoning, — and so 
every species ofgulitmay remain unpunished: 
he has a negative upon legislative acts, and so 
no law may pass. None but Presbyterians 
may be returned to the House of Commons, — 
and so the Church of England may be voted 
down. The Scottish and Irish members may 
join together in both houses, and dissolve both 
unions. If probability is put out of sight, — 
and if, in the enumeration of dangers, it is 
sufficient to state any which, by remote con- 
tingency, may happen, then is it time that we 
should begin to provide against all the host of 
perils which we have just enumerated, and 
which are many of them as likely to happen, 
as those which the reverend prelate has stated 
in his charge. His lordship forgets that the 
Catholics are not asking for election but for 
eligibility — not to be admitted into the cabinet, 
but not to be excluded from it. A century may 
elapse before any Catholic actually becomes a 
member of the cabinet; and no event can be 
more utterly destitute of probability, than that 
they should gain an ascendency there, and 
direct that ascendency against the Protestant 
interest. If the bishop really wishes to know 
upon what our security is founded; it is 4/pon 
the prodigious and decided superiority of the Pro- 
testant interest in the British nation, and in the 
United Parliament. No Protestant king would 
select such a cabinet, or countenance such 
measures ; no man would be mad enough to 
attempt them ; the English Parliament and the 
English people would not endure it for a mo- 
ment. No man, indeed, but under the sanctity 
of the mitre, would have ventured such an ex- 
travagant opinion. — Wo to him, if he had been 
only a dean. But, in spite of his venerable 
office, we must express our decided belief, that 
his lordship (by no means averse to a good 
bargain) would not pay down five pounds, to 
receive fifty millions for his posterity, when- 
ever the majority of the cabinet should be 
(Catholic emancipation carried) members of 
the Catholic religion. And yet, upon such 
terrors as these, which, when put singly to 
him, his better senses would laugh at, he has 
thought fit to excite his clergy to petition, and 
done all in his power to increase the mass of 
hatred against the Catholics. 

It is true enough, as his lordship remarks, 
that events do not depend upon laws alone, but 
upon the wishes and intentions of those who 
administer these laws. But then his lordship 
totally puts out of sight two considerations — 
the improbability of Catholics ever reaching 
the highest offices of the state — and those fixed 
Protestant opinions of the country, which 
would render any attack upon the established 
church so hopeless, and therefore, so impro- 
bable. Admit a supposition (to us perfectly 
ludicrous, but still necessary to the bishop's 
argument), that the cabinet council consisted 
entirely of Catholics, we should even then have 
no more fear of their making the English 
40 



people Catholics, than we should have of a cabi- 
net of butchers making the Hindoos eat beef. 
The bishop has not stated the true and great 
security for any course of human actions. It 
is not the word of the law, nor the spirit of 
the government, but the general way of think- 
ing among the people, especially when that 
way of thinking is ancient, exercised upon 
high interests, and connected with striking 
passages in history. The Protestant church 
does not rest upon the little narrow founda- 
tions where the Bishop of Lincoln supposes it 
to be placed : if it did, it would not be worth 
saving. It rests upon the general opinion en- 
tertained by a free and reflecting people, that 
the doctrines of the church are true, her pre- 
tensions moderate, and her exhortations useful. 
It is accepted by a people who have, from good 
taste, an abhorrence of sacerdotal mummery; 
and from good sense, a dread of sacerdotal 
ambition. Those feelings, so generally diffused, 
and so clearly pronounced on all occasions, 
are our real bulwarks against the Catholic re- 
ligion, and the real cause which makes it so 
safe for the best friends of the church to di- 
minish (by abolishing the test laws) so very 
fertile a source of hatred to the state. 

In the 15th page of his lordship's charge, 
there is an argument of a very curious nature. 

" Let us suppose," (says the Bishop of Lin- 
coln), "that there had been no test laws, no 
disabling statutes, in the year 1745, when an 
attempt was made to overthrow the Protestant 
government, and to place a popish sovereign 
upon the throne of these kingdoms ; and let 
us suppose, that the leading men in the houses 
of Parliament, that the ministers of state, and 
the commanders of our armies, had then been 
Papists. Will any one contend, that that for- 
midable rebellion, supported as it was by a 
foreign enemy, would have been resisted 
with the same zeal, and suppressed with the 
same facility, as when all the measures were 
planned and executed by sincere Protestants 1" 
(p. 15.) 

And so his lordship means to infer, that it 
would be foolish to abolish the laws against 
the Catholics now, because it would have been 
foolish to have abolished them at some other 
period ; — that a measure must be bad, because 
there was formerly a combination of circum- 
stances, when it would have been bad. His 
lordship might, with almost equal propriety, 
debate what ought to be done if Julius Caesar 
were about to make a descent upon our coasts ; 
or lament the impropriety of emancipating 
the Catholics, because the Spanish Armada 
was putting to sea. The fact is that Julius 
Csesar is dead — the Spanish Armada was de- 
feated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth— for 
half a century there has been no disputed suc- 
cession — the situation of the world is changed 
— and, because it is changed, we can do now 
what we could not do then. And nothing can 
be more lamentable than to see this respecta- 
ble prelate wasting his resources in putting 
imaginary and inapplicable cases, and reason- 
ing upon their solution, as if they had any 
thing to do with present afl'airs. 
2D 



314 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



These remarks enrirely put an end to the 
common mode of arguing a Gulielmo. What 
did King William do 1 — what would King 
William sa}- 1 &c. King William was in a 
very different situation from that in which we 
are placed. The whole world was in a very 
different situation. The great and glorious 
authors of the Revolution (as they are com- 
monly denominated) acquired their greatness 
and their glory, not by a superstitious reverence 
for inapplicable precedents, but by taking hold 
of present circumstances to lay a deep founda- 
tion for liberty ; and then using old names for 
new things, they left the Bishop of Lincoln, 
and other good men, to suppose that they had 
been thinking all the time about ancestors. 

Another species of false reasoning, which 
pervades the Bishop of Lincoln's charge, is 
this : He states what the interests of men are, 
and then takes it for granted that they will 
eagerly and actively pursue them ; laying 
totally out of the question the probability or im- 
probability of their effecting their obj ect, and the 
inffuence which this balance of chances must 
produce upon their actions. For instance, it is 
the interest of the Catholics that our church 
should be subservient to theirs. Therefore, 
says his lordship, the Catholics will enter into 
a conspiracy against the English church. But, 
is it not also the decided interest of his lord- 
ship's butler that he should be bishop, and the 
bishop his butler 1 That the crozier and the 
corkscrew should change hands, — and the 
washer of the bottles which they had emptied 
become the diocesan of learned divines 1 What 
has prevented this change, so beneficial to the 
upper domestic, but the extreme improbability 
of success, if the attempt were made ; an im- 
probability so great that we will venture to 
say, the very notion of it has scarcely once 
entered into the understanding of the good 
man. Why, then, is the reverend prelate, who 
lives on so safely and contentedly with John, 
so dreadfully alarmed at the Catholics ? And 
why does he so completely forget, in their in- 
stance alone, that men do not merely strive to 
obtain a thing because it is good, but always 
mingle with the excellence of the object a con- 
sideration of the chance of gaining it 1 

The Bishop of Lincoln (p. 19) states it as 
an argument against concession to the Catho- 
lics, that we have enjoyed " internal peace and 
entire freedom from all religious animosities 
and feuds since the Revolution." The fact, 
however, is not more certain than conclusive 
against his view of the question. For, since 
that period, the worship of the church of Eng- 
land has been abolished in Scotland — the cor- 
poration and test acts repealed in Ireland — 
and the whole of this king's reign has been 
one series of concessions to the Catholics. 
Relaxation, then (and we wish this had been 
remembered at the charge), of penal laws, on 
subjects of religious opinion, is perfectly com- 
patible with internal peace and exemption from 
religious animosity. But the bishop is always 
fond of lurking in generals, and cautiously 
avoids coming to any specific instance of the 
dangers which he fears. 

" It is declared in one of the 39 Articles, 
that the king is head of our church, without 



being subject to any foreign power ; and it is 
expressly said that the Bishop of Rome has no 
jurisdiction within these realms. On the con- 
trary, Papists assert, that the pope is supreme 
head of the whole Christian church, and that 
allegiance is diie to him from every individual 
member, in all spiritual matters. This direct 
opposition to one of the fundamental princi- 
ples of the ecclesiastical part of our constitu- 
tion, is alone sufficient to justify the exclusion 
of Papists from all situations of authority. 
They acknowledge, indeed, that obedience in 
civil matters is dite to the king. But cases 
must arise, in which civil and religious duties 
will clash ; and he knows but little of the influ- 
ence of the Popish religion over the mind of 
its votaries, who doubts which of these duties 
would be sacrificed to the other. Moreover, 
the most subtle casuistry cannot always dis- 
criminate between temporal and spiritual 
things ; and in truth, the concerns of this life 
not unfrequently partake of both characters." — 
(pp. 21, 22.) 

We deny entirely that any case can occur, 
where the exposition of a doctrine purely spe-- 
culative, or the arrangement of a mere point 
of church discipline, can interfere with civil 
duties. The Roman Catholics are Irish and 
English citizens at this moment ; but no such 
case has occurred. There is no instance in 
which obedience to the civil magistrate has 
been prevented, by an acknowledgment of the 
spiritual supremacy of the pope. The Catho- 
lics have given (in an oath which we suspect 
the bishop never to have read) the most solemn 
pledge, that their submission to their spiritual 
ruler should never interfere with their civil 
obedience. The hypothesis of the Bishop of 
Lincoln is, that it must very often do so. The 
fact is, that it has never done so. 

His lordship is extremely angry with the 
Catholics for refusing to the crown a veto upon 
the appointment of their bishops. He forgets, 
that in those countries of Europe where the 
crown interferes with the appointment of bish- 
ops, the reigning monarch is a Catholic, — 
which makes all the difference. We sincerely 
wish that the Catholics would concede this 
point; but we cannot be astonished at their 
reluctance to admit the interference of a Pro- 
testant prince with their bishops. What would 
his lordship say to the interference of any 
Catholic power with the appointment of the 
English sees 1 

Next comes the stale and thousand times re- 
futed charge against the Catholics, that they 
think the pope has the power of dethroning 
heretical kings ; and that it is the duty of every 
Catholic to use every possible means to root- 
out and destroy heretics, &c. To all of which 
may be returned this one conclusive answer, 
that the Catholics are ready to deny these doc- 
trines upon oath. And as the whole contro- 
versy is, whether the Catholic shall, by means 
of oaths, be excluded from certain offices in 
the state ; — those who contend that the con- 
tinuation of these excluding oaths is essential 
to the public safety, must admit, that oaths are 
binding upon Catholics, and a security to the 
state that what they swear to is true. 

It is right to keep these things in view — and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



315 



to omit no opportunity of exposing and coun- 
teracting that spirit of intolerant zeal or intol- 
erable time-serving, which has so long dis- 
graced and endangered this country. But the 
truth is, that we look upon this cause as already 
gained; — and while we warmly congratulate 
the nation on the mighty step it has recently 
made towards increased power and entire 
security, it is impossible to avoid saying a 
word upon the humiliating and disgusting, but 
at the same time most edifying spectacle, 
which has lately been exhibited by the anti- 
Catholic addressers. That so great a number 
of persons should have been found with such 
a proclivity to servitude (for honest bigotry 
had but little to do with the matter), as to rush 
forward with clamours in favour of intolerance, 
upon a mere surmise that this would be ac- 
counted as acceptable service by the present 
possessors of patronage and power, affords a 
more humiliating and discouraging picture 
of the present spirit of the country, than 
any thing else that has occurred in our re- 
membrance. The edifying part of the spec- 



tacle is the contempt with which their officious 
devotions have been received by those whose 
favour they were intended to purchase, — and 
the universal scorn and derision with which, 
they were regarded by independent men of all 
parties and persuasions. The catastrophe, we 
think, teaches two lessons ; — one to the time- 
servers themselves, not to obtrude their servi- 
lity on the government, till they have reason- 
able ground to think it is wanted; — and the 
other to the nation at large, not to imagine that 
a base and interested clamour in favour of 
what is supposed to be agreeable to govern- 
ment, however loudly and extensively sounded, 
affords any indication at all, either of the ge- 
neral sense of the country, or even of what is 
actually contemplated by those in the adminis- 
tration of its affairs. The real sense of the 
country has been proved, on this occasion, to 
be directly against those who presumptuously 
held themselves out as its organs ; — and even 
the ministers have made a respectable figure, 
compared with those who assumed the charac- 
ter of their champions. 



MADAME D'EPINAY; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1818.1 



There used to be in Paris, under the ancient 
regime, a few women of brilliant talents, who 
violated all the common duties of life, and 
gave T^ery pleasant little suppers. Among 
these supped and sinned Madame d'Epinay — 
the friend and companion of Rousseau, Dide- 
rot, Grimm, Holbach, and many other literary 
persons of distinction of that period. Her 
principal lover was Grimm ; with whom was 
deposited, written in feigned names, the history 
of her life. Grimm died — his secretary sold 
the history — the feigned names have been ex- 
changed for the real ones — and her works now 
appear abridged in three volumes octavo. 

Madame d'Epinay, though far from an im- 
maculate character, has something to say in 
palliation of her irregularities. Her husband 
behaved abominably; and alienated, by a series 
of the most brutal injuries, an attachment 
which seems to have been very ardent and 
sincere, and which, with better treatment, 
would probably have been lasting. For, in all 
her aberrations, Mad. d'Epinay seems to have 
had a tendency to be constant. Though ex- 
tremely young when separated from her hus- 
band, she indulged herself with but two lovers 
for the rest of her life ; — to the first of whom she 
seems to have been perfectly faithful, till he 
left her at the end often or twelve years ; — and 
to Grimm, by whom he was succeeded, she 
appears to have given no rival till the day of 
her death. The account of the life she led, 
both with her husband and her lovers, brings 



* Mimoircs et Correspondence de Madame d'Epinay. 
3 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1818. 



upon the scene a great variety of French cha- 
racters, and lays open very completely the 
interior of French life and manners. But 
there are some letters and passages which 
ought not to have been published ; which a 
sense of common decency and morality ought 
to have suppressed ; and which, we feel as- 
sured, would never have seen the light in this 
country. 

A French woman seems almost always lo 
have wanted the flavour of prohibition, as a ne- 
cessary condiment to human life. The provided 
husband was rejected, and the forbidden hus- 
band introduced in ambiguous light, through 
posterns and secret partitions. It was not the 
union to one man that was objected to — for 
they dedicated themselves with a constancy 
which the most household and parturient wo- 
man in England could not exceed ; — but the 
thing wanted was the wrong man, the gentle- 
man without the ring — the master unsworn to 
at the altar — the person unconsecrated by 
priests — 

"Oh! let me taste thee unexcised by kings." 

The following strikes us as a very lively 
picture of the ruin and extravagance of a fash- 
ionable house in a great metropolis. 

"M. d'Epinay a complete son domestique. 
II a trois laquais, et moi deux ; je n'en ai pas 
voulu davantage. II a un valet de chambre ; 
et il vouloit aussi que je prisse une seconde 
femme, mais comme je n'en ai que faire, j'ai 
tenu bon. Enfin les officiers, les fenfmes, les 
valets se montent au nombre de seize. Quoique 
la vie que je mene soil assez uniforme, j'espere 



316 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



n'etre pas obligee d'en changer. Celle de M. 
d'Epinay est differente. Lorsqu'il est leve, son 
valet de chambre se met en devoir de I'accom- 
moder. Deux laquais sent debout a attendre 
ordres. Le premier secretaire vient nvec 
I'intention de lui rendre comple des lettres 
qu'il a refues de son departement, et qu'il est 
charge d'ouvrir; il doit lire les reponses et les 
faire signer; mais il est interrompu deux cents 
fois dans cette occupation par toutes sortes 
d'especes imaginables. C'est un maquignon 
qui a des chevaux uniques a vendre, mais qui 
sont retenus par un seigneur; ainsi il est venu 
pour ne pas manquer a sa parole; car on lui 
en donneroit le double, qu'on ne pourroit faire 
affaire. II en fait une description seduisante, 
on demande le prix. Le seigneur un tel en 
offre soixante louis. — Je vous en donne cent. — 
Cela est inutile, a moins qu'il ne se dedise. 
Cependant Ton conclut a cent louis sans les 
avoir vus, car le lendemain le seigneur ne 
manque pas de se dedire : voila ce que j'ai vu 
et entendu la semaine derniere. 

" Ensuite c'est un polisson qui vient brailler 
un air, et a qui on accorde sa protection pour 
le faire entrer a I'Opera, apres lui avoir donne 
quelques lecons de bon gout, et lui avoir appris 
ce que c'est que la proprete du chant fran9ois ; 
c'est une demoiselle qu'on fait attendre pour 
savoir si je suis encore la. Je me leva et je 
m'en vais; les deux laquais ouvrent les deux 
battans pour me laisser sortir, moi qui passe- 
rois alors par le trou d'une aiguille; et les 
deux estafiers crient dans I'anti-chambre : Ma- 
dame, messieurs, voila madame. Tout le 
monde se range en haie, et ces messieurs sont 
des marchands d'etoffes, des marchands d'in- 
strumens, des bijoutiers, des colporteurs, des 
laquais, des d^croteurs, des creanciers ; enfin 
tout ce que vous pouvez imaginer de plus ridi- 
cule et de plus affligeant. Midi ou une heure 
Sonne avant que cette toilette soit achevee, et 
le secretaire, qui, sans doute, sait par experi- 
ence I'impossibilite de rendre un compte de- 
taille des affaires, a un petit bordereau qu'il 
remet entre les mains de son maitre pour I'in- 
struire de ce qu'il doit dire a I'assemblee. Une 
autre fois il sort a pied ou en fiacre, rentre a 
deux heures, fait comme un bruleur de maison, 
dine tete a tete avec moi, ou admet en tiers 
son premier secretaire qui lui parle de la 
necessite de fixer chaque article de depense, 
de donner des delegations pour tel ou tel objet. 
La seuie reponse est: Nous verrons cela. 
Ensuite il court le monde et les spectacles; et 
il soupe en ville quand il n'a personne a souper 
chez lui. Je vois que mon temps de repos 
est fini."— L pp. 308—310. 

A very prominent person among the early 
friends of Madame d'Epinay is Mademoiselle 
d'Ette, a woman of great French respectabi- 
lity, and circulating in the best society ; and, 
as Ave are painting French manners, we shall 
make no apology to the serious part of our 
English readers, for inserting this sketch of 
her history and character by her own hand. 

" Je connois, me dit-elle ensuite, votre fran- 
chise et •»otre discretion : dites-moi naturelle- 
ment quelle opinion on a de moi dans le monde. 
La meilleure, lui dis-je, et telle que vous ne 



pourriez la conserver si vous pratiquiez la 
morale que vous venez de me prScher. Voila 
ou je vous attendois, me dit-elle. Depuis dix 
ans que j'ai perdu ma mere, je fus seduite par 
le chevalier de Valory qui m'avoit vu, pour 
ainsi dire, elever; mon extreme jeunesse et la 
confiance que j'avois en lui ne me permirent 
pas d'abord de me defier de ses veus. Je fus 
longtemps a. m'en apercevoir, et lorsque je 
m'en aperjus, j'avois pris tant de goilt pour 
lui, que je n'eus pas la force de lui resister. 
II me vint des scrupules ; il les leva, en me 
promettant de m'epouser. II y travailla ea 
effet ; mais voyant I'opposition que sa famille 
y apportoit, a cause de la disproportion d'age 
et de mon peu de fortune; et me trouvant, 
d'ailleurs, heureuse comme j'etois, je fus la 
premiere a etouffer mes scrupules, d'autant 
plus qu'il est assez pauvre. II commenjoit 
a faire des reflexions, je lui proposai de con- 
tinuer a vivre comme nous etions; il I'accepta. 
Je quittai ma province, et je le suivis a Paris; 
vous voyez comme j'y vis. Quatre fois la se- 
maine il passe sa journee chez moi; le reste 
du temps nous nous contentons reciproque- 
ment d'apprendre de nos nouvelles, a moins 
que le hasard ne nous fasse rencontrer. Nous 
vivons heureux, contens ; peut-etre ne le se- 
rious nous pas tant si nous etions maries." — 
L pp. Ill, 112. 

This seems a very spirited, unincumbered 
way of passing through life ; and it is some 
comfort, therefore, to a matrimonial English 
reader, to find Mademoiselle d'Ette kicking the 
chevalier out of doors towards the end of the 
second volume. As it is a scene very edifying 
to rakes, and those who decry the happiness 
of the married state, we shall give it in the 
words of Madame d'Epinay. 

" Une nuit, dont elle avoit passe la plus 
grande partie dans I'inquietude, elle entre chez 
le chevalier : il dormoit ; elle le reveille, s'as- 
sied sur son lit, et entame une explication 
avec toute la violence et la fureur qui I'ani- 
moient. Le chevalier, apres avoir employe 
vainement, pour le calmer, tous les moyens 
que sa bonte naturelle lui suggera, lui signifia 
enfin tres-precisement qu'il alloit se separer 
d'elle pour toujours, et fuir un enfer auquel il 
ne pouvoit plus tenir. Cette confidence, qui 
n'etoit pas faite pour I'appaiser, redoubla sa 
rage. Puis-qu'il est ainsi, dit-elle, sortez tout 
a I'heure de chez moi; vous deviez partir danS 
quatre jours, c'est vous rendre service de vous 
faire partir dans I'instant Tout ce qui est ici 
m'appartient; le bail est en mon nom: il ne 
me convient plus de vous souffrir chez moi: 
levez-vous, monsieur, et songez a ne rien em- 
porter sans ma permission." — II. pp. 193, 194. 

Our English method of asking leave to sepa- 
rate from Sir William Scott and Sir John Nicol 
is surely better than this. 

Any one who provides good dinners for 
clever people, and remembers what they say, 
cannot fail to write entertaining Memoires. 
Among the early friends of Madame d'Epinay 
was Jean Jacques Rousseau, — she lived with 
him in considerable intimacy; and no small 
part of her book is taken up with accounts of 
his eccentricity, insanity, and vice. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



317 



"Nous avons debute par V Engagement teme- 1 
raire, comedie nouvelle, de M. Rousseau, ami 
de Fraucueil qui nous I'a presente. L'auteur 
a joue un role dans sa piece. Quoique ce ne 
soit qu'une comedie de societe, elle a eu un 
grand succes. Je doute cependant qa'elle put 
r^ussir au theatre ; mais c'est I'ouvrage d'un 
homme de beaucoup d'esprit, et peut-etre d'un 
homme singulier. Je ne sais pas trop cepen- 
dant si c'est ce que j'ai vu de l'auteur ou de 
la piece qui me fait juger ainsi. II est com- 
plinaenteur sans etre poll, ou au moins sans 
en avoir I'air. II paroit ignorer les usages du 
monde ; mais il est aise de voir qu'il a infini- 
ment d'esprit. II a le teint brun : et des yeux 
pleins de feu animent sa physionomie- Lors- 
qu'il a parle et qu'on le regarde, il paroit joli ; 
mais lorsqu'on se le rappelle, c'est toujours en 
laid. On dit qu'il est d'une mauvaise sante, 
et qu'il a des souffrances qu'il cache avec soin, 
par je ne sais quel principe de vanite ; c'est 
apparemment ce qui lui donne, de temps en 
temps, I'air farouche. M. de Bellegarde, avec 
qui il a cause long-temps, ce matin, en est en- 
chante, et I'a engage a nous venir voir sou- 
vent. J'en suis bien aise ; je me promets 
de profiler beaucoup de sa conversation." — 
I. pp. 175, 176. 

Their friendship so formed, proceeded to a 
great degree of intimacy. Madame d'Epinay 
admired his genius, and provided him with 
hats and coats ; and, at last, was so far de- 
luded by his declamations about the country, 
as to fit him up a little hermit cottage, where 
there were a great many birds, and a great 
many plants and flowers — and where Rous- 
seau was, as might have been expected, su- 
premely miserable. His friends from Paris 
did not come to see him. The postman, the 
butcher, and the baker, hate romantic scenery; 
duchesses and marchionesses were no longer 
found to scramble for him. Among the real 
inhabitants of the country, the reputation of 
reading and thinking is fatal to character; and 
Jean Jacques cursed his own successful elo- 
quence which had sent him from the suppers 
and flattery of Paris to smell to daflTodils, 
watch sparrows, or project idle saliva into 
the passing stream. Very few men who have 
gratified, and are gratifying their vanity in a 
great metropolis, are qualified to quit it. Few 
have the plain sense to perceive that they 
must soon inevitably be forgotten, — or the for- 
titude to bear it when they are. They repre- 
sent to themselves imaginary scenes of de- 
ploring friends and dispirited companies, — 
but the ocean might as well regret the drops 
exhaled by the sunbeams. Life goes on ; and 
whether the absent have retired into a cottage 
or a grave, is much the same thing. — In Lon- 
don, as in law, de non apparentibus, et non cxist- 
entibus eadem est ratio. 

This is the account Madame d'Epinay gives 
of Rousseau soon after he had retired into the 
hermitage. 

"J'ai ete il y a deux jours a la Chevrette, 
pour terminer quelques affaires avant de m'y 
etablir avec mes enfans. J'avois fait prevenir 
Rousseaxi de mon voyage : il est venu me voir. 
Je crois qu'il a besoin de ma presence, et que 



la solitude a deja agite sa bile. II se plaint de 
tout le monde. Diderot doit toujours aller, et 
ne va jamais le voir; M.Grimm le neglige; 
le Baron d'Holbach I'oublie; Gauffecourt et 
moi seulement avons encore des egards pour 
lui, dit-il ; j'ai voulu les justifier ; cela n'a pas 
reussi. j'espere qu'il sera beaucoup plus a la 
Chevrette qu'a I'Hermitage. Je suis persuad^e 
qu'il n'y a que fa9on de prendre cet homme 
pour le rendre heureux ; c'est de feindre de ne 
pas prendre garde a lui, et s'en occuper sans 
cesse; c'est pour cela que je n'insistai point 
pour le retenir, lorsqu'il m'eut dit qu'il vouloit 
s'en retourner a I'Hermitage, quoiqu'il fflttardet 
malgre le mauvais temps." — II. pp. 253, 254. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau seems, as the reward 
of genius and fine writing, to have claimed an 
exemption from all moral duties. He borrowed 
and begged, and never paid ; — put his children 
in a poor-house — betrayed his friends — insulted 
his benefactors — and Avas guilty of every spe- 
cies of meanness and mischief. His vanity 
was so great, that it was almost impossible to 
keep pace with it by any activity of attention; 
and his suspicion of all mankind amounted 
nearly, if not altogether, to insanity. The fol- 
lowing anecdote, however, is totally clear of 
any symptom of derangement, and carries only 
the most rooted and disgusting selfishness. 

"Rousseau vous a done dit qu'il n'avoit pas 
porte son ouvrage a Paris ? II en a menti, car 
il n'a fait son voyage que pour cela. J'ai re§u 
hier une lettre de Diderot, qui peint votre her- 
mite comme si je le voyois. II a fait ces deux 
lieues a pied, est venu s'etablir chez Diderot 
sans I'avoir prevenu, le tout pour faire avec 
lui la revision de son ouvrage. Au point ou 
ils en etoient ensemble, vous conviendrez que 
cela est assez etrange. Je vois, par certains 
mots echappes a mon ami dans sa lettre, qu'il y 
a quelque sujet de discussion entre eux; mais 
comme il ne s'explique point, je n'y comprends 
rien. Rousseau I'a tenu impitoyablement a 
I'ouvrage depuis le Saniedi dix heures du matin 
jusqu'au Lundi onze heures du soir, sans lui 
donner a peine le temps de boire ni manger. 
La revision finie, Diderot cause avec lui d'un 
plan qu'il a dans la tete, et prie Rousseau de 
I'aider a arranger un incident qui n'est pas en- 
core trouve a sa fantaisie. Cela est trop difli- 
cile, repond froidement Thermite, il est tard, 
je ne suis point accoutume a veiller. Bon 
soir, je pars demain a six heures du matin, il 
est temps de dormir. II se leve, va se coucher, 
et laisse Diderot petrifie de son procede. Voila 
cet homme que vous croyez si pen6tre de vos 
lefons. Ajoutez a cette reflexion un propos 
singulier de la femme de Diderot, dont je vous 
piie de faire votre profit. Cette femme n'est 
qu'une bonne femme, mais elle a la tact juste. 
Voyant son mari desole le jour du depart de 
Rousseau, elle lui en demande la raison ; il la 
lui dit : C'est le manque de delicatesse de cet 
homme, ajoute-t-il, qui m'affligc; il me fait 
travailler comme un mancEUvre, je ne m'en 
serois, je crois, pas aper5u, s'il ne m'avoit re 
fuse aussi sechement de s'occuper pourmoi un 
quart-d'heure . . . Vous etes etonne de cela, lui 
repond sa femme, vous ne le connoissez done 
pas ? II est devors d'envie ; il enrage quand 
2d3 



318 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



il paroit quelque chose de beau qui n'est pas 
de lui. On lui verra faire un jour quelques 
grands forfaits plutot que de se laisser ignore r. 
TeneZ, je fie jurerois pas qu'il ne se langeat 
du parti des Jesuites, et qu'il n'enterprit leur 
apologie." — II. pp. 60, 61. 

The horror which Diderot ultimately con- 
ceived for him, is strongly expressed in the 
following letter to Grimm, — written after an 
interview which compelled him, with many 
pangs, to renounce all intercourse with a man 
who had, for years, been the object of his ten- 
derest and most partial feelings. 

" Get homme est un forcene. Je I'ai vu, je 
lui ai reproche, avec toute la force que donne 
I'honnetete et une sorte d'interet qui reste au 
fond du ccEur d'un ami qui lui est devoue de- 
puis long-temps, Tcnormite de sa conduite ; les 
pleurs verses aux pieds de Madame d'Epinay, 
dans le moment meme ou il la chargeoit pres 
de moi des accusations les plus graves; cette 
odieuse apologie qu'il vous a envoyee, et oii il 
n'y pas une seule des raisons qu'il avoit ii dire ; 
cette lettre projectee pour Saint-Lambert, qui 
devoit le tranquilliser sur des sentimens qu'il 
se reprochoit, et ou, loin d'avoucr une passion 
nee dans son cueur son malgre lui, il s'ex- 
cuse d'avoir alarme Madame d'Houdetot sur la 
sienne. Que sais-je encore ■? Je ne suis point 
content de ses responses ; je n'ai pas eu le 
courage de le lui temoigner j'ai mieux aime 
lui laisser la miserable consolation de croire 
qu'il m'a trompe. Qu'il vive ! II a mis dans 
sa defense un emportement froid qui m'a 
afflige. J'ai peur qu'il ne soit endurci. 

"Adieu, mon ami; soyons et continuons 
d'etre honnetes gens : I'etat de ceux qui ont 
cesse al'etre me fait peur. Adieu, mon ami; 

je vous embrasse bien tendrement Je ne 

jette dans vos bras comme un homme effraye ; 
je tache en vain de faire de lapoesie, mais cet 
homme me revient tout a travers mon travail ; 
il me trouble, et je suis comme si j'avois a cote 
de moi un damne ; il est damne, cela est sur. 

Adieu, mon ami Grimm, viola I'effet que 

je ferois sur vous, si je devenois jamais un 
mechant: en verite, j'aimerois mieux etre mort. 
II n'y a peut-etre pas le sens commun dans 
tout ce que je vous ecris, mais je vous avoue 
que je n'ai jamais eprouve un trouble d'ame 
si terrible que cela que j'ai. 

" Oh ! mon ami, quel spectacle que celui 
d'un homme mechant et bourrele ! Brulez, 
dechirez ce papier, qu'il ne retomhe plus sous 
vos yeux ; que je ne revoie plus cet homme 
la, il me feroit croire aux diables et a I'enfer. 
Si je suis jamais force de retouruer chez lui, 
je suis sur que je fremirai tout le longduche- 
min : j'avois la fievre en reveiiant. Je suis 
fache de ne lui avoir pas laisse voir I'horreur 
qu'il m'inspiroit, et je ne me reconcilie avec 
moi qu'en pensant, que vous, avec toute votre j 
fermete, vous ne I'auriez pas pu a ma place ; \ 
je ne sais pas s'il ne m'auroit pas tue. On 
. entendoit ses cris jusqu'au bout du jardin; et 
je le voyois ! Adieu, mon ami, j'irai demain 
vous voir; j'irai chercher un homme de bien, 
aupres duquel je m'asseye, qui me rassure, et 
qui chasse de mon ame je ne sais quoi d'in- 
fernal qui la tourmente et qui s'y est attache. 
Les poetes ont bien fait de mettre un inter- 



valle immense entre le ciel et les enfers. En 
verite, la main me tremble." — III. pp. 148, 149. 

Madame d'Epinay lived, as we before ob- 
served, with man}' persons of great celebrity. 
We could npt help smiling, among many 
others, at this anecdote of our countryman, 
David Hume. At the beginning of his splen- 
did career of fame and fashion at Paris, the 
historian was persuaded to appear in the cha- 
racter of a sultan ; and was placed on a sofa 
between two of the most beautiful women of 
Paris, who acted for that evening the part of 
inexorables, whose favour he was supposed to 
be soliciting. The absurdity of this scene can 
easily be conceived. 

" Le celebre David Hume, grand et gros his- 
toriographe d'Angleterre, connu et estime par 
ses ecrits, n'a pas autar.t de talens pour ce 
genre d'amusemens auquel toutes nos jolies 
femmes I'avoient decide propre. II lit son debut 
chez Madame de T * * * ; on lui avoit destine 
le role d'un sultan assis entre deux esclaves, 
employant toute son eloquence pour s'en faire 
aimer; les trouvant inexorables, il devoit 
chercher le sujet de lenrs peines et de leur re- 
sistance: on le place sur im sopha entre les 
deux plus jolies femmes de Paris, il les regarde 
attentiveraent, il se frappe le ventre et les ge- 
noux a plusieurs reprises, et ne trouve jamais 
^utre chose a leur dire que . Eh bien ! mes de- 
moiselles .... Eh bien ! vous voild done .... Eh 
bien! vous voild .... vous voild ici? .... Cette 
phrasc dura un quart-d'heure,sans qu'il put en 
sortir. Une d'elles se leva d'impatience : Ah I 
dit-elle, je m'en etois bien doutee, cet homme 
n'est bon qu'a manger du veau ! Dupuis ce 
temps il est relegue au role de spectateur, et 
n'en est pas moins fete et cajole. C'est en ve- 
rite une chose plaisante que le role qu'il joue 
ici ; malheureusement pour lui, ou plutot pour 
la dignitephilosophique, car, pour lui, il paroit 
s'accommoder fort de ce train de vie ; il n'y 
avoit aucune manie dominante dans ce pays 
lorsqu'il y est arrive ; on I'a regarde comme 
une trouvaille dans cette circonstance, et I'ef- 
fervescence de nos jeunes tetes s'est tourn^e 
de son cote. Toutes les jolies femmes s'en sont 
emparees ; il est de tous les soupers fins, et il 
n'est point de bonne fete sans lui: en un mot, 
il est pour nos agreables ce que les Genevois 
sont pour moi." — III. pp. 284, 285. 

There is always some man, of whom the 
human viscera stand in greater dread than of 
any other person, who is supposed, for the time 
being, to be the only person who can dart his 
pill into their inmost recesses ; and bind them 
over, in medical recognisance, to assimilate 
and digest. In the Trojan war, Podalirius and 
Machaon Avere what Dr. Baillie and Sir Henry 
Halford now are — they had the fashionable 
practice of the Greek camp; and, in all pro- 
bability, received many a guinea from Aga- 
memnon dear to Jove, and Nestor the tamer 
of horses. In the time of Madame d'Epinay, 
Dr. Tronchin, of Geneva, was in vogue, and 
no lady of fashion could recover without 
writing to him, or seeing him in person. To 
the Esculapius of this very small and irritable 
republic, Madame d'Epinay repaired ; and, 
after a struggle between life and death, and 
Dr. Tronchin, recovered her health. During 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



319 



her residence at Geneva, she became acquaint- 
ed with Voltaire, of whom she has left the 
following admirable and original account — the 
truth, talent, and simplicity of which, are not 
a little enhanced by the tone of adulation or 
abuse which has been so generally employed 
in speaking of this celebrated person. 

"Eh bien ! men ami, je n'aimerois pas a 
vivre de suite avec lui; il n'a nul principe ar- 
rete, il compte trop sur sa memoire, et il en 
abuse souvent; je trouve qu'elle fait tortquel- 
quefois a sa conversation ; il redit plus qu'il 
ne dit, et ne laisse jamais rien a faire aux 
autres. II ne sait point causer, et il humilie 
I'amour-propre ; il dit le pour et le centre, tant 
qu'on veut, toujours avec de nouvelles graces 
a la verite, et neanmoins il a toujours I'air .de 
se moquer de tout, jusqu'a lui-meme. II n'a 
nuUe philosophic dans la tete ; il est tout he- 
risse de petits prejuges d'enfans ; on les lui 
passeroit peut-etre en faveur de ses graces, du 
brilliant de son esprit et de son originalite, s'il 
ne s'afhchoit pas pour les secouer tous. II a 
des inconsequences plaisantes, et il est au 
milieu de tout cela tres-amusant a voir. Mais 
je n'aime point les gens qui ne font que 
m'amuser. Pour madame sa niece, elle est 
tout-a-fait comique. 

"II paroit ici depuis quelques jours un livre 
qui a vivement echauffe les t^tes, et qui cause 
des discussions fort interessantes entre differ- 
entes personnes de ce pays, parce que Ton 
pretend que la constitution de leur gouverne- 
ment y est interessee : Voltaire s'y trouve 
rael^ pour des propos assez vifs qu'il a tenu a 
ce sujet centre les pretres. La grosse niece 
trouve fort mauvais que tous les magistrals 
n'ayent pas pris fait et cause pour son oncle. 
Elle jette tour a tour ses grosses mains et ses 
petits bras par dessus sa tete, maudissant avec 
des cris inhumains les lois, les republiques, et 
surtout ces polissons de republicains qui vont 
a pied, qui sont obliges de souftrir les criail- 
leries de leurs pretres, et qui se croient libres. 
Cela est tout-d-fait bon a entendre et a voir." 
III. pp. 196, 197. 

Madame D'Epinay was certainly a woman 
of very considerable talent. Rousseau accuses 
her of writing bad plays and romances. This 
may be ; but her epistolary style is excellent 
— her remarks on passing events lively, acute, 
and solid — and her delineation of character 
admirable. As a proof of this, we shall give 
her portrait of the Marquis de Croismare, one 
uf the friends of Diderot and the Baron d'Hol- 
bach. 

"Je lui crois bien soixante ans; il ne les 



j paroit pourtant pas. II est d'une taille mediocre, 
sa figure a du etre tres-agreable : elle se dis- 
I tingue encore par un air de noblesse et d'ais- 
ance, qui repand de la grace sur tout sa 
personne. Sa physionomie a de la finesse. 
Ses gestes, ses attitudes ne sont jamais 
recherches; mais ils sont si bien d'accord 
avec la tournure de son esprit, qu'ils semblent 
ajouter a son originalite. II parle des choses 
les plus serieuses et les plus importantes d'un 
ton si gai, qu'on est souvent tente de ne rien 
croire de ce qu'il dit. On n'a presque jamais 
rien a citer de ce qu'on lui eutend dire ; mais 
lorsqu'il parle, on ne veut rien perdre de ce 
qu'il dit; s'il se tait, on desire qu'il parle 
encore. Sa prodigieuse vivacite, et une' sin- 
guliere aptitude a toutes sortes de talens et de 
connoissances, I'ont porte a tout voir et a tout 
connoitre ; au moyen de quoi vous comprenez 
qu'il est fort instruit. II a bien lu, bien vu, et 
n'a retenu que ce qui valoit la peine de I'etre. 
Son esprit annonce d'abord plus d'agrement 
que de solidite, mais je crois que quiconque 
le jugeroit frivole lui feroit tort. Je le soup- 
f onne de renfermer dans son cabinet les epines 
des roses qu'il distribue dans la societe : assez 
constamment gai dans le monde, seul je le 
crois melancolique. On dit qu'il a I'ame aussi 
tendre qu'honnete ; qu'il sent vivement et qu'il 
se livre avec impetuosite a ce qui trouve le 
chemin de son coeur.. Tout le monde ne lui 
plait pas ; il faut pour cela de I'originalite, ou 
des vertus distinguees, ou de certains vices 
qu'il appelle passions ; neanmoins dans le 
courant de la vie, il s'accommode de tout. 
Beaucoup de curiosite et de la facilite dans le 
caractere (ce qui va jusqu'a la foiblesse) 
I'entrainent souvent a negliger ses meilleurs 
amis et a les perdre de vue, pour se livrer a 
des gouts factices et passagers : il en rit avec 
eux ; mais on voit si clairement qu'il en rougit 
avec lui-meme, qu'on ne pent lui savoir 
mauvais gre de ses disparates." — III. pp. .324 
—326. 

The portrait of Grimm, the French Boswell, 
vol. iii. p. 97, is equally good, if not superior ; 
but we have already extracted enough to show 
the nature of the work, and the talents of the 
author. It is a lively, entertaining book, — 
relating in an agreeable manner the opinions 
and habits of many remarkable men — mingled 
with some very scandalous and improper pas- 
sages, which degrade the whole work. But if 
all the decencies and delicacies of life were in 
one scale, and five francs in the other, what 
French bookseller would feel a single moment 
of doubt in making his selection 1 



390 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



POOR-LAWS/ 

[Edinburgh Review, 1820.] 



OoB readers, we fear, will require some 
apology for being asked to look at anything 
upon the poor-laws. No subject, we admit, 
can be more disagreeable, or more trite. But, 
unfortunately, it is the most important of all 
the important subjects which the distressed 
state of the country is now crowding upon our 
notice. 

A pamphlet on the poor-laws generally con- 
tains some little piece of favourite nonsense, 
by which we are gravely told this enormous 
evil may be perfectly cured. The first gentle- 
man recommends little gardens ; the second 
cows; the third a village shop; the fourth a 
spade ; the fifth Dr. Bell, and so forth. Every 
man rushes to the press with his small morsel 
of imbecility ; and is not easy till he sees his 
impertinence stitched in blue covers. In this 
list of absurdities, we must not forget the pro- 
ject of supporting the poor from national funds, 
or, in other words, of immediately doubling the 
expenditure, and introducing every possible 
abuse into the administration of it. 

Then there are M^orthy men, who call upon 
gentlemen of fortune and education to become 
overseers — meaning, we suppose, that the pre- 
sent overseers are to perform the higher duties 
of men of fortune. Then merit is set up as 
the test of relief; and their worships are to 
enter into a long examination of the life and 
character of each applicant, assisted, as they 
doubtless would be, by candid overseers, and 
neighbours divested of every feeling of malice 
and partiality. The children are next to be 
taken from their parents, and lodged in im- 
mense pedagogueries of several aci'es each, 
where they are to be carefully secluded from 
those fathers and mothers they are commanded 
to obey and honour, and are to be brought up 
in virtue by the churchwardens. — And this is 
gravely intended as a corrective of the poor- 
laws ; as if (to pass over the many other ob- 
jections which might be made to it,) it would 
not set mankind populating faster than carpen- 
ters and bricklayers could cover in their child- 
ren, or separate twigs to be bound into rods for 
their flagellation. An extension of the poor- 
laws to personal property is also talked of 
We should be very glad to see any species of 
property exempted from these laws, but have 
no wish that any which is now exempted should 
be subjected to their influence. The case 
would infallibly be like that of the income-tax, 
— the more easily the tax was raised, the more 



* 1. Safe Method for renderinir Income arising from Per- 
sonal Property available to the Poor-Laics. Longman 
&Co. 1819. 

2. Summary Review of the Report and Evidence relative 
to the Poor-Laws. By S. W. Nicol. York. 

3. Essn.y on the Practicability of modifying- the Poor-Laws. 
Sherwood. 1819. 

4. Considerations on the Poor-Laws. By John Davison, 
A. M. Oxford. 



profligate would be the expenditure. It is pro- 
posed also that alehouses should be diminished, 
and that the children of the poor should be 
catechized publicly in the church, — both very 
respectable and proper suggestions but of them- 
selves hardly strong enough for the evil. We 
have every wish that the poor should accus- 
tom themselves to habits of sobriety; but we 
cannot help reflecting, sometimes, that an ale- 
house is the only place where a poor fired 
creature, haunted with every species of wretch- 
edness, can purchase three or four times a 
year three pennyworth of ale — a liquor upon 
which wine-drinking moralists are always ex- 
tremely severe. We must not forget, among 
other nostrums, the eulogy of small farms — in 
other words, of small capital, and profound ig- 
norance in the arts of agriculture ; — and the 
evil is also thought to be curable by periodical 
contributions from men who have nothing, and 
can earn nothing without charity. To one of 
these plans, and perhaps the most plausible, 
Mr. Nicol has stated, in the following passage, 
objections that are applicable to almost all the 
rest. 

"The district school would no doubt be well 
superintended and well regulated; magistrates 
and country gentlemen would be its visitors. 
The more excellent the establishment, the 
greater the mischief; because the greater the 
expense. We may talk what we will of econ- 
omy, but where the care of the poor is taken 
exclusively into the hands of the rich, compa- 
rative extravagance is the necessary conse- 
quence: to say that the gentleman, or even the 
overseer, would never permit the poor to live 
at the district school, as they live at home, is 
saying far too little. English humanity will 
never see the poor in any thing like want, when 
that want is palpably and visibly brought be- 
fore it : first, it will give necessaries, next com- 
forts ; until its fostering care rather pampers, 
than merely relieves. The humanity itself is 
highly laudable; but if practised on an exten- 
sive scale, its consequences must entail an al- 
most unlimited expenditure. 

" Mr. Locke computes that the labour of a 
child from 3 to 14, being set against its nourish- 
ment and teaching, the result would be exone- 
ration of the parish from expense. Nothing 
could prove more decisively the incompetency 
of the board of trade to advise on this question. 
Of the productive labour of the workhouse, I 
shall have to speak hereafter; I will only ob- 
serve in this place, that after the greatest care 
and attention bestowed on the subject, after ex- 
pensive looms purchased, &c., the 50 boys of 
the blue coat school earned in the year 1816, 
59/. 10s. 3r?.; the 40 girls earned, in the same 
time, 40Z. 7s. 9cl. The ages of these children 
are from 8 to 16. They earn about one pound 
in the year, and cost about twenty. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



321 



" The greater the call for labour in public 
institutions, be they prisons, workhouses, or 
schools, the more difficult to be procured that 
labour must be. There will thence be both 
much less of it for the comparative numbers, 
and it will afford a much less price ; to get any 
labour at all, one school must underbid an- 
other. 

" It has just been observed, that ' the child 
of a poor cottager, half clothed, half fed, with 
the enjoyment of home and liberty, is not only 
happier but better than the little automaton of 
a parish workhouse :' and this I believe is ac- 
curately true. I scarcely know a more cheer- 
ing sight, though certainly many more elegant 
ones, than the youthful gambols of a village 
green. They call to mind the description given 
by Paley of the shoals of the fry of fish : ' They 
are so happy that they know not what to do 
with themselves ; their attitude, their vivacity, 
their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, 
all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and 
are simply the effects of that excess.' 

"Though politeness may be banished from 
the cottage, and though the anxious mother may 
sometimes chide a little too sharply, yet here 
both maternal endearments and social affection 
exist in perhaps their greatest vigour : the at- 
tachments of lower life, where independent of 
attachment there is so little to enjoy, far out- 
strip the divided if not exhausted sensibility 
of the rich and great ; and in depriving the 
poor of these attachments, we may be said to 
rob them of their little all. 

" But it is not to happiness only I here refer ; 
it is to morals. I listen with great reserve to 
that system of moral instruction, which has 
not social affection for its basis, or the feelings 
of the heart for its ally. It is not to be con- 
cealed, that every thing may be taught, yet no- 
thing learned, that systems planned with care, 
and executed with attention, may evaporate 
into unmeaning forms, where the imagination 
is not roused, or the sensibility impressed. 

"Let us suppose the children of the 'district 
school,' nurtured with that superabundant care 
which such institutions, when supposed to be 
well conducted, are wont to exhibit ; they rise 
with the dawn ; after attending to the calls of 
cleanliness, prayers follow ; then a lesson ; 
then breakfast ; then work, till noon liberates 
them, for perhaps an hour, from the walls of 
their prison to the walls of their prison court. 
Dinner follows ; and then, in course, work, les- 
sons, supper, prayers ; at length, after a day 
dreary and dull, the counterpart of every day 
which has preceded, and of all that are to fol- 
low, the children are dismissed to bed. — This 
system may construct a machine, but it will 
not form a man. Of what does it consist 1 of 
prayers parroted without one sentiment in ac- 
cord with the words uttered : of moral lectures 
which the understanding does not comprehend, 
or the heart feel ; of endless bodily constraint, 
intolerable to youthful vivacity, and injurious 
to the perfection of the human frame. — The 
cottage day may not present so imposing a 
scene ; no decent uniform ; no well trimmed 
locks ; no glossy skin ; no united response of 
hundreds of conjoined voices; no lengthened 
procession, misnamed exercise ; but if it has 
41 



less to strike the eye, it has far more to engage 
the heart. A trifle in the way of cleanliness 
must suffice ; the prayer is not forgot ; it is per- 
haps imperfectly repeated, and confusedly un- 
derstood; but it is not muttered as a vain 
sound; it is an earthly parent that tells of a 
heavenly one ; duty, love, obedience, are not 
words without meaning, when repeated by a 
mother to her child : to God, the great unknown 
Being that made all things, all thanks, all praise, 
all adoration is due. The young religionist 
may be in some measure bewildered by all 
this; his notions may be obscure, but his feel- 
ings will be roused, and the foundation at least 
of true piety will be laid. 

" Of moral instruction, the child may be 
taught less at home than at school, but he will 
be taught better; that is, whatever he is taught 
he will feel : he will not have abstract proposi- 
tions of duty coldly presented to his mind ; but 
precept and practice will be conjoined; what 
he is told it is right to do will be instantly done. 
Sometimes the operative principle on the child's 
mind will be love, sometimes fear, sometimes 
habitual sense of obedience ; it is always some- 
thing that will impress, always something that 
will be remembered." 

There are two points which we consider as 
now admitted by all men of sense, — 1st, That 
the poor-laws must be abolished ; 2dly, That 
they must be very gradually abolished.* We 
hardly think it worth while to throw away pen 
and ink upon any one who is still inclined to 
dispute either of these propositions. 

With respect to the gradual abolition, it must 
be observed, that the present redundant popu- 
lation of the country has been entirely produced 
by the poor-laws: and nothing could be so 
grossly unjust as to encourage people to such 
a vicious multiplication, and then, when you 
happen to discover your folly, immediately to 
starve them into annihilation. You have been 
calling upon your population for two hundred 
years to beget more children — furnished them 
with clothes, food, and houses — taught ihem to 
lay up nothing for matrimony, nothing for 
children, nothing for age— but to depend upon 
justices of the peace for every human want. 
The folly is now detected; but the people, who 
are the fruit of it, remain. It was madness to 
call them in this manner into existence ; but 
it would be the height of cold-blooded cruelty 
to get rid of them by any other than the most 
gentle and gradual means ; and not only wouldg 
it be cruel, but extremely dangerous, to make 
the attempt. Insurrections of the most san- 
guinary and ferocious nature would be the 
immediate consequence of any very sudden 
change in the system of the poor-laws; not 
partial, like those which proceeded from an 
impeded or decaying state of manufactures, 
but as universal as the poor-laws themselves. 



* I am not quite so wrong in this as I seem to be, nor 
after all our experience am I satisfied that there has not 
been a good deal of rashness and precipitation in the 
conductof this admirable measure. Yon have not been 
able to carry the law into manufacturing countries. 
Parliament will compel you to soften some of the more 
severe clauses. It has been the nucleus of general in- 
surrection and chartism The Duke of Wellington 
wisely recommended that the experiment should be 
first tried in a few counties round the metropolis. 



3^2 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



and as ferocious as insurrections always are 
which are led on by hunger and despair. 

These observations may serve as an answer 
to those angry and impatient gentlemen, who 
are always crying out, What has the committee 
of the House of Commons done 1 — What have 
they to show for their labours 1 — Are the rates 
lessened 1 — Are the evils removed 1 The com- 
mittee of the House of Commons would have 
shown themselves to be a set of the most con- 
temptible charlatans, if they had proceeded 
with any such indecent and perilous haste, or 
paid the slightest regard to the ignorant folly 
which required it at their hands. They have 
very properly begun, by collecting all possible 
information upon the subject ; by consulting 
speculative and practical men ; by leaving lime 
for the press to contribute whatever it could of 
thought or knowledge to the subject; and by 
introducing measures, the effects of which will 
be, and are intended to be, gradual. The lords 
seemed at first to have been surprised that the 
poor-laws were not abolished before the end of 
the first session of Parliament ; and accordingly 
set up a little rival committee of their own, 
which did little or nothing, and will not, we 
believe, be renewed. We are so much less 
sanguine than those noble legislators, that we 
shall think the improvement immense, and a 
subject of very general congratulation, if the 
poor-rates are perceptibly diminished, and if 
the system of pauperism is clearly going down 
in twenty or thirty years hence. 

We think, upon the whole, that government 
has been fortunate in the selection of the gen- 
tleman who is placed at the head of the com- 
mittee for the revision of the poor-laws ; or 
rather, we should say, (for he is a gentleman 
of very independent fortune) , who has consented 
that he should be placed there. Mr. Sturges 
Bourne is undoubtedly a man of business, and 
of very good sense : he has made some mis- 
takes ; but, upon the whole, sees the subject as 
a philosopher and a statesman ought to do. 
Above all, we are pleased with his good nature 
and good sense in adhering to his undertaking, 
after the Parliament has flung out two or three 
of his favourite bills. Many men would have 
surrendered so unthankful and laborious an 
undertaking in disgust ; but Mr. Bourne knows 
better what appertains to his honour and cha- 
racter, and, above all, what he owes to his 
country. It is a great subject ; and such as will 
secure to him the gratitude and favour of pos- 
terity, if he brings it to a successful issue. 

We have staled our opinion that all remedies, 
without gradual abolition, are of little impor- 
tance. With a foundation laid for such gradual 
abolition, every auxiliary improvement of the 
poor-laws (while they do remain) is worthy the 
attention of Parliament: and, in suggesting a 
few alterations as fit to be immediately adopted, 
we wish it to be understood, that we have in 
view the gradual destruciion of the system, as 
well as its amendment while it continues to 
operate. 

It seems to us, then, that one of the first and 
greatest improvements of this unhappy system 
would be a complete revision of the law of set- 
tlement. Since Mr. East's act for preventing 
the removal of the poor till they are actually 



chargeable, any man may live where he pleases, 
until he becomes a beggar, and asks alms of 
the place where he resides. To gain a settle- 
ment, then, is nothing more than to gain a right 
of begging : it is not, as it used to be before Mr. 
East's act, a power of residing where, in the 
judgment of the resident, his industry and exer- 
tion will be best rewarded; but a power of tax- 
ing the industry and exertions of other persons 
in the place where his settlement falls. This 
privilege produces all the evil complained of iu 
the poor-laws ; and instead, therefore, of being 
conferred with the liberality and profusion 
which it is at present, it should be made of very 
difiicult attainment, and liable to the fewest 
possible changes. The constant policy of our 
courts of justice has been, to make settlements 
easily obtained. Since the period we have be- 
fore alluded to, this has certainly been a very 
mistaken policy. It would be a far wiser 
course to abolish all other means of settlement 
than those of birth, parentage, and marriage — 
not for the limited reason stated in the com- 
mittee, that it would diminish the law expenses, 
(though that, too, is of importance,) but because 
it would invest fewer residents with the fatal 
privilege of turning beggars, exempt a greater 
number of labourers from the moral corruption 
of the poor-laws, and stimulate them to exertion 
and economy, by the fear of removal if they are 
extravagant and idle. Of ten men who leave 
the place of their birth, four, probably, get a 
settlement by yearly hiring, and four others by 
renting a small tenement ; while two or three • 
may return to the place of their nativity, and 
settle there. Now, under the present system, 
here are eight men settled where they have a 
right to beg without being removed. The pro- 
bability is, that they will all beg ; and that rtieir 
virtue will give way to the incessant temptation 
of the poor-laws : but if these men had felt from 
the very beginning, that removal from the place 
where they wished most to live would be the 
sure consequence of their idleness and extrava- 
gance, the probability is, that they would have 
escaped the contagion of pauperism, and been 
much more useful members of society than 
they now are. The best labourers in a village 
are commonly those who are living where they 
are legally settled, and have therefore no right to 
ask charity — for the plain reason, that they have 
nothing to depend upon but their own exertions: 
in short, for them the poor-laws hardly exist; 
and they are such as the great mass of English 
peasantry would be, if we had escaped the curse 
of these laws altogether. 

It is incorrect to say, that no labourer would 
settle out of the place of his birth, if the means 
of acquiring a settlement were so limited. Many 
men begin the world with strong hope and 
much confidence in their own fortune, and 
without any intention of subsisting by charily; 
but they see others subsisting in greater ease, 
without their toil — and their spirit gradually 
sinks to the meanness of mendicity. 

An affecting picture is sometimes drawn of a 
man falling into want in the decline of life, and 
compelled to remove from the place where he 
has spent the greatest part of his days. These 
things are certainly painful enough to him who 
has the misfortune to witness them. But they 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



323 



must be taken upon a large scale; and the 
whole good and evil which they produce dili- 
gently weighed and considered. The question 
then will be, whether any thing can be more 
really humane, than to restrain a system which 
relaxes the sinews of industry, and places the 
dependence of laborious men upon any thing 
but themselves. We must not think only of 
the wretched sufferer who is removed, and, at 
the sight of his misfortunes, call out for fresh 
facilities to beg. We must remember the in- 
dustry, the vigour, and the care which the dread 
of removal has excited, and the number of per- 
sons who owe their happiness and their wealth 
to that salutary feeling. The very person, who, 
in the decline of life, is removed from the spot 
where he has spent so great a part of his time, 
would, perhaps, have been a pauper half a cen- 
tury before, if he had been afflicted with the 
right of asking alms in the place where he 
lived. 

It has been objected, that this plan of abolish- 
ing all settlements but those of birth, would 
send a man, the labour of whose youth had 
benefited some other parish, to pass the useless 
part of his life in a place for which he existed 
only as a burden. Supposing that this were 
the case, it would be quite sufficient to answer, 
that any given parish would probably send 
away as many useless old men as it received ; 
and, after all, little inequalities must be borne 
for the general good. But, in truth, it is rather 
ridiculous to talk of a parish not having bene- 
fited by the labour of the man who is returned 
upon their hands in his old age. If such parish 
resembles most of those in England, the absence 
of a man for thirty or forty years has been a 
great good instead of an evil ; they have had 
many more labourers than they could employ : 
and the very man whom they are complaining 
of supporting for his few last years, would, in 
all probability, have been a beggar forty years 
before, if he had remained among them ; or, by 
pushing him out of work, would have made 
some other man a beggar. Are the benefits de- 
rived from prosperous manufactures limited to 
the parishes which contain them 1 The indus- 
try of Halifax, Huddersfield, or Leeds, is felt 
across the kingdom as far as the Eastern Sea. 
The prices of meat and corn at the markets of 
York and Malton are instantly affected by any 
increase of demand and rise of wages in the 
manufacturing districts to the west. They 
have benefited these distant places, and found 
labour for their superfluous hands by the pros- 
perity of their manufactures. Where, then, 
would be the injustice, if the manufacturers, in 
the time of stagnation and poverty, were re- 
turned to their birth settlements 1 But as the 
law now stands, poptdation tumors, of the most 
dangerous nature, may spring up in a parish : 
— a manufacturer, concealing his intention, may 
settle there, take 200 or .300 apprentices, fail, 
and half ruin the parish which has been the 
scene of his operations. For these reasons, 
we strongly recommend to Mr. Bourne to nar- 
row as much as possible, in all his future bills, 
the means of acquiring settlements,* and to re- 
duce them ultimately to parentage, birth and 



* This has been done. 



marriage — convinced that, in so doing, he will, 
in furtherance of the great object of abolishing 
the poor-laws, be only limiting the right of beg- 
ging, and preventing the resident and almsman 
from being (as they now commonly are) one 
and the same person. But, before we dismiss 
this part of the subject, we must say a few 
words upon the methods by which settlements 
are now gained. 

In the settlement by hiring it is held, that a 
man has a claim upon the parish for support 
where he has laboured for a year; and yet 
another, who has laboured there for twenty 
years by short hirings, gains no settlement at 
all. When a man was not allowed to live 
where he was not settled, it was wise to lay 
hold of any plan for extending settlements. But 
the whole question is now completely changed ; 
and the only point which remains is, to find out 
what mode of conferring settlements produces 
the least possible mischief. We are convinced • 
it is by throwing every possible difficulty in the 
way of acquiring them. If a settlement here- 
after should not be obtained in that parish in 
which labourers have worked for many years, 
it will be because it contributes materially to 
their happiness that they should not gain a 
settlement there ; and this is a full answer to 
the apparent injustice. 

Then, upon what plea of common sense 
should a man gain a power of taxing a parish 
to keep him, because he has rented a tenement 
of ten pounds a year there ? or, because he has 
served the office of clerk, or sexton, or hog- 
ringer, or bought an estate of thirty pounds 
value] However good these various pleas 
might be for conferring settlements, if it was ' -^'^ 
desirable to increase the facility of obtaining 
them, they are totally inefficacious if it can be 
shown that the means of gaining new settle- 
ments should be confined to the limits of the 
strictest necessity. 

These observations (if they have the honour 
of attracting his attention) will show Mr. Bourne 
our opinion of his bill for giving the privilege 
of settlement only to a certain length of resi- 
dence. In the first place, such a bill would be 
the cause of endless vexation to the poor, from 
the certainty of their being turned out of their 
cottages, before they pushed their legal taproot 
into the parish ; and, secondly, it would rapidly 
extend all the evils of the poor laws, by identi- 
fying, much more than they are at present 
identified, the resident and the settled man — the 
very opposite of the policy which ought to be 
pursued. 

Let us suppose, then, that we have got rid of 
all the means of gaining a settlement, or right 
to become a beggar, except by birth, parentage, 
and marriage ; for the wife, of course, must fall 
into the settlement of the husband; and the 
children, till emancipated, must be removed, if 
their parents are removed. This point gained, 
the task of regulating the law expenses of the 
poor-laws would be nearly accomplished: for 
the most fertile causes of dispute would be 
removed. Every first settlement is an inex- 
haustible source of litigation and expense to 
the miserable rustics. Upon the simple fact, 
for example, of a farmer hiring a ploughman 
for a year, arise the following afflicting ques- 



324 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tions : — Was it an expressed contract? Was it 
an implied contract? Was it an implied hiring 
of the ploughman, rebutted by circumstances 1 
Was the ploughman's contract for a year's 
prospective service ? Was it a customary hir- 
ing of the ploughman? Was it a retrospective 
hiring of the ploughman ? Was it a condi- 
tional hiring ? Was it a general hiring ? Was 
it a special, or a special yearly hiring, or a 
special hiring with wages reserved weekly ? — 
Did the farmer make it a special conditional 
hiring with warning, or an exceptive hiring? 
Was the service of the ploughman actual or 
contructive ? Was there any dispensation ex- 
pressed or implied ? — en- was there a dissolution 
implied? — by new agreement? — or mutual con- 
sent? — or by justices ? — or by any other of the 
ten thousand means which the ingenuity of 
lawyers has created? Can any one be sur- 
prised, after this, to learn, that the amount of 
appeals for removals, in the four quarter ses- 
sions ending Mid-summer, 1817, were four 
thousand seven, hundred ?* Can any man doubt 
that it is necessary to reduce the hydra to as 
few heads as possible ? or can any other objec- 
tion be slated to such reduction, than the 
number of attorneys and provincial counsel, 
whom it will bring into the poor-house? Mr. 
Nicol says, that the greater number of modes 
of settlement do not increase litigation. He 
may just as well say, that the number of the 
streets in the Seven Dials does not increase the 
difficulty of finding the way. The modes of 
settlement we leave, are by far the simplest, 
and the evidence is assisted by registers. 

Under the head of law expenses, we are 
convinced a great deal may be done, by making 
some slight alteration in the law of removals. 
At present, removals are made without any 
warning to the parties to whom the pauper is 
removed; and the first intimation which the 
defendant parish receives of the projected in- 
crease of their population is, by the arrival of 
the father, mother, and eight or nine children at 
the overseer's door — where they are tumbled 
out, with the justice's order about their necks, 
and left as a spectacle to the assembled and 
indignant parishioners. No sooner have the 
poor wretches become a little familiarized to 
their new parish, than the order is appealed 
against, and they are recarted with the same 
precipitate indecency — Quo fata trahunt, retra- 



No removal should ever take place without 
due notice to the parish to which the pauper is 
to be removed, nor till the time in which it may 
be appealed against is passed by. Notice to be 
according to the distance — either by letter, or 
personally; and the decision should be made 
by the justices at iheir petty sessions, with as 
much care and attention as if there were no 
appeal from their decision. An absurd notion 
prevails among magistrates, that they need not 
take much trouble in the investigation of re- 
movals, because their errors may be corrected 
by a superior court; whereas, it is an object of 
great importance, by a fair and diligent inves- 
tigation in the nearest and cheapest court, to 
convince the countr}' people which party is 



* Commons' Report, 1817 



right and which is wrong : and in this manner 
to prevent them from becoming the prey of law 1 
vermin. We are convinced that this subject I 
of the removal of poor is well worthy a short 
and separate bill. Mr. Bourne thinks it would 
be very difficult to draw up such a bill. We 
are quite satisfied we could draw up one in ten 
minutes that would completely answer the end 
proposed, and cure the evil complained of. 

We proceed to a number of small details, 
which are well worth the attention of the legis- 
lature. Overseers' accounts should be given 
in quarterly, and passed by the justices, as they 
now are, annually. The office of overseer 
should be triennial. The accounts which have 
nothing to do with the poor, such as the con- 
stable's account, should be kept and passed 
separately from them ; and the vestry should 
have the power of ordering a certain portion 
of the superfluous poor upon the roads. But 
we beseech all speculators in poor-laws to re- 
member, that the machinery they must work 
with is of a very coarse description. An over- 
seer must always be a limited, uneducated 
person, but little interested in what he is about, 
and with much business of his own on his 
hands. The extensive interference of gentle- 
men with those matters is quite visionary and 
impossible. If gentlemen were tide-waiters, the 
custom-house would be better served ; if gen- 
tlemen would become petty constables, the 
police would be improved; if bridges were 
made of gold, instead of iron, they would not 
rust. But there are not enough of these arti- 
cles for such purposes. 

A great part of the evils of the poor-laws, 
has been occasioned by the large powers in- 
trusted to individual justices. Every body is 
full of humanity and good-nature when he can 
relieve misfortune by putting his hand — in his 
neighbour's pocket. Who can bear to see a , 
fellow-creature suffering pain and poverty, when ^ 
he can order other fellow-creatures to relieve 
him ? Is it in human nature, that A should see 
B in tears and misery, and not order C to assist 
him ? Such a power must, of course, be liable 
to every degree of abuse ; and the sooner the 
power of ordering relief can be taken out of 
the hands of magistrates, the sooner shall we 
begin to experience some mitigation of the 
evils of the poor-laws. The special-vestry bill 
is good for this purpose, as far as it goes ; but 
it goes a very little way ; and we much doubt 
if it will operate as any sort of abridgment to 
the power of magistrates granting relief. A 
single magistrate must not act under this bill 
but in cases of special emergency. But every 
case of distress is a case of special emergen- 
cy: and the double magistrates, holding their 
petty sessions at some little alehouse, and over- 
whelmed with all the monthly business of the 
hundred, cannot possibly give to the pleadings 
of the overseer and pauper half the attention 
they would be able to afl!brd them at their own 
houses. 

The common people have been so much 
accustomed to resort to magistrates for relief, 
that it is certainly a delicate business to wean 
them from this bad habit; but it is essential to 
the great objects which the poor-committee 
have in view, that the power of magistrates of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



325 



ordering relief should be gradually taken away. 
When this is once done, half the difficulties of 
the abolition are accomplished. We will sug- 
gest a few hints as to the means by which this 
desirable end may be promoted. 

A poor man now comes to a magistrate any 
day in the week, and any hour in any day, to 
complain of the overseers, or of the select 
committee. Suppose he were to be made to 
wait a little, and to feel for a short time the bit- 
terness of that poverty which, by idleness, ex- 
travagance, and hasty marriage, he has proba- 
bly brought upon himself. To elTect this object, 
we would prohibit all orders for relief, by jus- 
tices, between the 1st and 10th of the month ; 
and leave the poor entirely in the hands of the 
overseers, or of the select vestry, for that 
period. Here is a beginning — a gradual aboli- 
tion of one of the first features of the poor- 
laws. And it is without risk of tumult ; for 
no one will run the risk of breaking the laws 
for an evil to which he anticipates so speedy a 
termination. This Decameron of overseers' 
despotism, and paupers' suffering, is the very 
thing wanted. It will teach the parishes to 
administer their own charity responsibly, and 
to depend upon their own judgment. It will 
teach the poor the miseries of pauperism and 
dependence ; and will be a warning to unmar- 
ried young men not hastily and rashly to place 
themselves, their wives and children, in the 
same miserable situation ; and it will effect all 
these objects gradually, and without danger. 
It would of course be the same thing on prin- 
ciple, if relief were confined to three days be- 
tween the 1st and the 10th of each month; 
three between the lOlh and the 20lh ; three 
between the 20th and the end of the month ; — 
or in any other manner that would gradually* 
crumble away the power, and check the gratui- 
tous munificence of justices, — give authority 
over their own affairs to the heads of the parish, 
and teach the poor, by little and little, that they 
must suSer if they are imprudent. It is under- 
stood in all these observations, that the over- 
seers are bound to support their poor without 
any order of justices ; and that death arising 
from absolute want should expose those officers 
to very severe punishments, if it could be traced 
to their inhumanity and neglect. The time must 
come when we must do without this ; but we 
are not got so far yet — and are at present only 
getting rid of justices, not of overseers. 

Mr. Davison seems to think that the plea of 
old age stands upon a different footing, with 
respect to the poor-laws, from all oiher pleas. 
But why should this plea be more favoured 
than that of sickness 1 why more than losses 
in trade, incurred by no imprudence 1 In 
reality, this plea is less entitled to indulgence. 
Every man knows he is exposed to the help- 
lessness of age ; but sickness and sudden ruin 
are very often escaped — comparatively seldom 
happen. Why is a man exclusively to be pro- 
tected against that evil which he must have 
foreseen longer than any other, and has had 
the longest time to guard against 1 Mr. Davi- 
son's objections to a limited expenditure are 



* All gradation and caution have been banished since 
the reform liill — rapid high-pressure wisdom is the only 
agent in public affairs. 



much more satisfactory. These we shall lay 
before our readers ; and we recommend them 
to the attention of the committee. 

" I shall advert next to the plan of a limitation 
upon the amount of rates to be assessed in fu- 
ture. This limitation, as it is a pledge of some 
protection to the property now subjected to the 
maintenance of the poor against the indefinite 
encroachment which otherwise threatens it, is, 
in that light, certainly a benefit ; and supposing 
it were rigorously adhered to, the very know- 
ledge, among the parish expectants, that there 
was some limit to their range of expectation, 
some barrier which they could not pass, might 
incline them to turn their thoughts homeward 
again to the care of themselves. But it is an 
expedient, at the best, far from being satisfac- 
tory. In the first place, there is much reason 
to fear that such a limitation would not eventu- 
ally be maintained, after the example of a simi- 
lar one having failed before, and considering 
that the urgency of the applicants as long as 
they retain the principle of dependence upon 
the parish unqualified in any one of its main 
articles, would probably overbear a mere bar- 
rier of figures in the parish account. Then 
there would be much real difficulty in the pro- 
ceedings, to be governed by such a limiting 
rule. For the use of the limitation would be 
chiefly, or solely, in cases where there is some 
struggle between the ordinary supplies of the 
parish rates, and the exigencies of the poor, or 
a kind of run and pressure upon the parish by 
a mass of indigence : and in circumstances of 
this kind, it would be hard to know how to dis- 
tribute the supplies under a fair proportion to 
the applicants, known or expected; hard to 
know how much might be granted for the pre- 
sent, and how much should be kept in reserve 
for the remainder of the year's service. The 
real intricacy in such a distribution of account 
would show itself in disproportions and ine- 
qualities of allowance, impossible to be avoid- 
ed; and the applicants would have one pretext 
more for discontent. 

" The limitation itself in many places would 
be only in words and figures. It would be set, 
I presume, by an average of certain preceding 
years. But the average taken upon the preced- 
ing years might be a sum exceeding in its real 
value the highest amount of the assessments of 
any of the averaged years, under the great 
change which has taken place in the value of 
money itself. A given rate, or assessment 
nominally the same, or lower, might in this way 
be a greater real money value than it was some 
time before. In many of the most distressed 
districts, where the parochial rates have nearly 
equalled the rents, a nominal average would, 
therefore, be no effectual benefit; and yet it is 
in those districts that the alleviation of the bur- 
then is the most wanted. 

"It is manifest also that a peremptory re- 
striction of the whole amount of money appli- 
cable to the parochial service, though abun- 
dantly justified in many districts by their par- 
ticular condition being so impoverished as to 
make the measure, for them, almost a measure 
of necessity, if nothing can be substituted for 
it ; and where the same extreme necessity does 
not exist, still justified by the prudence of pre- 
2E 



826 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



venting, in some way the interminable increase 
of the parochial burthens ; still, that such a re- 
striction is an ill-adjusted measure in itself, and 
would, in many instances, operate very inequi- 
tably. It would fall unfairly in some parishes, 
where the relative state of the poor and the 
parish might render an increase of the relief as 
just and reasonable as it is possible for any 
thing to be under the poor-laws at all. It would 
deny to many possible fair claimants the whole, 
or a part, of that degree of relief commonly 
granted elsewhere to persons in their condition, 
on this or that account of claim. Leaving the 
reason of the present demands wholly unim- 
peached, and unexplained ; directing no distinct 
warning or remonstrance to the parties, in the 
line of their affairs, by putting a check to their 
expectations upon positive matters implicated 
in their conduct ; which would be speaking to 
them in a definite sense, and a sense applicable 
to all : this plan of limitation would nurture the 
whole mass of the claim in its origin, and deny 
the allowance of it to thousands, on account of 
reasons properly affecting a distant quarter, of 
which they know nothing. The want of a clear 
method, and of a good principle at the bottom 
of it, in this direct compulsory restriction, ren- 
ders it, I think, wholly unacceptable, unless it 
be the only possible plan thai can be devised 
for accomplishing the same end. If a parish 
had to keep its account with a single dependant, 
the plan would be much more useful in that 
case. For the ascertained fact of the total 
amount of his expectations might set his mind 
to rest, and put him on a decided course of pro- 
viding for himself. But, in the limitation pro- 
posed to be made, the ascertained fact is of a 
general amount only, not of each man's share 
in it. Consequently, each man has his indefi- 
nite expectations left to him, and every separate 
specific ground of expectation remaining as 
before." 

Mr. Davison talks of the propriety of refusing 
to find labour for able labourers after the lapse 
of ten years, as if it was some ordinary bill he 
was proposing, unaccompanied by the slightest 
risk. It is very easy to make such laws, and 
to propose them; but it would be of immense 
difficulty to carry them into execution. Done 
it must be, every body knows that ; but the real 
merit will consist in discovering the gradual 
and gentle means by which the difficulties of 
getting parish labour may be increased, and 
the life of a parish pauper be rendered a life of 
salutary and deterring hardship. A law that 
rendered such request for labour perfectly law- 
ful for ten years longer, and then suddenly 
abolished it, would merely bespeak a certain, 
general, and violent insurrection for the year 
1830. The legislator, thank God, is in his 
nature a more cunning and gradual animal. 

Before we drop Mr. Davison, who writes like 
a very sensible man, we wish to say a few 
words about his style. If he would think less 
about it, he would write much better. It is 
always as plethoric and full-dressed as if he 
were writing a treatise de finibus bmiorum et ma- 
lorum. He is sometimes obscure ; and is occa- 
sionally apt to dress up common-sized thoughts 
in big clothes, and to dwell a little too long in 
proving what every man of sense knows and 



admits. We hope we shall not offend Mr. Da- 
vison by these remarks ; and we have really no 
intention of doing so. His views upon the 
poor-laws are, generally speaking, verj^ correct 
and philosophical; he writes like a gentleman, 
a scholar, and a man capable of eloquence; 
and we hope he will be a bishop. If his mitred 
productions are as enlightened and liberal as 
this, we are sure he will confer as much honour 
on the bench as he receives from it. There is 
a good deal, however, in Mr. Davison's book 
about the " virtuous marriages of the poor." 
To have really the charge of a family as a hus- 
band and father, we are told — to have the privi- 
lege of laying out his life in their service, is the 
poor man's boast, — " his home is the school of 
his sentiments," &c. &c. This is viewing 
human life through a Claude Lorraine glass, 
and decorating it with colours which do not 
belong to it. A ploughman marries a plough- 
woman because she is plump ; generally uses 
her ill ; thinks his children an incumbrance ; 
very often flogs them; and, for sentiment, has 
nothing more nearly approaching to it, than the 
ideas of broiled bacon and mashed potatoes. 
This is the state of the lower orders of mankind 
— deplorable, but true — and yet rendered much 
worse by the poor-laws. 

The system of roundsmen is much com- 
plained of; as well as that by which the labour 
of paupers is paid, partly by the rate, partly by 
the master — and a long string of Sussex jus- 
tices send up a petition on the subject. But 
the evil we are suffering under is an excess of 
population. There are ten men applying for 
work, when five only are wanted ; of course, 
such a redundance of labouring persons must 
depress the rate of their labour far beyond 
what is sufficient for the support of their fami- 
lies. And how is that deficiency to be made up 
but from the parish rates, unless it is meant 
suddenly and immediately to abolish the whole 
system of the poor-laws 1 To state that the 
rate of labour is lower than a man can live by, 
is merely to state that we have had, and have, 
poor-laws — of which this practice is at length 
the inevitable consequence ; and nothing could 
be more absurd than to attempt to prevent, by 
acts of Parliament, the natural depreciation of 
an article which exists in much greater abun- 
dance than it is wanted. Nor can any thing 
be more unjust than the complaint, that roimds- 
men are paid by their employers at an inferior 
rate, and that the difference is made up by the 
parish funds. A roundsman is commonly an 
inferior description of labourer who cannot 
get regularly hired ; — he comes upon his parish 
for labour commonly at those periods when 
there is the least to do ; — he is not a servant of 
the farmer's choice, and probably does not suit 
him ; — he goes off to any other labour at a mo- 
ment's warning, when he finds it more profit- 
able ; — and the farmer is forced to keep nearly 
the same number of labourers as if there were 
no roundsmen at all. Is it just, then, that a 
labourer, combining every species of imper- 
fection, should receive the same wages as a 
chosen, regular, stationary person, who is 
always ready at hand, and whom the farmer 
has selected for his dexterity and character! 
Those persons who do not, and cannot em- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



327 



ploy Jabourers, have no kind of right to com- 
plain of the third or fourth part of the wages 
being paid by the rates ; for if the farmers did 
not agree among themselves to take such occa- 
sional labourers, the whole of their support 
must be paid by the rates, instead of one-third. 
The order is, that the pauper shall be paid such 
a sum as will support himself and family; and if 
this agreement to take roundsmen was not enter- 
ed into by the farmers, they must be paid, by the 
rates, the whole of the amount of the order, for 
doing nothing. If a circulating labourer, there- 
fore, with, three children, to whom the justices 
would order 12s. per week, receives 8s. from 
his employer, and 4s. from the rates, the parish 
is not burdened by this system to the amount 
of 4«., but relieved to the amount of 8s. A 
parish manufacture, conducted by overseers, is 
infinitely more burdensome to the rates than 
any system of roundsmen. There are undoubt- 
edly a few instances to the contrary. Zeal and 
talents will cure the original defects of any 
system ; but to suppose that average men can 
do what extraordinary men have done, is the 
cause of many silly projects and extravagant 
blunders. Mr. Owen may give his whole heart 
and soul to the improvement of one of his 
parochial parallelograms ; but who is to suc- 
ceed to Mr. Owen's enthusiasm'! Before we 
have quite done with the subject of roundsmen, 
we cannot help noticing a strange assertion of 
Mr. Nicol, that the low rate of wages paid by 
the master is an injustice to the pauper — that 
he is cheated, forsooth, out of 8s. or 10s. per 
week by this arrangement. Nothing, however, 
can possibly be more absurd than such an alle- 
gation. The whole country is open to him. 
Cart he gain more anywhere else ? If not, this 
is the market price of his labour ; and what 
right has he to complain 1 or how can he say 
he is defrauded 1 A combination among far- 
mers to lower the price of labour would be 
impossible, if labour did not exist in much 
greater quantities than was wanted. All such 
things, whether labour, or worsted stocking, or 
broadcloth, are, of course, always regulated by 
the proportion between the supply and demand. 
Mr. Nicol cites an instance of a parish in Suf- 
folk, where the labourer receives sixpence from 
the farmers, and the rest is made up by the 
rates; and for this he reprobates the conduct 
of the farmers. But why are they not to take 
labour as cheap as they can get it 1 Why are 
they not to avail themselves of the market 
price of this, as of any other commodity 1 The 
rates are a separate consideration ; let them 
supply what is wanting ; but the farmer is right 
to get his iron, his wood, and his labour, as 
cheap as he can. It would, we admit, come 
nearly to the same thing, if 100?. were paid in 



wages rather than 25Z. in wages, and 75/. by 
rate ; but then, if the farmers were to agree to 
give wages above the market price, and suffi- 
cient for the support of the labourers without 
any rate, such an agreement could never be 
adhered to. The base and the crafty would 
make their labourers take less, and fling hea- 
vier rates upon those who adhered to the con- 
tract; whereas, the agreement, founded upon 
giving as little as can be given, is pretty sure 
of being adhered to ; and he who breaks it, 
lessens .the rate to his neighbour, and does not 
increase it. The problem to be solved is this : 
If you have ten or twenty labourers who say 
they can get no work, and you cannot dispute 
this, and the poor-laws remain, what better 
scheme can be devised, than that the farmers 
of the parish should employ them in their 
turns 1 — and what more absurd than to sup- 
pose that farmers so employing them should 
give one farthing more than the market price 
for their labour 1 

It is contended, that the statute of Elizabeth, 
rightly interpreted, only compels the overseer 
to assist the sick and old, and not to find labour 
for strong and healthy men. This is true 
enough ; and it would have been eminently 
useful to have attended to it a century past: 
but to find employment for all who apply, is 
now, by long use, become a practical part of 
the poor-laws, and will require the same care 
and dexterity for its abolition as any other part 
of that pernicious system. It would not be 
altogether prudent suddenly to tell a million of 
stout men, with spades and hoes in their hands, 
that the 43d of Elizabeth had been miscon- 
strued, and that no more employment would be 
found for them. It requires twenty or thirty 
years to state such truths to such numbers. 

We think, then, that the diminution of the 
claims of settlement, and of the authority of 
justices, coupled with the other subordinate 
improvements we have stated, will be the best 
steps for beginning the abolition of the poor- 
laws. When these have been taken, the de- 
scription of persons entitled to relief may be 
narrowed by degrees. But let no man hope to 
get rid of these laws, even in the gentlest and 
wisest method, without a great deal of misery, 
and some risk of tumult. If Mr. Bourne thinks' 
only of avoiding risk, he will do nothing. Some 
risk must be incurred : but the secret is gra- 
dation ; and the true reason for abolishing these 
laws is, not that they make the rich poor, but 
that they make the poor poorer.* 



* The boldness of modern legislation has thrown all 
my caution into the background. Was it wise to en- 
counter such a risk' Is the danger overl Can the 
vital parts of the bill be maintained? 



328 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



PUBLIC CHAEACTERS 05 1801, 1801.* 



[Edinbuegh Review, 1802.] 



The design of this book appeared to us so 
extremely reprehensible, and so capable, even 
in the hands of a blockhead, of giving pain to 
families and individuals, that we considered it 
as a fair object of literary police, and had pre- 
pared for it a very severe chastisement. Upon 
the perusal of the book, however, we were en- 
tirely disarmed. It appears to be written by 
some very innocent scribbler, who feels him- 
self under the necessity of dining, and who 
preserves, throughout the whole of the work, 
that degree of good humour, which the terror 
of indictment by our lord the king is so well 
calculated to inspire. It is of some import- 
ance, too, that grown-up country gentlemen 
should be habituated to read printed books ; 
and such may read a story book about their 
living friends, who would read nothing else. 



♦ Public CharaeUrs of 1801—1802. Richard Phillipa, 
St. Paul's. 1 vol. 8vo. 



We suppose the booksellers have authors 
at two different prices. Those who do write 
grammatically, and those who do not; and that 
they have not thought fit to put any. of their 
best hands upon this work. Whether or not 
there may be any improvement on this point 
in the next volume, we request the biographer 
will at least give us some means of ascertain- 
ing when he is comical, and when serious. 
In the life of Dr. Rennell, we find this pas- 
sage : — 

" Dr. Rennell might well look forward to the 
highest dignities in the establishment; but, if 
our information be right, and we have no rea- 
son to question it, this is what he by no means 
either expects or courts. There is a primitive 
simplicity in this excellent man, which much 
resembles that of the first prelates of the Chris- 
tian church, who were with great difl&culty pre- 
vailed upon to undertake the episcopal oflace." 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



329 



ANASTASIUS/ 



[EriNBrKGii Review, 1821.] 



Anastasitjs is a sort of oriental Gil Bias, 
■who is tossed about from one state of life to 
another, — sometimes a beggar in the streets 
of Constantinople, and, at others, an officer of 
the highest distinction under an Egyptian Bey, 
— .with that mixture of good and evil, of loose 
principles and popular qualities, which, against 
our moral feelings and better judgment, ren- 
der a novel pleasing, and an hero popular. 
Anastasius is a greater villain than Gil Bias, 
merely because he acts in a Avorse country, 
and under a worse government. Turkey is a 
country in the last stage of Casllereagh-ery and 
VaHsiUarthm ; it is in that condition to which 
we are steadily approaching — a political /nis/i; 
— the sure result of just and necessary wars, 
interminable burthens upon affectionate peo- 
ple, green bags, strangled sultanas, and mur- 
dered mobs. There are, in the world, all 
shades and gradations of tyranny. The Turk- 
ish, or last, puts the pistol and stiletto in ac- 
tion. Anastasius, therefore, among his other 
pranks, makes nothing of two or thi'ee mur- 
ders ; but tiiey ai-e committed in character, 
and are suitable enough to the temper and 
•disposition of a lawless Turkish soldier; and 
this is the justification of the book, which is 
called wicked but for no other reason than be- 
cause it accurately paints the manners of a 
people become wicked from the long and un- 
corrected abuses of their government. 

One cardinal fault which pervades this 
work is, that it is too long; — in spite of the 
numerous fine passages with which it abounds, 
there is too much of it; — and it is a relief, not 
a disappointment, to get to the end. Mr. Hope, 
too, should avoid humour, in which he certain- 
ly does not excel. His attempts of that nature 
are among the most serious parts of the book. 
With all these objections, (and we only men- 
tion them in case Mr. Hope writes again,) 
there are few books in the English language 
which contain passages of greater power, feel- 
ing, and eloquence than this novel, — which de- 
lineate frailty and vice with more energy and 
acuteness, or describe historical scenes with 
such bold imagery, and such glowing language. 
Mr. Hope will excuse us, — but we could not 
help exclaiming, in reading it, Is this Mr. 
Thomas Hope 1 — Is this the man of chairs 
and tables — the gentleman of sphinxes — the 
CEdipus of coal-boxes — he who meditated on 
muffineers and planned pokers ? — Where has 
he hidden all this eloquence and poetry up to 
this hour 1 — How is it that he has, all of a 
sudden, burst out into descriptions which 
would not disgrace the pen of Tacitus — and 
displayed a depth of feeling and a vigour of 
imagination which Lord Byron could not 

* Anastasius ; or. Memoirs of a Greek, written in the 
il8tA Century. London. Murray. 3 vols. 8vo. 
42 



excel ? We do not shrink from one syllable 
of this eulogium. The work now before us 
places him at once in the highest list of elo- 
quent writers, and of superior men. 

Anastasius, the hero of the tale, is a native 
of Chios, the son of the drogueman to the 
French consul. The drogueman, instead of 
bringing him up to make Latin verses, sufter- 
ed him to run wild about the streets of Chios, 
where he lives for some time a lubberly boy, 
and then a profligate youth. His first exploit 
is to debaiich the daughter of his acquaintance, 
from whom (leaving her in a state of preg- 
nancy) he runs away, and enters as a cabin 
boy in a Venetian brig. The brig is taken by 
Maynote pirates : the pirates by a Turkish 
frigate, by which he is landed at Nauplia, and 
marched away to Argos, Avhere the captain, 
Hassan Pacha, was encamped with his army. 

"I had never seen an encampment: and the 
novel and striking sight absorbed all my fa- 
culties in astonishment and awe. There 
seemed to me to be forces sufficient to subdue 
the whole world : and I knew not which most 
to admire, the endless clusters of tents, the 
enormous piles of armour, and the rows of 
threatening cannon, which I met at every step, 
or the troops of well mounted spahees, who, 
like dazzling meteors, darted by us on every 
side, amid clouds of stifling dust. The very 
dirt with which the nearer horsemen bespat- 
tered our humble troop, was, as I thought, im- 
posing; and every thing upon which I cast 
my eyes gave me a feeling of nothingness, 
which made me shrink within myself like a snail 
in its cell. I envied not only those who were 
destined to share in all the glory and success 
of the expedition, but even the meanest fol- 
lower of the camp, as a being of a superior 
order to myself; and, when suddenly there 
arose A loud flourish of trumpets, which, end- 
ing a concert of cymbals and other warlike 
instruments, re-echoed in long peals from all 
the surrounding mountains, the clank shook 
every nerve in my body, thrilled me to the very 
soul, and infused in all my veins a species of 
martial ardour so resistless, that it made me 
struggle with my fetters, and try to tear them 
asunder. Proud' as I was by nature, I M^ould 
have knelt to whoever had offered to liberate 
my limbs, and to arm ray hands with a sword 
or a battleaxe."— (L 36, 37.) 

From his captive state he passes into the 
service of Mavroyeni, Hassan's drogueman, 
with whom he ingratiates himself, and becomes 
a person of consequence. In the service of 
this person, he receives from old Demo, a 
brother domestic, the following admirable 
lecture on masters : — 

"' Listen, young man,' said he, 'whether you 
like it or not. For my own part, I have always 
2 E 2 



330 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



had too miich indolence, not to make it my 
study throughout life rather to secure ease 
than to labour for distinction. It has, there- 
fore, been my rule to avoid cherishing in my 
patron any outrageous admiration of my capa- 
city, which would have increased my depend- 
ence while it lasted, and expose me to perse- 
cution on wearing out: — but you, I see, are of 
a different mettle : I therefore may point out 
to you the surest way to that more perilous 
height, short of which your ambition, I doubt, 
will not rest satisfied. When you have com- 
passed it, you may remember old Demo, if 
you please. 

" ' Know first that all masters, even the least 
lovable, like to be loved. AU wish to be served 
from affection rather than duty. It flatters 
their pride, and it gratifies their selfishness. 
They expect from this personal motive a greater 
devotion to their interest, and a more unlimited 
obedience to their commands. A master looks 
upon mere fidelity in his servant as his due — 
as a thing scarce worth his thanks : but at- 
tachment he considers as a compliment to his 
merit, and if at all generous, he will reward it 
with liberality. Mavroyeni is more open than 
any body to this species of flattery. Spare it 
not, therefore. If he speak to you kindly, let 
your face brighten up. If he talk to you of his 
own affairs, though it should only be to dispel 
the tedium of conveying all day long other 
men's thoughts, listen with the greatest eager- 
ness. A single yawn, and you are undone ! 
Yet let not curiosity appear your motive, but 
the delight only of being honoured with his 
confidence. The more you appear grateful 
for the least kindness, the oftener you will re- 
ceive important favours. Our ostentatious 
drogueman will feel a pleasure in raising your 
astonishment. His vanity knows no bounds. 
Give it scope, therefore. When he comes 
home choking with its suppressed ebullitions, 
be their ready and patient receptacle : — do 
more ; discreetly help him on in venting his 
conceit ; provide him with a cue ; hint what 
you heard certain people, not knowing you to 
be so near, say of his capacity, his merit, and 
his influence. He wishes to persuade the 
world that he completely rules the pasha. Tell 
him not flatly he does, but assume it as a thing 
of general notoriety. Be neither too candid 
in your remarks, nor too fulsome in your flat- 
tery. Too palpable deviations from fact might 
appear a satire on your master's understand- 
ing. Should some disappointment evidently 
rufile his temper, appear not to conceive the 
possibility of his vanity having received a 
mortification. Preserve the exact medium 
between too cold a respect, and too presump- 
tuous a forwardness. However much Ma- 
vroyeni may caress you in private, never 
seem quite at ease with him in public. A 
master still likes to remain master, or, at least, 
to appear so to others. Should you get into 
some scrape, wait not to confess your impru- 
dence, until concealment becomes impossible; 
nor try to excuse the offence. Rather than 
that you should, by so doing, appear to make 
light of your guilt, exaggerate your self-up- 
biaidings, and throw yourself entirely upon 
the drogueman's n^ercy. On all occasions 



take care how you appear cleverer than your 
lord, even in the splitting of a pen ; or, if you 
cannot avoid excelling him in some trifle, give 
his own tuition all the credit of your profi- 
ciency. Many things he will dislike, only 
because they come not from himself. Vindi- 
cate not your innocence when unjustly re- 
buked: rather submit for the moment; and 
trust that, though Mavroyeni never will ex- 
pressly acknowledge his error, he will in due 
time pay you for your forbearance.' " — (I. 43 
—45.) 

In the course of his service with Mavroyeni,. 
he bears arms against the Arnoots, under the 
Captain Hassan Pacha ; and a very animated 
description is given of his first combat. 

" I undressed the dead man completely. — 
When, however, the business which engaged 
all my attention was entirely achieved, and 
that human body, of which, in the eagerness 
for its spoil, I had only thus far noticed the 
separate limbs one by one, as I stripped them, 
all at once struck my sight in its full dimen- 
sions, as it lay naked before me ; — when I con- 
templated that fine athletic frame, but a moment 
before full of life and vigour unto its fingers' 
ends, now rendered an insensible corpse by the 
random shot of a raw youth whom in close 
combat its little finger might have crushed, I 
could not help feeling, mixed with my exulta- 
tion, a sort of shame, as if for a cowardly ad-^ 
vantage obtained over a superior being; and, 
in order to make a kind of atonement to the 
shade of an Epirote — of a kinsman — I ex- 
claimed with outstretched hands, 'Cursed be 
the paltry dust which turns the warrior's arm 
into a mere engine, and, striking from afar an 
invisible blow, carries death no one knows 
whence to no one knows whom ; levels the 
strong with the weak, the brave with the das- 
tardly ; and, enabling the feeblest hand to wield 
its fatal lightning, makes the conqueror slay 
without anger, and the conqueror die without 
glory.' "—(I. 54, 55.) 

The campaign ended, he proceeds to Constan- 
tinople with the drogueman, where his many 
intrigues and debaucheries end with the drogue- 
man's turning him out of doors. He lives for 
some time at Constantinople in great misery; 
and is driven, among other expedients, to the 
trade of quack-doctor. 

" One evening, as we were returning from 
the Blacquernes, an old woman threw herself 
in our way, and, taking hold of my master's 
garments, dragged him almost by main force 
after her into a mean-looking habitation just' 
by, where lay on a couch, apparently at the 
last gasp, a man of foreign features. ' I have 
brought a physician,' said the female to the 
patient, ' who, perhaps, may relieve you.' ' Why 
will you' — answered he faintly — ' still persist 
to feed idle hopes ! I have lived an outcast: 
suffer me at least to die in peace ; nor disturb 
ray last moments by vain illusions. My soul 
panls to rejoin the Supreme Spirit; arrest not 
its flight ; it would only be delaying my eternal 
bliss !' 

"As the stranger spoke these words — which 
struck even Yacoob sufficiently to make him 
suspend his professional grimace — the last 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



331 



beams of the setting sun darted across the 
casement of the window upon his pale yet 
swarthy features. Thus visited, he seemed for 
a moment to revive. 'I have always,' said he, 
' considered my fate as connected with the 
great luminary that rules the creation. I have 
always paid it due worship, and firmly believed 
I could not breathe my last while its rays shone 
upon me. Carry me, therefore, out, that I may 
take my last farewell of the heavenly ruler of 
my earthly destinies !' 

"We all rushed forward to obey the man- 
date; but the stairs being too narrow, the 
woman only opened the window, and placed 
the dying man before it, so as to enjoy the full 
view of the glorious orb, just in the act of 
dropping beneath the horizon. He remained 
a few moments in silent adoration; and me- 
chanically we all joined him in fixing our eyes 
on the object of his worship. It set in all its 
splendour; and when its golden disk had en- 
tirely disappeared, we looked round at the 
Parsee. He, too, had sunk into everlasting 
rest."— (I. 103, 104.) 

From the dispensation of chalk and water, 
he is then ushered into a Turkish jail, the de- 
scription of which, and of the plague with 
which it is visited, are very finely written ; and 
we strongly recommend them to the attention 
of our readers. 

" Every day a capital, fertile in crimes, pours 
new offenders into this dread receptacle ; and 
its high walls and deep recesses resound every 
instant with imprecations and curses, uttered 
in all the various idioms of the Ottoman 
empire. Deep moans and dismal yells leave 
not its frightful echoes a moment's repose. 
From morning till night, and from night till 
morning, the ear is stunned with the clang of 
chains, which the galley-slaves wear while 
confined in their cells, and which they still 
drag about when toiling at their tasks. Linked 
together two and two for life, should they sink 
under their sufferings, they still continue un- 
severed after death ; and the man doomed to 
live on, drags after him the corpse of his dead 
companion. In no direction can the eye es- 
cape the spectacle of atrocious punishments 
and of indescribable agonies. Here, perhaps, 
you see a wretch whose stiffened limbs refuse 
their office, stop suddenly short in the midst of 
his labour, and as if already impassible, defy 
the stripes that lay open his flesh, and wait in 
total immobility the last merciful blow that is 
to end his misery; while there, you view his 
companion foaming with rage and madness, 
turn against, his own person his desperate 
hands, tear his clotted hair, rend his bleeding 
bosom, and strike his skull, until it burst, 
against the wall of his dungeon." — (I. 110, 111.) 

A few survived. 

"I was among these scanty relics. Iwho, 
indifferent to life, had never stooped to avoid 
the shafts of death, even when they flew 
thickest around me, had more than once laid 
my finger on the livid wound they inflicted, 
had probed it as it festered ; I yet remained un- 
hurt: for sometimes the plague is a magnani- 
mous enemy, and, while it seldom spares the 
pusillanimous victim, whose blood, running 



cold ere it is tainted, lacks the energy neces- 
sary to repel the infection when at hand, it will 
pass him by who dares its utmost fury, and 
advances undaunted to meet its raised dart." — 
(I. 121.) 

In this miserable receptacle of guilty and 
unhappy beings, Anastasius forms and cements 
the strongest friendship with a young Greek, 
of the name of Anagnosti. On leaving the 
prison, he vows to make every exertion for the 
liberation of his friend — vows that are for- 
gotten as soon as he is clear from the prison 
walls. After being nearly perished with 
hunger, and after being saved by the charity 
of an hospital, he gets into an intrigue with a 
rich Jewess — is detected— pursued — and, to 
save his life, turns Mussulman. This exploit 
performed, he suddenly meets his friend Anag- 
nosti — treats him with disdain — and, in a quar- 
rel which ensues between them, stabs him to 
the heart. 

" ' Life,' says the dying Anagnosti, ' has long 
been bitterness : death is a welcome guest : I 
rejoin those that love me, and in a better place. 
Already, methinks, watching my flight, they 
stretch out their arms from heaven to their 
dying Anagnosti. Thou, — if there be in thy 
breast one spark of pity left for him thou once 
namedst thy brother ; for him to whom a holy 
tie, a sacred vow Ah! suffer not the starv- 
ing hounds in the street .... See a little hal- 
lowed earth thrown over my wretched corpse.' 
These words were his last." — (I. 209.) 

The description of the murderer's remorse 
is among the finest passages in the work. 

" From an obscure aisle in the church I 
beheld the solemn service ; saw on the field 
of death the pale stiff corpse lowered into its 
narrow cell, and hoping to exhaust sorrow's 
bitter cup, at night, when all mankind hushed 
its griefs, went back to my friend's final rest- 
ing-place, lay down upon his silent grave, and 
watered with my tears the fresh-raised hollow 
mound. 

" In vain ! Nor my tears nor my sorrows 
could avail. No offerings nor penance could 
purchase me repose. Wherever I went, the 
beginning of our friendship and its issue still 
alike rose in view; the fatal spot of blood still 
danced before my steps, and the reeking dagger 
hovered before my aching eyes. In the silent 
darkness of the night I saw the pale phantom 
of my friend stalk round my watchful couch, 
covered with gore and dust: and even during 
the unavailing riots of the day, I still beheld 
the spectre rise over the festive board, glare on 
me with piteous look, and hand me whatever I 
attempted to reach. But whatever it presented 
seemed blasted by its touch. To my wine it 
gave the taste of blood, and to my bread the 
rank flavour of death !"— (L 212, 213.) 

We question whether there is in the English 
language a finer description than this. We 
request our readers to look at the very beauti- 
ful and affecting picture of remorse, pp. 214, 
215, vol. i. 

Equally good, but in another way, is the de- 
scription of the opium coffee-house. 

"In this tchartchee might be seen any day a 
numerous collection of those whom private 



332 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



sorrows have driven to a public exhibition of 
insanity. There each reeling idiot might take 
his neighbour by the hand, and say, 'Brother, 
and what ailed thee, to seek so dire a cure V 
There did I, with the rest of its familiars, now 
take my habitual station in my solitary niche, 
like an insensible, motionless idol, sitting with 
sightless eyeballs staring on vacuity. 

"One day, as I lay in less entire absence 
than usual under the purple vines of the porch, 
admiring the gold-tipped domes of the majestic 
Sulimanye, the appearance of an old man with 
a snow-white beard, reclining on the couch 
beside me, caught my attention. Half plunged 
in stupor, he every now and then burst out 
into a wild laugh, occasioned by the grotesque 
phantasms which the ample dose of madjoon 
he had just swallowed was sending up to his 
brain. I sat contemplating him with mixed 
curiosity and dismay, when, as if for a moment 
roused from his torpor, he took me by the 
hand, and fixing on my countenance his dim, 
vacant eyes, said, in an impressive tone, 
'Young man, thy days are yet few; take the 
advice of one who, alas ! has counted many. 
Lose no time ; hie thee hence, nor cast behind 
one lingering look : but if thou hast not the 
strength, why tarry even here ? Thy journey 
is but half achieved. At once go on to that 
large mansion before thee. It is thy ultimate 
destination : and by thus beginning where thou 
must end at last, thou mayest at least save both 
thy time and thy money.'" — (I. 215, 216.) 

Lingering in the streets of Constantinople, 
Anastasius hears that his mother is dead, and 
proceeds to claim that heritage which, by the 
Turkish law in favour of proselytes, had de- 
volved upon him. 

"How often," he exclaims (after seeing his 
father in the extremity of old age) — " how often 
does it happen in life, that the most blissful 
moments of our return to a long-left home are 
those only that just precede the instant of our 
arrival; those during which the imagination 
still is allowed to paint in its own unblended 
colours the promised sweets of our reception ! 
How often, after this glowing picture of the 
phantasy, does the reality which follows appear 
cold and dreary ! How often do even those 
who grieved to see us depart, grieve more to 
see us return ! and how often do we ourselves 
encounter nothing but sorrow, on again behold- 
ing the once happy, joyous promoters of our 
own hilarity, now mournful, disappointed, and 
themselves needing what consolation we may 
bring!"— (L 239, 240.) 

During his visit to Chios, he traces and de- 
scribes the dying misery of Helena, whom he 
had deserted, and then debauches her friend 
Agnes. From thence he sails to Rhodes, the 
remnants of which produce a great deal of 
eloquence and admirable description. — (pp. 
275, 276, vol. i.) From Rhodes he sails to 
Egypt; and chap. 16 contains a short and 
very well written history of the origin and 
progress of the Mameluke government. The 
flight of Mourad, and the pursuit of this chief 
in the streets of Crtiro (p. 325, vol. i.), would 
be considered as very fine passages in the best 
histories of antiquity. Our limits prevent us 



from quoting them. Anastasius then becomes 
a Mameluke ; marries his master's daughter, 
and is made a kiashef. In the numerous 
skirmishes into which he falls in his new 
military life, it falls to his lot to shoot, from 
an ambush, Assad, his inveterate enemy. 

" Assad, though weltering in his blood, was 
still alive : but already the angel of death 
flapped his dark wings over the traitor's brow. 
Hearing footsteps advance, he made an effort 
to raise his head, probably in hopes of ap- 
proaching succour : but beholding, but recog- 
nising only me, he felt that no hopes remained, 
and gave a groan of despair. Life was flow- 
ing out so fast, that I had only to stand still — 
my arms folded in each other, — and with a 
steadfast eye to watch its departure. One in- 
stant I saw ray vanquished foe, agitated by a 
convulsive tremor, open his eyes and dart at 
me a glance of impotent rage ; but soon he 
averted them again, then gnashed his teeth, 
clenched his fist, and expired." — (11. 92.) 

We quote this, and such passages as these, 
to show the great power of description which 
Mr. Hope possesses. The vindictive man 
standing with his arms folded, and watching 
the blood flowing from the wound of his 
enemy, is very new and very striking. 

Aftei' the death of his wife, he collects his 
property, quits Egypt, and visits Mekkah, and 
acquires the title and prerogatives of an 
Hadjee. After this he returns to the Turkish 
capital, renews his acquaintance with Spiri- 
dion, the friend of his youth, who in vain 
labours to reclaim him, and whom he at last 
drives away, disgusted with the vices and 
passions of Anastasius. We then find our 
oriental profligate fighting as a Turkish cap- 
tain in Egypt, against his old friends the 
Mamelukes ; and afterwards employed in 
Wallachia, under his old friend Mavroyeni, 
against the Russians and Austrians. In this 
part of the work, we strongly recommend to 
our readers to look at the Mussulmans in a 
pastry-cook's shop duriiig the Rhamadam, vol- 
ii. p. 164 ; the village of beggars, vol. ii. p. 266 ; 
the death of the Hungarian officer, vol. ii. p. 
327 ; and, in the last days of Mavroyeni, vol. 
ii. p. 356 ; — not forgetting the walk over a field 
of battle, vol. ii. p. 252. The character of 
Mavroyeni is extremely well kept up through 
the whole of the book; and his decline and 
death are drawn in a very spirited and masterly 
manner. The Spiridion part of the novel we 
are not so much struck Avith ; we entirely ap- 
prove of Spiridion, and ought to take more 
interest in him; but we cannot disguise the 
melancholy truth that he is occasionally a little 
long and tiresome. The next characters as- 
sumed by Anastasius are, a Smyrna debauchee, 
a robber of the desert, and a Wahabee. After 
serving some time with these sectaries, he re- 
turns to Smyrna, — finds his child missing 
whom he had left there, — traces the little boy 
to Egypt, — recovers him, — then loses him by 
sickness, — and wearied of life, retires to end 
his days in a cottage in Carinthia. For strik- 
ing passages in this part of the novel, we refer 
our readers to the description of the burial- 
places near Constantinople, vol. iii. 11 — 13; 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



333- 



the account of Djezzar Pacha's retirement to 
his harem during the revolt, — equal to any 
thing in Tacitus ; and, above all, to the land- 
ing of Anastasius with his sick child, and the 
death of the infant. It is impossible not to 
see that this last picture is faithfully drawn 
from a sad and cruel reality. The account of 
the Wahabees is ver}r interesting, vol. iii. 128; 
and nothing is more so than the story of Eu- 
phrosyne. Anastasius had gained the afiec- 
tions of Euphrosyne, and ruined her reputa- 
tion; he then wishes to cast her oli', and to 
remove her from his house. 

"'Ah no!' now cried Euphrosyne, convul- 
sively clasping my knees, ' be not so barba- 
rous ! Shut not your own door against her 
against whom you have barred every once 
friendly door. Do not deny her whom you 
have dishonoured the only asylum she has 
left. If I cannot be your wife, let me be your 
slave, your drudge. No service, however 
mean, shall I recoil from when you command. 
At least before you I shall not have to blush. 
In your eyes I shall not be what I must seem 
in those of others ; I shall not from you in- 
cur the contempt which I must expect from 
my former companions; and my diligence 
to execute the lowest ofRces you may require, 
will earn for me, not only as a bare alms at 
your hands, that support which, however 
scanty, I can elsewhere only receive as an 
unmerited indulgence. Since I did a few daj^s 
please your eye, I may still please it a few 
days longer : — perhaps a few days longer, 
therefore, I may still wish to live ; and when 
that last blessing, your love, is gone by, — 
when my cheek, faded with grief, has lost the 
last attraction that could arrest your favour, 
then speak, then tell me so, that, burthening 
you no longer, I may retire — and die !'" — (III. 
64, 65.) 

Her silent despa,ir, and patient misery, when 
she finds that she has not only ruined herself 
with the world, but lost his affections also, 
have the beauty of the deepest tragedy. 

" Nothing but the most unremitting tender- 
ness on my part could in some degree have 
revived her drooping spirits. — But when, after 
my excursion, and the act of justice on Sophia, 
m which it ended, I reappeared before the 
still trembling Euphrosyne, she saw too soon 
that that cordial of the heart must not be ex- 
pected. One look she cast upon my counte- 
nance, as I sat down in silence, sufficed to 
inform her of my total change of sentiments ; — 
and the responsive look by which it was met, 
tore for ever from her breast the last seeds of 
hope and confidence. Like the wounded snail, 
she shrunk within herself, and thenceforth, 
cloaked in unceasing sadness, never more ex- 



panded to the sunshine of joy. With her 
buoyancy of spirits she seemed even to lose 
all her quickness of intellect, nay, all her 
readiness of speech: so that, not only fearing 
to embark with her in serious conversation, 
but even finding no response in her mind to 
lighter topics, I at last began to nauseate her 
seeming torpor and dulness, and to roam 
abroad even more frequently than before a 
partner of my fate remained at home, to count 
the tedious hours of my absence ; while she, 
poor, miserable creature, dreading the sneers 
of an unfeeling world, passed her time under 
my roof in dismal and heart-breaking s'->litude. 
— Had the most patient endurance of the most 
intemperate sallies been able to soothe my 
disappointment and to soften my hardiness, 
Euphrosyne'!^ angelic sweetness must at last 
have conquered : but, in my jaundiced eye, 
her resignation only tended to strengthen the 
conviction of her shame ; and I saw in her 
forbearance nothing but the consequence of 
her debasement, and the consciousness of her 
guilt. ' Did her heart,' thought I, ' bear wit- 
ness to a purity on which my audacity dared 
first to cast a blemish, she could not remain 
thus tame, thus spiritless, under such an ag- 
gravation of my wrongs ; and either she would 
be the first to quit my merciless roof, or, at 
least, she would not so fearfully avoid giving 
me even the most unfovmded pretence for 
denying her its shelter. — She must merit her 
sufferings, to bear them so meekly !' — Hence, 
even when moved to real pity by gentleness 
so enduring, I seldom relented in my apparent 
sternness." — (III. 72 — 74.) 

With this, we end our extracts from Anasta- 
sius. We consider it as a work in which great 
and extraordinary talent is evinced. It abounds 
in eloquent and sublime passages, — in sense, — 
in knowledge of history, — and in knowledge 
of human character; — but not in wit. It is 
too long ; and if this novel perishes, and is 
forgotten, it will be solely on that account. 
If it is the picture of vice, so is Clarissa Har- 
lowe, and so is Tom Jones. There are no 
sensual and glowing descriptions in Anasta- 
sius, — nothing which corrupts the morals by 
inflaming the imagination of youth ; and we 
are quite certain that every reader ends this 
novel with a greater disgust at vice, and a 
more thorough conviction of the necessity of 
subjugating passion, than he feels from read- 
ing either of the celebrated works we have 
just mentioned. The sum of our eulogium is, 
that Mr. Hope, without being very successful 
in his story, or remarkably skilful in the 
delineation of character, has written a novel, 
which all clever people of a certain age 
should read, because it is full of marvellously 
fine things. 



334 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



SCARLETrS POOR BILL/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1821.] 



We are friendly to the main principle of Mr. 
Scarlett's bill ; but are rather surprised at the 
unworkmanlike manner in which he has set 
about it. 

To fix a maximum for the poor-rates, we 
should conceive to be an operation of suffi- 
cient difficulty and novelty for any one bill. 
There was no need to provoke more prejudice, 
to rouse more hostility, and create more alarm, 
than such a bill would naturally do. But Mr. 
Scarlett is a very strong man ; and before he 
works his battering-ram, he chooses to have 
the wall made of a thickness worthy of his 
blow — capable of evincing, by the enormity of 
its ruins, the superfluity of his vigour, and the 
certainty of his aim. Accordingly, he has in- 
troduced into his bill a number of provisions, 
which have no necessary, and, indeed, no near 
connection with his great and main object ; 
but which are sure to draw upon his back all 
the Sir Johns and Sir Thomases in the House 
of Commons. It may be right, or it may be 
wrong, that the chargeable poor should be re- 
moved; but why introduce such a controverted 
point into a bill framed for a much more im- 
portant object, and of itself calculated to pro- 
duce so much difference of opinion ! Mr. 
Scarlett appears to us to have been not only 
indiscreet in the introduction of such hetero- 
geneous matter, but very much mistaken in 
the enactments which that matter contains. 

" And be it further enacted, that from and 
after the passing of this act, it shall not be 
lawful for any justice of peace or other per- 
son to remove, or cause to be removed, any 
poor person or persons from any parish, 
township or place, to any other, by reason of 
such person or persons being chargeable to 
such parish, town ship or place, or being unable 
to maintain him or themselves, or under colour 
of such person or persons being settled in any 
other parish, township or place, any law or 
statute to the contrary notwithstanding : Pro- 
vided always, that nothing in this act shall in 
any wise be deemed to alter any law now in 
force for the punishment of vagrants, or for 
removing poor persons to Scotland, Ireland, or 
the Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, and Man. — And 
be it further enacted, that in all cases where 
any poor person, at the time of the passing of 
this act, shall be resident in any parish, town- 
ship or place, where he is not legally settled, 

* 1. Letter to James Scarlett, Esq., M. P., on his Bill 
relating- to the Poor-Laws. By a Surrey Magistrate. 
London, 1821. 

2. An Address to the Lnpenal Parliament, upon the 
Prartieal Means of gradually Abolishing the Poor-Laws, 
and Educating the Poor Systematicalhi. llhistrated by nn 
Account of the Colonies of Fredericks- Oord in Hollc.nd, 
and of the Common Mountain in the South of Ireland. 
With Oenernl Observations. Third Edition. By Wil- 
liam Herbert Saunders, Esq. London, 1821. 

3. On Pauperism and the Poor-Lava. With a Supple- 
ment. London, 1821. 



and shall be receiving relief from the over- 
seers, guardians, or directors of the poor of 
the place of his legal settlement, the said over- 
seers, guardians, or directors, are hereby 
required to continue such relief, in the same 
manner, and by the same means, as the same 
is now administered, until one of his majesty's 
justices of the peace, in or near the place of 
residence of such poor person, shall, upon ap- 
plication to him, either by such poor person, 
or any other person on his behalf, for the con- 
tinuance thereof, or by the said overseers, 
guardians, or directors of the poor, paying 
such relief, for the discharge thereof, certify 
that the same is no longer necessary." — BiU, 
pp. 3, 4.) 

Now, here is a gentleman, so thoroughly 
and so justly sensible of the evils of the poor- 
laws, that he introduces into the House of 
Commons a very plain, and very bold measure 
to restrain them ; and yet, in the very same 
bill, he abrogates the few impediments that 
remain to universal mendicity. The present 
law says, " Before you can turn beggar in the 
place of your residence, you must have been 
born there, or you must have rented a farm 
there, or served an office ;" but Mr. Scarlett 
says, " You may beg anywhere where you 
happen to be. I will have no obstacles to 
your turning beggar ; I will give every facility 
and every allurement to the destruction of 
your independence." We are quite confident 
that the direct tendency of Mr. Scarlett's en- 
actments is to produce these effects. Labourers 
living in one place, and settled in another, are 
uniformly the best and most independeiit cha- 
racters in the place. Alarmed at the idea of 
being removed from the situation of their 
choice, and knowing they have nothing to de- 
pend upon but themselves, they are alone 
exempted from the degrading influence of the 
poor-laws, and frequently arrive at independ- 
ence by their exclusion from that baneful pri- 
vilege which is offered to them by the incon- 
sistent benevolence of this bill. If some are 
removed, after long residence in parishes 
where they are not settled, these examples 
onl3^ insure the beneficial effects of which we 
have been speaking. Others see them, dread 
the same fate, quit the mug, and grasp the 
flail. Our policy, as we have explained in a 
previous article, is directly the reverse of that 
of Mr. Scarlett. Considering that a poor man, 
since Mr. East's bill, if he asks no charity, has 
a right to live where he pleases, and that a 
settlement is now nothing more than a beggar's 
ticket, we would gradually abolish all means 
of gaining a settlement, but those of birth, 
parentage, or marriage ; and this method 
would destroy litigation as effectually as the 
method proposed by Mr. Scarlett.* 



* This has since been done. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



335 



Mr. Scarlett's plan, too, we are firmly per- 
•suaded, would completely defeat his own 
intentions; and would inflict a greater injury 
■ upon the poor than this very bill, intended to 
■^prevent their capricious removal. If his bill 
• had passed, he could not have passed. His 
post-chaise on the northern circuit would have 
been impeded by the crowds of houseless vil- 
lagers, driven from their cottages by landlords 
rendered merciless by the bill. In the mud — 
all in the mud (for such cases made and pro- 
vided) would they have rolled this most excel- 
lent counsellor. Instigated by the devil and 
their own malicious purposes, his wig they 
would have polluted, and tossed to a thousand 
winds the parchment bickerings of Doe and 
Roe. Mr. Scarlett's bill is so powerful a mo- 
tive to proprietors for the depopulation of a 
village — for preventing the poor from living 
where they wish to live, — that nothing but the 
conviction that such a bill would never be 
suffered to pass, has prevented those effects 
from already taking place. Landlords would, 
in the contemplation of such a bill, pull down 
all the cottages of persons not belonging to the 
parish, and eject the tenants ; tne most vigor- 
ous measures would be taken to prevent any 
one from remaining or coming who was not 
absolutely necessary to the lord of the soil. 
At present, cottages are let to anybody: be- 
cause, if they are burthensome to the parish, 
the tenants can be removed. But the impos- 
sibility of doing this would cause the imme- 
diate demolition of cottages ; prevent the 
erection of fresh ones where they are really 
wanted ; and chain a poor man for ever to the 
place of his birth, without the possibility of 
moving. If everybody who passed over Mr. 
Scarlett's threshold were to gain a settlement 
for life in his house, he would take good care 
never to be at home. We all boldly let our 
friends in, because we know we can easily get 
them out. So it is with the residence of the 
poor. Their present power of living where 
they please, and going where they please, 
entirely depends upon the possibility of their 
removal when they become chargeable. If 
any mistaken friend were to take from them 
this protection, the whole power and jealousy 
of property would be turned against their 
locomotive liberty ; they would become ad- 
scripli glebce, no more capable of going out 
of the parish than a tree is of proceeding, with 
its roots and branches, to a neighbouring wood. 

The remedy here proposed for these evils 
is really one of the most extraordinary we ever 
remember to have been introduced into any 
act of Parliament. 

" And whereas it may happen, that in seve- 
ral parishes or townships now burdened with 
the maintenance of the poor settled and re- 
siding therein, the owners of lands or inha- 
bitants may, in order to remove the residence of the 
labouring poor from such parishes or places, 
destroy the cottages and habitations therein, 
now occupied by the labourers and their 
families : And whereas, also, it may happen, 
that certain towns and villages, maintaining 
their own poor, may, by the residence therein 
of labourers employed and working in other 
parishes or townships lying near the said 



towns and villages, be charged with the burden 
of maintaining those who do not work, and 
before the passing of this act were not settled 
therein : For remedy thereof, be it enacted, by 
the authority aforesaid, that, in either of the 
above cases, it shall be lawful for the justices, 
at any quarter-sessions of the peace held for 
the county in which such places shall be, upon 
the complaint of the overseers of the poor of 
any parish, town or place, that by reason of 
either of the causes aforesaid, the rates for the 
relief of the poor of such parish, town, or 
place, have been materially increased, whilst 
those of any other parish or place have been 
diminished, to hear and fully to inquire into 
the matter of such complaint ; and in case 
they shall be satisfied of the truth thereof, then 
to make an order upon the overseers of the 
poor of the parish or township, whose rates 
have been diminished by the causes aforesaid, 
to pay to the complainants such sum or sums, 
from time to time, as the said justices shall 
adjudge reasonable, not exceeding, in any 
case, together with the existing rates, the 
amount limited by this act, as a contribution 
towards the relief of the poor of the parish, 
town, or place, whose rates have been in- 
creased by the causes aforesaid ; which order 
shall continue in force until the same shall 
be discharged by some future order of ses- 
sions, upon the application of the over.-^eers 
paying the same, and proof that the occasion 
for it no longer exists : Provided, always, that 
no such order shall be made, without proof of 
notice in writing of such intended application, 
and of the grounds thereof, having been served 
upon the overseers of the poor of the parish or 
place, upon whom such order is prayed, four- 
teen days at the least before the first day of 
the quarter-sessions, nor unless the justices 
making such order shall be satisfied that no 
money has been improperly or unnecessarily 
expended by the overseers of the poor praying 
for such order ; and that a separate and distinct 
account has been kept by them of the addi- 
tional burden which has been thrown upon 
their rates by the causes alleged." — (Bill, pp. 
4, 5.) 

Now this clause, we cannot help saying, ap- 
pears to us to be a receipt for universal and 
interminable litigation all over England — a 
perfect law-hurricane — a conversion of all 
flesh into plaintiffs and defendants. The parish 
A. has pulled down houses, and burlhened the 
parish B.; B. has demolished to the misery of 
C; which has again misbehaved itself in the 
same manner to the oppression of other letters 
of the alphabet. All run into parchment, and 
pant for revenge and exoneration. Though 
the fact may be certain enough, the causes 
which gave rise to it may be very uncertain ; 
and assuredly will not be admitted to have 
been those against which the statute has de- 
nounced these penalties. It will be alleged, 
therefore, that the houees were not pulled 
down to get rid of the poor, but because they 
were not worth repair — because they obstruct- 
ed the squire's view— because rent was not 
paid. All these motives must go before the 
sessions, the last resource of legislators— the 
unhappy quarter-sessions pushed to the ex- 



336 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tremity of their wit by the plump contradictions 
of parish perjury. 

Another of the many sources of litigation, in 
this clause, is as follows : — A certain number 
of workmen live in a parish M., not being 
settled in it, and not working in it before the 
passing of this act. After the passing of this 
act, they become chargeable to M., whose poor- 
rates are increased. M. is to find out the 
parishes relieved from the burthen of these 
men, and to prosecute at the quarter-sessions 
for relief. But suppose the burthened parish 
to be in Yorkshire, and the relieved parish in 
Cornwall, are the quarter-sessions in Yorkshire 
to make an order of annual payment upon a 
parish in Cornwall 1 and Cornwall, in turn, 
■upon Yorkshire 1 How is the money to be 
transmitted"? What is the easy and cheap 
remedy, if neglected to be paid 1 And if all 
this could be effected, what is it, after all, but 
the present system of removal rendered ten 
times more intricate, confused and expensive! 
Perhaps Mr. Scarlett means, that the parishes 
■where these men worked, and which may hap- 
pen to be within the jurisdiction of the justices, 
are to be taxed in aid of the parish M., in pro- 
portion to the benefit they have received from 
the labour of men whose distresses they do not 
relieve. We must have, then, a detailed ac- 
count of how much a certain carpenter work- 
ed in one parish, how much in another; and 
enter into a species of evidence absolutely 
interminable. We hope Mr. Scarlett will not 
be angry with us : we entertain for his abilities 
and character the highest possible respect ; 
but great lawyers have not leisure for these 
trifling details. It is very fortunate that a 
clause so erroneous in its view should be so 
inaccurate in its construction. If it were easy 
to comprehend it, and possible to execute it, it 
would be necessary to repeal it. 

The shortest way, however, of mending all 
this, will be entirely to omit this part of the 
bill. We earnestly, but with very little hopes 
of success, exhort Mr. Scarlett not to endanger 
the really important part of his project, by the 
introduction of a measure which has little to do 
with it, and which any quarter-session country 
squire can do as well or better than himself 
The real question introduced by his bill is, 
whether or not a limit shall be put to the poor- 
laws ; and not only this, but whether their 
amount shall be gradually diminished. To 
this better and higher part of the law, we shall 
now address ourselves. 

In this, however, as well as in the former 
part of his bill, Mr. Scarlett becomes frighten- 
ed at his own enactments, and repeals himself. 
Parishes are first to relieve every person ac- 
tually resident within them. This is no sooner 
enacted than a provision is introduced to 
relieve them from this expense, tenfold more 
burthensome and expensive than the present 
system of removal. In the same manner, a 
maximum is very wisely and bravely enacted; 
and in the following clause is immediately 
repealed. 

"Provided, also, and be it further enacted, 
that if, by reason of any unusual scarcity of 
provisions, epidemic disease, or any other 



cause of a temporary or local nature, it- shall 
be deemed expedient by the overseers of the 
poor, or other persons having, by virtue of any 
local act of Parliament, the authority of over- 
seers of the poor of any parish, township, or 
place, to make' any addition to the sum assessed 
for the relief of the poor, beyond the amount 
limited by this act, it shall be lawful for the 
said overseers, or such other persons, to give 
public notice in the several churches, and 
other places of worship, within the same pa- 
rish, township, or place, and if there be no 
church or chapel within such place, then in 
the parish church or chapel next adjoining the 
same, of the place and time of a general meet- 
ing to be held by the inhabitants paying to the 
relief of the poor within such parish, town- 
ship, or place, for the purpose of considering 
the occasion and the amount of the proposed 
addition ; and, if it shall appear to the majority 
of the persons assembled at such meeting, that 
such addition shall be necessary, then it shall 
be lawful to the overseers, or other persons 
having power to make assessments, to increase 
the assessment by the additional sum proposed 
and allowed, at such meeting, and for the jus- 
tices, by whom such rate is to be allowed, upon 
due proof upon oath to be made before them, 
of the resolution of such meeting, and that the 
same was held after sufficient public notice to 
allow such rate with the proposed addition, 
specifying the exact amount thereof, with the 
reasons for allowing the same, upon the face 
of the rate." — (Bill, p. 3.) 

It would really seem^ from these and other 
qualifying provisions, as if Mr. Scarlett had 
never reflected upon the consequences of his 
leadingenactments till he had penned them; and 
that he then set about finding how he could 
prevent himself from doing what he meant to do. 
To what purpose enact a maximum, if that 
maximum may at any time be repealed by the 
majority of the parishioners 1 How will the 
compassion and charity which the poor-laws 
have set to sleep be awakened, when such a 
remedy is at hand as the repeal of the maxi- 
mum by a vote of the parish ? Will ardent 
and amiable men form themselves into volun- 
tary associations to meet any sudden exigency 
of famine and epidemic disease, when this 
sleepy and sluggish method of overcoming the 
evil can be had recourse to? As soon as it 
becomes really impossible to increase the poor 
fund by law — when there is but little, and there 
can be no more, that little will be administered 
with the utmost caution ; claims will be mi- 
nutely inspected ; idle manhood will not receive 
the scraps and crumbs which belong to failing 
old age ; distress will make the poor provident 
and cautious ; and all the good expected from 
the abolition of the poor-laws will begin to 
appear. But these expectations will be entirely 
frustrated, and every advantage of Mr. Scar- 
lett's bill destroyed, by this fatal facility of 
eluding and repealing it. 

The danger of insurrection is a circumstance 
worthy of the most serious consideration, in 
discussing the propriety of a maximum. Mr» 
Scarlett's bill is an infallible receipt for tumult 
and agitation, whenever corn is a little dearer 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



837 



than common. " Repeal the maximum," will 
be the clamour in every village ; and woe be 
to those members of the village vestry who 
should oppose the measure. Whether it was 
really a year of scarcity, and whether it was a 
proper season for expanding the bounty of the 
law, would be a question constantly and fierce- 
ly agitated between the farmers and the poor. 
lif the maximum is to be quietly submitted to, 
its repeal must be rendered impossible but to 
the legislature. " Burn your ships, Mr. Scar- 
lett. You are doing a wise and necessary 
thing ; don't be afraid of yourself. Respect 
your own nest. Don't let clause A repeal 
clause B. Be stout. Take care that the rat 
lawyers on the treasury bench do not take the 
oysters out of your bill, and leave you the 
shell. Do not yield one particle of the wisdom 
and philosophy of your measure to the country 
gentlemen of the earth." 

We object to a maximum which is not ren- 
dered a decreasing maximum. If definite 
sums were fixed for each village, which they 
could not exceed, that sum would, in a very 
few years, become a minimum, and an esta- 
blished claim. If 80s. were the sum allotted 
for a particular hamlet, the poor would very 
soon come to imagme that they were entitled 
to that precise sum, and the farmers that they 
were compelled to give it. Any maximum 
established should be a decreasing, but a very 
slowly decreasing maximum, — perhaps it 
should not decrease at a greater rate than 10s. 
per cent, per annum. 

It may be doubtful also, whether the first 
bill should aim at repealing more than 20 per 
cent, of the present amount of the poor-rates. 
This would be eff'ected in forty years. Long 
before that time, the good or bad effects of the 
measure would be fairly estimated ; if it is 
■wise that it should proceed, let posterity do the 
rest. It is by no means necessary to destroy, 
in one moment, upon paper, a payment which 
cannot, without violating every principle of 
justice, and every consideration of safety and 
humanity, be extinguished in less than two 
centuries. 

It is important for Mr. Scarlett to consider 
whether he will make the operation of his bill 
immediate, or interpose two or three years 
between its enactment and first operation. 

We entirely object to the following clause ; 
the whole of which ought to be expunged : — 

"And be it further enacted, that it shall not 
be lawful for any churchwarden, overseer, or 
guardian of the poor, or any other person 
having authority to administer relief to the poor, 
to allow or give, or for any justice of the peace 
to order, any relief to any person whatsoever, 
who shall be married after the passing of this 
act, for himself, herself, or any part of his or 
her family, unless such poor person shall be 
actually, at the time of asking such relief, by 
reason of age, sickness, or bodily infirmity, 
unable to obtain a livelihood, and to support 
his or her family by work: Provided, always, 
that nothing in this clause contained shall be 
construed so as to authorize the granting 
relief, or making any order for relief, in cases 
■where the same was not lawful before the 
passing of this act." 

43 



Nothing in the whole bill will occasion so 
much abuse and misrepresentation as this 
clause. It is upon this that the radicals will 
first fasten. It will, of course, be explained 
into a prohibition of marriage to the poor ; and 
will, in fact, create a marked distinction be- 
tween two classes of paupers, and become a 
rallying point for insurrection. In fact, it is 
wholly unnecessary. As the funds for the re- 
lief of pauperism decrpase, under the opera- 
tion of a diminishing maximum, the first to 
whom relief is refused will be the young and 
the strong; in other words, the most absurd 
and extravagant consequences of the present 
poor-laws will be the first cured. 

Such, then, is our conception of the bill 
which ought to be brought into Parliament — a 
maximum regulated by the greatest amount of 
poor-rates ever paid, and annually diminishing 
at the rate of lOs. per cent, till they are reduced 
20 per cent, of their present value ; with such 
a preamble to the bill as will make it fair and 
consistent for any future Parliament to con- 
tinue the reduction. If Mr. Scarlett will bring 
in a short and simple bill to this efiect, and not 
mingle with it any other parochial improve- 
ments, and will persevere in such a bill for 
two or three years, we believe he wdll carry 
it ; and we are certain he will confer, by such 
a measure, a lasting benefit upon his country — • 
and upon none more than upon its labouring 
poor. 

We presume there are very few persons who 
will imagine such a measure to be deficient in 
vigour. That the poor-laws should be stopped 
in their fatal encroachment upon property, and 
unhappy multiplication of the human species, 
— and not only this, but that the evil should 
be put in a state of diminution, would be an 
improvement of our condition almost beyond 
hope. The tendency of fears and objections 
will all lie the other way; and a bill of this 
nature will not be accused of inertness, but of 
rashness, cruelty, and innovation. We can- 
not now enter into the question of the poor- 
laws, of all others that which has undergone 
the most frequent and earnest discussion. Our 
whole reasoning is founded upon the assump- 
tion, that no system of laws was ever so com- 
pletely calculated to destroy industry, foresight, 
and economy in the poor ; to extinguish com- 
passion in the rich ; and, by destroying the 
balance between the demand for, and supply 
of, labour, to spread a degraded population 
over a ruined land. Not to attempt the cure 
of this evil, would be criminal indolence ; not 
to cure it gradually and compassionately, 
would be very wicked. To Mr. Scarlett 
belongs the real merit of introducing the bill. 
He will forgive us the freedom, perhaps the 
severity, of some of our remarks. We are 
sometimes not quite so smooth as we ought to 
be; but we hold Mr. Scarlett in very high 
honour and estimation. He is the greatest 
advocate, perhaps, of his time; and without 
the slightest symptom of tail or whiskers — 
decorations, it is reported, now as character- 
istic of the English bar as wigs and gowns in 
days of old — he has never carried his soul to 
the treasury, and said, What will you give me 
for this 1 — he has never sold the warm feelings. 
2F 



-338 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



''-:and honourable motives of his youth and man- 
hood for an annual sum of money and an 
office — he has never taken a price for public 
liberty and public happiness — he has never 
touched the political Aceldama, and signed 
the devil's bond for cursing to-morrow what 



he has blessed to-day. Living in the midst of 
men who have disgraced it, he has cast honour 
upon his honourable profession; and has 
sought dignity, not from the ermine and the 
mace, but from a straight path and a spotless 
life. 



MEMOIUS OF CAPTAIN ROCK/ 



[Edinburgh Review, 1824.] 



This agreeable and witty book is generally 
supposed to have been written by Mr. Thomas 

, Moore, a gentleman of small stature, but full 
of genius, and a steady friend of all that is 
honourable and just. He has here borrowed 
the name of a celebrated Irish leader, to typify 
that spirit of violence and insurrection which 

•is necessarily generated by systematic oppres- 
sion, and rudely avenges its crimes ; and the 
picture he has drawn of its prevalence in that 
unhappy country is at once piteous and fright- 
ful. Its effect in exciting our horror and in- 
dignation is in the long run increased, we 
think, — though at first it may seem counter- 
acted, by the tone of levity, and even jocularity, 
under which he has chosen to veil the deep 
sarcasm and substantial terrors of his story. 
We smile at first, and are amused — and won- 
der, as we proceed, that the humorous narra- 
tive should produce conviction and pity — 
shame, abhorrence, and despair! 

England seems to have treated Ireland much 
in the same way as Mrs. Brownrigg treated 
her apprentice — for which Mrs. Brownrigg is 
hanged in the first volume of the Newgate 
Calendar. Upon the whole, we think the ap- 
prentice is better off than the Irishman : as 
Mrs. Brownrigg merely starves and beats her, 
without any attempt to prohibit her from going 
to any shop, or praying at any church, appren- 
tice might select; and once or twice, if we 
remember rightly, Brownrigg appears to have 
felt some compassion. Not so Old England, 
who indulges rather in a steady baseness, uni- 
form brutality, and unrelenting oppression. 

Let us select from this entertaining little 
book a short history of dear Ireland, such as 
even some profligate idle member of the House 
of Commons, voting as his master bids him, 
may perchance throw his eye upon, and reflect 
for a moment upon the iniquity to which he 
lends his support. 

For some centuries after the reign of Henry 
IT. the Irish were killed like game, by persons 
qualified or unqualified. Whether dogs were 
used does not appear quite certain, though it 
is probable thej' were, spaniels as well as 
pointers ; and that, after a regular point by 
Basto, well backed by Ponto and CEesar, Mr. 
O'Donnel or Mr. O'Le-iry bolted from the 
thicket, and were bagged by the English sports- 



* Memoirs of Captain Rock, the celebrated Irish Chief- 
tain; with some .Account of his Jlucestors, Written by 
bimself. Fourth Edition. 12mo. London, 1824. 



man. With Henry II. came in tithes, to which, 
in all probability, about one million of lives 
may have been sacrificed in Ireland. In the 
reign of Edward I., the Irish who were settled 
near the English requested that the benefit of 
the English laws might be extended to them ; 
but the remonstrance of the barons with the 
hesitating king was in substance this: — "You 
have made us a present of these wild gentle- 
men, and we particularly request that no mea- 
sures may be adopted to check us in that full 
range of tyranny and oppression in which we 
consider the value of such a gift to consist. 
You might as well give us sheep, and prevent 
us from shearing the wool, or roasting the 
meat." This reasoning prevailed, and the 
Iiish were kept to their barbarism, and the 
barons preserved their live-stock. 

" Read ' Orange faction' (says Captain Rock) 
here, and you have the wisdom of our rulers, 
at the end of near six centuries, in statu quo.-^ 
The grand periodic year of the stoics, at the 
close of which every thing was to begin again, 
and the same events to be all reacted in the 
same order, is, on a miniature scale, repre- 
sented in the history of the English govern- 
ment in Ireland — every succeeding century 
being but a renewed revolution of the saihe 
follies, the same crimes, and the same turbu- 
lence that disgraced the former. But ' Vive 
I'ennemi !' say I : whoever may suff'er by such 
measures. Captain Rock, at least, will prosper. 

" And such was the result at the period of 
which I am speaking. The rejection of a pe- 
tition, so humble and so reasonable, was fpl- 
lowed, as a matter of course, by one of thoSe 
daring rebellions into which the revenge of an 
insulted people naturally breaks forth. The 
M'Cartys, the O'Briens, and all the other Macs 
and O's, who have been kept on the alert by 
similar causes ever since, flew to arms under 
the command of a chieftain of my family ; and, 
as the proffered handle of the sword had been 
rejected, made their inexorable masters at least 
feel its crfge."— (pp. 23—25.) 

Fifty years afterwards the same request 
was renewed and refused. Up again rose Mac 
and 0, — a just and neceasnry war ensued; and 
after the usual murders, the usual chains were 
replaced upon the Irishry. All Irishmen wei;e 
excluded from every species of office. It was 
high treason to marry with the Irish blood, and 
highly penal to receive the Irish into religious 
houses. War was waged also against their 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



339 



Thomas Moores, Samuel Rogerses, and Walter 
Scotts, who went about the country harping 
and singing against English oppression. No 
such turbulent guests were to be received. 
The plan of making them poets-laureate, or 
converting them to loyalty by pensions of 100/. 
per annum, had not then been thought of. 
They debarred the Irish even from the plea- 
sure of running away, and fixed them to the 
soil like negroes. 

"I have thus selected," says the historian 
of Rock, " cursorily and at random a few fea- 
tures of the reigns preceding the Reformation, 
in order to show what good use was made of 
those three or four hundred years in attaching 
the Irish people to their English governors ; 
and by what a gentle course of alternatives 
they were prepared for the inoculation of a 
new religion, which was now about to be at- 
tempted upon them by the same skilful and 
friendly hands. 

" Henry the Seventh appears to have been 
the first monarch to whom it occurred, that 
matters were not managed exactly as they 
ought in this part of his dominions ; and we 
find him — with a simplicity which is still fresh 
and youthful among our rulers — expressing 
his surprise that ' his subjects of this land 
should be so prone to faction and rebellion, 
and that so little advantage had been hitherto 
derived from the acquisitions of his predeces- 
sors, notwithstanding the fruitfulness and na- 
tural advantages of Ireland.' — Surprising, in- 
deed, that a policy, such as we have been 
describing, should not have converted the 
whole country into a perfect Atalantis of hap- 
piness — should not have made it like the ima- 
ginary island of Sir Thomas More, \vhere 
' tola insula velut una familia est /' — most stub- 
born, truly, and ungrateful must that people 
be, upon whom, up to the very hour in which 
I write, such a long and unvarying course of 
penal laws, confiscations, and insurrection acts 
has been tried, without making them in the 
least degree in love with their rulers. 

" Heloise tells her tutor Abelard, that the 
correction which he inflicted upon her only 
served to increase the ardour of her affection 
for him ; but bayonets and hemp are no such 
* amoris stimuli.' — One more characteristic 
anecdote of those times, and I have done. At 
the battle of Knocktow, in the reign of Henry 
VII., when that remarkable man, the Earl of 
Kildare, assisted by the great O'Neal and 
other Irish chiefs, gained a victory over Clan- 
ricard of Connaught, most important to the 
English government, Lord Gormanstown, after 
the battle, in the first insolence of success, 
said, turning to the Earl of Kildare, ' We have 
now slaughtered our enemies, but to complete 
the good deed, we must proceed yet further, 
and — cut the throats of those Irish of our own 
party !'* Who can wonder that the Rock family 
were active in those times 1" — (pp. 33 — 35.) 

Henry VIII. persisted in all these outrages, 
and aggravated them by insultingthe prejudices 
of the people. England is almost the only 
country in the world (even at present), where 

* Leland gives this anecdote on tlie authority of an 
Englishman. 



there is not some favourite religious spot, 
where absurd lies, little bits of cloth, feathers, 
rusty nails, splinters, and other invaluable 
relics, are treasured up, and in defence of 
which the whole population are willing to turn 
out and perish as one man. Such was the 
shrine of St. Kieran, the whole treasures of 
which the satellites of that corpulent tyrant 
turned out into the street, pillaged the sacred 
church of Clonmacnoise, scattered the holy 
nonsense of the priests to the winds, and 
burnt the real and venerable crosier of St. 
Patrick, fresh from the silversmith's shop, and 
formed of the most costly materials. Modern 
princes change the uniform of regiments ; Hen- 
ry changed the religion of kingdoms, and was 
determined that the belief of the Irish should 
undergo a radical and Protestant conversion. 
With what success this attempt was made, the 
present state of Ireland is sufficient evi- 
dence. 

" Be not dismayed," said Elizabeth, on hear- 
ing that O'Neal meditated some designs against 
her government ; " tell my friends, if he arise, 
it will turn to their advantage — there will be 
estates for those who want." Soon after this pro- 
phetic speech, Munster was destroyed by fa- 
mine and the sword, and near 600,000 acres 
forfeited to the crown, and distributed among 
Englishmen. Sir Walter Raleigh (the vir- 
tuous and good) butchered the garrison of 
Limerick in cold blood, after Lord Deputy 
Gray had selected 700 to be hanged. There 
were, during the reign of Elizabeth, three in- 
vasions of Ireland by the Spaniards, produced 
principally by the absurd measures of this 
princess for the reformation of its religion. 
The Catholic clergy, in consequence of these 
measures, abandoned their cures, the churches 
fell to ruin, and the people were left without 
any means of instruction. Add to these cir- 
cumstances the murder of M'Mahon, the im- 
prisonment of M'Toole* and O'Dogherty, and 
the kidnapping of O'Donnel — all truly Anglo- 
Hibernian proceedings. The execution of the 
laws was rendered detestable and intolerable 
by the queen's officers of justice. The spirit 
raised by these transactions, besides innume- 
rable smaller insurrections, gave rise to the 
great wars of Desmond and Hugh O'Neal ; 
which, after they had worn out the ablest 
generals, discomfited the choicest troops, ex- 
hausted the treasure, and embarrassed the 
operations of Elizabeth, were terminated by 
the destruction of these two ancient families, 
and by the confiscation of more than half the 
territorial surface of the island. The two last 
years of O'Neal's wars cost Elizabeth 140,000/. 
per annum, though the whole revenue of 
England at that period fell considerably short 
of 500,000/. Essex, after the destruction of 
Norris, led into Ireland an army of above 
20,000 men, which was totally battled and de- 



* There are not a few of the best and most humane 
Englishmen of the present dav, who, when under the 
influence nf fear or anger, would think it no great crime 
to put to death people whose names begin with O or Mac 
The violent death of Smith, Green, or Thomson, would 
throw the neisrhbourhood into convulsions, and the regu- 
lar forms would be adhered to— but little would he really 
thought of the death of any body called O'Dogherty or 
O'Toole. 



340 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



stroyed by Tyrone, within two years of their 
landing. Such was the importance of Irish 
rebellions two centuries before the time in 
which we live. Sir G. Carew attempted to 
assassinate the Lugan earl — Mountjoy com- 
pelled the Irish rebels to massacre each other. 
In the course of a few months, 3000 men were 
starved to death in Tyrone. Sir Arthur Chi- 
chester, Sir Richard Manson, and other com- 
manders, saw three childrer; feeding on the 
flesh of their dead mother. Such were the 
golden days of good queen Bess ! 

By the rebellions of Dogherty in the reign 
of James I., six northern counties were con- 
fiscated, amounting to 500,000 acres. In the 
same manner, 64,000 acres were confiscated 
in Athlone. The whole of his confiscations 
amount to nearly a million of acres ; and if 
Leland means plantation acres, they consti- 
tute a twelfth of the whole kingdom according 
to Newenham, and a tenth according to Sir 
W. Petty. The most shocking and scanda- 
lous action in the reign of James, was his at- 
tack upon the whole property of the province 
of Connaught, which he would have effected, 
if he had not been bought off by a sum greater 
than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides 
the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during 
the reign of James I., suffered under the double 
evils of a licentious soldiery, and a religious 
persecution. 

Charles the First took a bribe of 120,000/. 
from his Irish subjects, to grant them what in 
those days were called graces, but in these 
days would be denominated the elements of 
justice. The money was paid, but the graces 
were never granted. One of these graces is 
curious enough: "That the clergy were not to 
be permitted to keep henceforward any private 
prisons of their own, but delinquents were to 
be committed to the public jails." The idea 
of a rector, with his own private jail full of 
dissenters, is the most ludicrous piece of ty- 
ranny we ever heard of. The troops in the 
beginning of Charles's reign were supported 
by the weekly fines levied upon the Catholics 
for non-attendance upon established worship. 
The Archbishop of Dublin went himself, at 
the head of a file of musketeers, to disperse a 
Catholic congregation in Dublin, — which ob- 
ject he effected, after a considerable skirmish 
with the priests. " The favourite object" 
(says Dr. Leland, a Protestant clergyman, and 
dignitary of the Irish church) " of the Irish 
government and the English Parliament, was 
the utter extermination of all the Catholic inha- 
bitants of Ireland." The great rebellion took 
place in this reign, and Ireland was one scene 
of blood and cruelty and confiscation. 

Cromwell began his career in Ireland by 
massacreing for five days the garrison of Dro- 
gheda, to whom quarter had been promised. 
Two millions and a half of acres were confis- 
cated. Whole towns were put up in lots, and 
sold. The Catholics were banished from 
three-fourths of the kingdom, and confined to 
Connaught. After a certain day, every Catho- 
lic found out of Connaught was to be punished 
with death. Fleetwood complains peevishly 
" that the people do not transport readily" — but 
adds, " it is doubtless a work in which the Lord will 



appear." Ten thousand Irish were sent as re- 
cruits to the Spanish army. 

" Such was CromweWs way of settKng the 
affairs of Ireland — and if a nation is to be 
ruined, this method is, perhaps, as good as any. 
It is, at least, more humane than the slow lin- 
gering process of exclusion, disappointment, 
and degradation, by which their hearts are worn 
out under more specious forms of tyranny^; 
and that talent of despatch which Moliere at- 
tributes to one of his physicians, is no ordi- 
nary merit in a practitioner like Cromwell : — 
' C'est un homme expeditif, qui aime a depS- 
cher ses malades ; et quand on a a mourir, cela 
se fait avec lui le plus vite du monde.' A 
certain military duke, who complains that Ire- 
land is but half conquered, would, no doubt, 
upon an emergency, trv his hand in the same 
line of practice, and, like that 'stern hero,' 
Mirmillo, in the Dispensary, 

' While others meanly take whole months to slay, 
Despatch the grateful patient in a day !' 

" Among other amiable enactments against 
the Catholics at this period, the price of five 
pounds was s'et on the head of a Romish priest 
— being exactly the same sum offered by the 
same legislators for the head of a wolf. The 
Athenians, we are told, encouraged the destruc- 
tion of wolves by a similar reward (five 
drachmas) ; but it does not appear that these 
heathens bought up the heads of priests at the 
same rate — such zeal in the cause of religion 
being reserved for times of Christianity and 
Protestantism." — (pp. 97 — 99.) 

Nothing can show more strongly the light 
in which the Irish were held by Cromwell, than 
the correspondence with Henry Cromwell, 
respecting the peopling of Jamaica from Ire- 
land. Secretary Thurloe sends to Henry, the 
lord-deputy in Ireland, to inform him, that " a 
stock of Irish girls, and Irish young men, are 
wanting for the peopling of Jamaica." The 
answer of Henry Cromwell is as follows; — 
" Concerning the supply of young men, al- 
though we must use force in taking them up, 
yet it being so much for their own good, and likely 
to be of so great advantage to the public, it is 
not the least doubted but that you may have 
such a number of them as you may think fit 
to make use of on this account. 

" I shall not need repeat any thing respect- 
ing the girls, not doubting to answer your ex- 
pectations to the full in that ■ and I think it 
might be of like advantage to your affJairs 
there, and ours here, if you should think fit to 
send 1500 or 2000 boys to the place above men- 
tioned. We can well spare them: and who 
knows that it may be the means of making 
them Englishmen, I mean rather Christians. 
As for the girls, I suppose you will make pro- 
visions of clothes, and other accommodations 
for them." Upon this, Thurloe informs Henry 
Cromwell, that the council have voted 400O 
girls, and as many boys, to go to Jamaica. 

Every Catholic priest found in Ireland was 
hanged, and five pounds paid to the informer. 

•'About the year 1652 and 1653," says 
Colonel Lawrence in his Interests of Ireland, 
" the plague and famine had so swept away 
whole counties, that a man might travel twenty 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



341 



or thirty miles and not see a living creature, 
either man, or beast, or bird, — they being all 
dead, or had quitted those desolate places. 
Our soldiers would tell stories of the places 
where they saw smoke — it was so rare to see 
either smoke by day, or fire or candle by night." 
In this manner did the Irish live and die under 
Cromwell, suffering by the sword, famine, pesti- 
lence, and persecution, beholding the confisca- 
tion of a kingdom and the banishment of a 
race. •' So that there perished (says S. W. 
Petry) in the year 1641, 650,000 human beings, 
whose blood somebody must atone for to God 
and the king ! l" 

In the reign of Charles II., by the Act of Set- 
tlement, four millions and a half of acres were 
for ever taken from the Irish. "This country," 
says the Earl of Essex, lord-lieutenant in 1675, 
"has been perpetually rent and torn, since his 
majesty's restoration. I can compare it to 
nothing better than the flinging the reward on 
the death of a deer among the packs of hounds 
— where every one pulls and tears where he 
can for himself." All wool grown in Ireland 
was, by act of Parliament, compelled to be sold 
to England ; and Irish cattle were excluded 
from England. The English, however, were 
pleased to accept 30,000 head of cattle, sent as 
a gift from Ireland to the sufferers in the great 
fire ! — and the first day of the sessions, after 
this act of munificence, the Parliament passed 
fresh acts of exclusion against the productions 
of that country. 

"Among the many anomalous situations in 
which the Irish have been placed, by those 
* marriage vows, false as dicers' oaths,' which 
bind their country to England, the dilemma in 
which they found themselves at the Revolution 
was not the least perplexing or cruel.* If they 
were loyal to the king de jure, they were hanged 
by the king, de facto ; and if they escaped with 
life from the king de facto, it was but to be 
plundered and proscribed by the king de jure 
afterwards. 

« "Hac gener atque socer coeant mercede suorum." — 

Virgil. 

"In a manner so summary, prompt, and high-mettled, 

'Twixt father and son-in-law matters were settled." 

" In fact, most of the outlawries in Ireland 
"were for treason committed the very day on 
which the Prince and Princess of Orange ac- 
cepted the crown in the banqueting-house ; 
though the news of this event could not possi- 
bly have reached the other side of the Chan- 
nel on the same day, and the lord-lieutenant 
of King James, with an army to enforce obedi- 
ence, was at that time in actual possession of 
the government, — so little was common sense 
consulted, or the mere decency of forms ob- 
served by that rapacious spirit, which nothing 
less than the confiscation of the whole island 
could satisfy ; and which having, in the reign 

* " Among the persons most puzzled and perplexed by 
the two opposite royal claims on their allegiance, were 
the clergymen of the established church; who, having 
first prayed for King James as their lawful sovereign, as 
soon as William was proclaimed, took to praying for him; 
but again, on the success of the Jacobite forces in the 
north, very prudently prayed for King James once more, 
tin the arrival of Schomberg, when, as far as his quar- 
ters reached, they returned to praying for King William 
again." 



of James I. and at the restoration, despoiled 
the natives of no less than ten millions six 
hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred 
and thirty-seven acres, now added to its plunder 
one million sixty thousand seven hundred and 
ninety-two acres more, being the am.ount, alto- 
gether, (according to Lord Clare's calculation), 
of the whole superficial contents of the island. 

"Thus not only had all Ireland suffered con- 
fiscation in the course of this century, but no 
inconsiderable portion of it had been twice 
and even thrice confiscated. Well might Lord 
Clare say, ' that the situation of the Irish na- 
tion, at the revolution, stands unparalleled in 
the history of the inhabited world.'" — Cpp. IH 
—113.) 

By the articles of Limerick, the Irish were 
promised the free exercise of their religion ; 
but from that period till the year 1788, every 
year produced some fresh penalty against that 
religion — some liberty was abridged, some 
right impaired, or some suffering increased. 
By acts in King William's reign, they were 
prevented from being solicitors. No Catholic 
was allowed to marry a Protestant ; and any 
Catholic who sent a son to Catholic countries 
for education was to forfeit all his lands. In 
the reign of Queen Anne, any son of a Catho- 
lic who chose to turn Protestant got possession 
of his father's estate. No Papist was allowed 
to purchase freehold property, or to take a 
lease for more than thirty years. If a Protest- 
ant dies intestate, the estate is to go to the 
next Protestant heir, though all to the tenth 
generation should be Catholic. In the same 
manner, if a Catholic dies intestate, his estate 
is to go to the next Protestant. No Papist is 
to dwell in Limerick or Galway. No Papist 
is to take an annuity for life. The widow of 
a Papist turning Protestant to have a portion 
of the chattels of deceased, in spite of any will. 
Every Papist teaching schools to be presented 
as a regular Popish convict. Prices of catch- 
ing Catholic priests from 50s. to 10/., accord- 
ing to rank. Papists are to answer all ques- 
tions respecting other Papists, or to be com- 
mitted to jail for twelve months. No trust to 
be undertaken for Papists. No Papist to be 
on grand juries. Some notion may be formed 
of the spirit of those times, from an order of 
the House of Commons, " that the sergeant-at- 
arms should take into custody all Papists that 
should presume to come into the gallery .'" 
{Commons' Journal, vol. iii. fol. 976.) During 
this reign, the English Parliament legislated 
as absolutely for Ireland as they do now for 
Rutlandshire — an evil not to be complained 
of, if they had done it as justly. In the reign 
of George I. the horses of Papists were seized 
for the militia, and rode by Protestants; towards 
which the Catholics paid double, and Avere 
compelled to find Protestant substitutes. They 
were prohibited from voting at vestries, or 
being high or petty constables. An act of the 
English Parliament in this reign opens as 
follows : — " Whereas attempts have been lately 
made to shake off the subjection of Ireland to 
the imperial crown of these realms, be it en- 
acted," &c. «&c. In the reign of George IL 
four-sixths of the population were cut off from 
the rights of voting at elections, by the neces- 
2f2 



342 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



sity under which ihey were placed of taking 
the oath of supremacy. Ban-isters and soli- 
citors marr}'ing Catholics are exposed to all 
the pena.lties of Catholics. Persons robbed by 
privateers during a war wi^ a Catholic state, 
are to be indemnified by a levy on th^ Catholic 
inhabitants of the neighbourhood. All mar- 
riages between Catholics and Protestants are 
annulled. All Popish priests celebrating them 
are to be hanged. "This system" (says Ar- 
thur Young) " has no other tendency than that 
of driving out of the kingdom all the personal 
wealth of the Catholics, and extinguishing 
their industry within it ! and the face of the 
country, every object which presents itself to 
travellers, tell him how effectually this has 
been done." — Fowng's Tour in Ireland, vol. ii. 
p. 48. 

Such is the history of Ireland — for we are 
now at our own times ; and the only remain- 
ing question is, whether the system of improve- 
ment and conciliation begun in the reign of 
George IH. shall be pursued, and the remain- 
ing incapacities of the Catholics removed, or 
all these concessions be made insignificant by 
an adherence to that spirit of proscription 
which they professed to abolish ? Looking to 
the sense and reason of the thing, and to the 
ordinary working of humanity and justice, 
when assisted, as they are here, by self-interest 
and worldly policy, it might seem absurd to 
doubt of the result. But looking to the facts 
and the persons by which we are now sur- 
rounded, we are constrained to say that we 
greatly fear that these incapacities never will 
be removed, till they are removed by fear. 
What else, indeed, can we expect when we see 
them opposed by such enlightened men as Mr. 
Peel — faintly assisted by men of such admira- 
ole genius as Mr. Canning — when royal dukes 
consider it as a compliment to the memory of 
their fathers to continue this miserable system 
of bigotry and exclusion, — when men act igno- 
miniously and contemptibly on this question, 
who do so on no other question, — when al- 
most the only persons zealously opposed to 
this general baseness and fatuity are a few 
whigs and reviewers, or here and there a vir- 
tuous poet, liks Mr. Moore 1 We repeat again, 
that the measure never will be effected but by 
fear. In the midst of one of our just and 
necessary wars, the Irish Catholics will com- 
pel this country to grant them a great deal 
more than they at present require, or even 
contemplate. We regret most severely the 
protraction of the disease, and the. danger of 
the remedy ; — but in this way it is that human 
affairs are carried on ! 

We are sorry we have nothing for which to 
praise the administration on the subject of the 
Catholic question — but, it is but justice to say, 
that they have been very zealous and active in 
detecting fiscal abuses in Ireland, in improving 
mercantile regulations, and in detecting Irish 
jobs. The commission on which Mr. Wallace 
presided has been of the greatest possible 
utility, and does infinite credit to the govern- 
ment. The name of Mr. Wallace, in any com- 
mission, has now become a pledge to the pub- 
lic that there is a real intention to investigate 



and correct abuse. He stands in the singular^ 
predicament of being equally trusted by the- 
rulers and the ruled. It is a new era in go- 
vernment, when such men are called into 
action ; and, if there were not proclaimed and 
fatal limits to that ministerial liberality — which, 
so far as it- goes, we welcome without a grudge, 
and praise without a sneer — we might yet 
hope that, for the sake of mere consistency, 
they might be led to falsify our forebodings.; 
But alas ! there are motives more immediate,, 
and therefore irresistible; and the time is not 
yet come, when it will be believed easier to- 
govern Ireland by the love of the many than by 
the power of the few — when the paltry and 
dangerous machinery of bigoted faction and 
prostituted patronage maybe dispensed with,, 
and the vessel of the state be propelled by the 
natural current of popular interests and the 
breath of popular applause. In the mean 
time, we cannot resist the temptation of gracing; 
our conclusion with the following beautiful 
passage, in which the author alludes to thc;- 
hopes that were raised at another great era of 
partial concession and liberality — that of the 
revolution of 1782, — when, also, benefits were 
conferred which proved abortive because they 
were incomplete — and balm poured into the 
wound, where the envenomed shaft was yet left 
to rankle. 

" And here," says the gallant Captain Rock, — 
"as the free confession of weaknesses consti- 
tutes the chief charm and use of biography — I 
will candidly own that the dawn of prosperity 
and concord, which I now saw breaking over 
the fortunes of my country, so dazzled and de- 
ceived my youthful eyes, and so unsettled every 
hereditary notion of what I owed to my name 
and family, that — shall I confess it"? — I even 
hailed with pleasure the prospects of peace 
and freedom that seemed opening around me ;, 
nay, was ready, in the boyish enthusiasm of 
the moment, to sacrifice all my own personal 
interest in all future riots and rebellions, to the 
one bright, seducing object of my country's 
liberty and repose. 

" When I contemplated such a man as the 
venerable Charlemont, whose nobility was to 
the people like a fort over a valley — elevated 
above them solely for their defence ; who in- 
troduced the polish of the courtier into the 
camp of the freeman, and served his country 
with all that pure, Platonic devotion, which a 
true knight in the times of chivalry proffered 
to his mistress ; — when I listened to the elo- 
quence of Grattan, the very music of freedom — 
her first, fresh matin song, after a long night 
of slavery, degradation, and sorrow ; — when I 
saw the bright offerings which he brought to 
the shrine of his country, — wisdom, genius, 
courage, and patience, invigorated and embel- 
lished by all those social and domestic virtues, 
without which the loftiest talents stand isolated 
in the moral waste around them, like the pillars 
of Palmyra towering in a wilderness ! — when 
I reflected on all this, it not only disheartened 
me for the mission of discord which I had un- 
dertaken, but made me secretly hope that it 
might be rendered unnecessary; and that a 
country, which could produce such men and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



BiS 



achieve such a revolution, might yet — in spite 
of the joint eflForts of the government and my 
family — take her rank in the scale of nations, 
and be happy ! 

" My father, however, who saw the momen- 
tary dazzle by which I was affected, soon drew 
me out of this false light of hope in which I 
lay basking, and set the truth before me in a 
way but too convincing and ominous. ' Be 
not deceived, boy,' he would say, ' by the fal- 
lacious appearances before you. Eminently 
great and good as is the man to whom Ireland 



owes this short era of glory, our work, believe 
me, will last longer than his. We have a 
power on our side that 'will not willingly let 
us die ;' and, long after Grattan shall have 
disappeared from earth, — like that arrow shot 
into the clouds by Alcestes, effecting nothing, 
but leaving a long train of light behind him, — 
the family of the Rocks will continue to flourish 
in all their native glory, upheld by the ever- 
watchful care of the legislature, and foster- 
ed by that 'nursing-mother of Liberty,' the 
Church.' " 



GHANBY.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1826.] 



There is nothing more amusing in the spec- 
tacles of the present day, than to see the Sir 
Johns and Sir Thomases of the House of Com- 
mons struck aghast by the useful science and 
wise novelties of Mr. Huskisson and the chan- 
cellor of the exchequer. Treason, Disaffection, 
Atheism, Republicanism, and Socinianism — 
the great guns in the Noodle's park of artillery 
— they cannot bring to bear upon these gentle- 
men. Even to charge with a regiment of an- 
cestors is not quite so efficacious as it used to 
be ; and all that remains, therefore, is to rail 
against Peter M-CuUoch and political econo- 
my ! In the mean time, day after day, down 
goes one piece of nonsense or another. The 
most approved trash, and the most trusty cla- 
mours, are found to be utterly powerless. Two- 
penny taunts and trumpery truisms have lost 
their destructive omnipotence ; and the ex- 
hausted commonplace-man, and the afiiicted 
fool, moan over the ashes of imbecility, and 
strew flowers on the urn of ignorance ! Gene- 
ral Elliot found the London tailors in a state 
of mutiny, and he raised from them a regiment 
of light cavalry, which distinguished itself in 
a very striking manner at the battle of Minden. 
In humble imitation of this example, we shall 
avail ourselves of the present political disaf- 
fection and unsatisfactory idleness of many 
men of rank and consequence, to request their 
attention to the Novel of Granby — written, as 
we have heard, by a young gentleman of the 
name of Lister,f and from which we have de- 
rived a considerable deal of pleasure and en- 
tertainment. 

The main question as to a novel is — did it 
amuse 1 were you surprised at dinner coming 
so soon 1 did you mistake eleven for ten, and 
twelve for eleven 7 were you too late to dress 1 
and did you sit up bej'ond the usual hour ] If 
a novel produces these effects, it is good ; if it 
does not — story, language, love, scandal itself, 
cannot save it. It is only meant to please ; and 
it must do that, or it does nothing. Now 

* Oranby. A JVooeZ in Three Volumes. London, Col- 
burn, 1826. 

+ This is the gentleman who now keeps the keys of 
Life and Death, the Janitor of the world. 



Granby seems to us to answer this test ex- 
tremely well ; it produces unpunctuality, makes 
the reader too late for dinner, impatient of con- 
tradiction, and inattentive,^-even if a bishop 
is making an observation, or a gentleman 
lately from the Pyramids, or the Upper Cata- 
racts, is let loose upon the drav/ing-room. The 
objection, indeed, to these compositions, when 
they are well done, is, that it is impossible to do 
any thing, or perform any human duty, while 
we are engaged in them. Who can read Mr. 
Hallam's Middle Ages, or extract the root of 
an impossible quantity, or draw up a bond, 
when he is in the middle of Mr. Trebeck and 
Lady Charlotte Duncan 1 How can the boy's 
lesson be heard, about the Jove-nourished 
Achilles, or his six miserable verses upon Dido 
be corrected, when Henry Granby and Mr. 
Courtenay are both making love to Miss Jer- 
myn T Common life palls in the middle of 
these artificial scenes. All is emotion when 
the book is open — all dull, flat, and feeble when 
it is shut. 

Granby, a young man of no profession, living 
with an old uncle in the country, falls in love 
with Miss Jermyn, and Miss Jermyn with him; 
but Sir Thomas and Lady Jermyn, as the 
young gentleman is not rich, having discover- 
ed, by long living in the world and patient 
observation of its ways, that young people are 
commonly Malthus-proof and have children, 
and that young and old must eat, very naturally 
do what they can to discourage the union. The 
young people, however, both go to town — meet 
at balls — flutter, blush, look and cannot speak 
— speak and cannot look, — suspect, misinter- 4 
pret, are sad and mad, peevish and jealous, 
fond and foolish ; but the passion, after all, ¥ 
seems less near to its accomplishment at the 
end of the season than the beginning. The 
uncle of Granby, however, dies, and leaves to 
his nephew a statement accompanied with the 
requisite proofs — that Mr. Tyrrel, the supposed 
son of Lord Malton, is illegitimate, and that 
he, Granby, is the heir to Lord Malton's for- 
tune. The second volume is now far advanced, 
and it is time for Lord Malton to die. Accord- 
ingly Mr. Lister very judiciously despatches 



»i4 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



liim; Granby inherits the estate — his virtues 
(for what shows off virtue like land?) are 
discovered by the Jermyns — and they marry in 
the last act. 

Upon this slender story, the author has suc- 
ceeded in making a very agreeable and inte- 
resting novel ; and he has succeeded, we think, 
chiefly, by the very easy and natural picture 
of manners, as they really exist among the 
upper classes ; by the description of new cha- 
racters judiciously drawn and faithfully pre- 
served ; and by the introduction of many strik- 
ing and well-managed incidents ; and we are 
particularly struck throughout the whole with 
the discretion and good sense of the author. 
He is never nimious ; there is nothing in ex- 
cess ; there is a good deal of fancy and a great 
deal of spirit at work, but a directing and 
superintending judgment rarely quits him. 

We would instance, as a proof of his tact 
and talent, the visit at Lord Daventry's, and 
the description of characters of which the party 
is composed. There are absolutely no events ; 
nobody runs away, goes mad, or dies. There 
is little of love, or of hatred ; no great passion 
comes into play ; but nothing can be farther 
removed from dulness and insipidity. Who 
has ever lived in the world without often 
meeting the Miss Cliftons ? 

" The Miss Cliftons were good-humoured 
girls ; not handsome, but of pleasing manners, 
and sufficiently clever to keep up the ball of 
conversation very agreeably for an occasional 
half hour. They were always au courant du 
jour, and knew and saw the first of every thing 
— were in the earliest confidence of many a 
bride elect, and could frequently tell that a 
marriage was ' off"' long after it had been an- 
nounced as 'on the tapis' in the morning 
papers — always knew something of the new- 
opera, or the new Scotch novel, before any 
body else did — were the first who made fizgigs, 
or acted charades — contrived to have private 
views of most exhibitions, and were supposed 
to have led the fashionable throng to the 
Caledonian Chapel, Cross Street, Hatton Gar- 
den. Their emplcry-ments were like those of 
most other girls; they sang, played, drew, 
rode, read occasionally, spoiled much muslin, 
manufactured purses, handscreens, and reti- 
cules for a repository, and transcribed a con- 
siderable quantity of music out of large fair 
print into diminutive manuscript 

" Miss Clifton was clever and accomplished; 
rather cold, but very conversable ; collected 
seals, franks, and anecdotes of the day; and 
was a greater retailer of the latter. Anne was 
odd and entertaining; was a formidable quiz- 
zer, and no mean caricaturist; liked fun in 
most shapes; and next to making people 
laugh, had rather they stared at what she said. 
Maria was the echo of the other two : vouched 
for all Miss Clifton's anecdotes, and led the 
laugh at Anne's repartees. They were plain, 
and they knew it ; and cared less about it than 
young ladies usually do. Their plainness, 
however, would have been less striking, but 
for that hard, pale, par-boiled town look, — that 
stamp of fashion, with which late hours and 
hoi rooms generally endow the female face." 
—(pp. 103—105.) I 



Having introduced our reader to the Miss 
Cliftons, we must make him acquainted with 
Mr. Trebeck, one of those universally appear- 
ing gentlemen and tremendous table tyrants, 
by whom London society is so frequently go- 
verned : — 

" Mr. Trebeck had great powers of enter- 
tainment, and a keen and lively turn for 
satire; and could talk down his superiors, 
whether in rank or talent, with very imposing 
confidence. He saw the advantages of being 
formidable, and observed with derision how 
those whose malignity he pampered with 
ridicule of others, vainly thought to purchase 
by subserviency exemption for themselves. 
He had sounded the gullibility of the world ; 
knew the precise current value of pretension ; 
and soon found himself the acknowledged 
umpire, the last appeal, of many conteuted 
followers. 

"He seldom committed himself by praise or 
recommendation, but rather left his example 
and adoption to work its way. As for censure 
he had both ample and witty store ; but here 
too he often husbanded his remarks, and where • 
it was needless or dangerous to define a fault, 
could check admiration by an incredulous 
smile, and depress pretensions of a season's 
standing by the raising of an eyebrow. He 
bad a quick perception of the foibles of others, 
and a keen relish for bantering and exposing 
them. No keeper of a menagerie could better 
show off" a monkey than he could an ' original.' 
He could ingeniously cause the unconscious 
subject to place his own absurdities in the 
best point of view, and would cloak his deri- 
sion under the blandest cajolery. Lnitators he 
loved much; but to bafile them — more. He 
loved to turn upon the luckless adopters of 
his last folly, and see them precipitately back 
out of the scrape into which himself had led 
them. 

" In the art of cutting he shone unrivalled : 
he knew the ' when,' the ' where,' and the 
' how.' Without aff"ecting useless short-sight- 
edness, he could assume that calm but wan- 
dering gaze which veers, as if unconsciously, 
round the proscribed individual ; neither fix- 
ing, nor to be fixed; not looking on vacancy, 
nor on anyone object; neither occupied nor 
abstracted ; a look which perhaps excuses you 
to the person cut, and, at any rate, prevents 
him from accosting you. Originality was his 
idol. He wished to astonish, even if he did 
not amuse ; and had rather say a silly thing 
than a commonplace one. He was led by this 
sometimes even to approach the verge of 
rudeness and vulgarity; but he had consider- 
able tact, and a happy hardihood, which gene- 
rally carried him through the difficulties into 
which his fearless love of originality brought 
him. Indeed, he well knew that what would, 
in the present condition of his reputation, be 
scouted in any body else, would pass current 
with the world in him. Such was the far- 
famed and redoubtable Mr. Trebeck." — (pp. 
109—112.) 

This sketch we think exceedingly clever. 
But we are not sure that its merit is fully sus- 
tained by the actual presentment of its subject. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



345 



He makes his debut at dinner very character- 
istically, by gliding in quietly after it is half 
over; but in the dialogue which follows with 
Miss Jermyn, he seems to us a little too reso- 
lutely witty, and- somewhat affectedly odd — 
though the whole scene is executed with spirit 
and talent. 

" The duke had been discoursing on cookery, 
when Mr. Trebeck turned to her, and asked in 
•a low tone if she had ever met the duke before 
— ' I assure you,' said he, ' that upon that sub- 
ject he is well worth attending to. He is sup- 
posed to possess more true science than any 
amateur of his day. By the bye, what is the 
dish before you ■? It looks well, and I see you 
are eating some of it. Let me recommend it 
to him upon your authority ; I dare not upon 
my own.' — ' Then pray do not use mine.' — 
' Yes, I will, with your permission ; I'll tell 
him you thought, by what dropped from him 
in conversation, that it would exactly suit the 
genius of his taste. Shall I ? Yes. — Duke,' 
(raising his voice a little, and speaking across 
the table,) — ' Oh, no ! how can youV — 'Why 
not? — Duke,' (with a glance at Caroline,) 
' will you allow me to take wine with you V — 
' I thought,' said she, relieved from her trepida- 
tion, and laughing slightly, ' you would never 
say any thing so veiy strange.' — ' You have too 
good an opinion of me ; I blush for my un- 
worthiness. But confess, that in fact you were 
rather alanned at the idea of being held up to 
such a critic as the recommender of a bad 
dish.' — ' Oh, no, I was not thinking of that ; 
but I hardly know the duke : and it would 
have seemed so odd; and perhaps he might 
have thought that I had really told you to say 
something of that kind.' — ' Of course he would; 
but you must not suppose that he would have 
been at all surprised at it. I'm afraid you are 
not aware of the full extent of your privileges, 
and are not conscious how many things young 
ladies can, and may, and will do.' — ' Indeed I 
am not — perhaps you will instruct me.' — 'Ah, 
I never do that for any body. I like to see 
young ladies instruct themselves. It is better 
for them, and much more amusing to me. 
But, however, for once I will venture *to tell 
you, that a very competent knowledge of the 
duties of women may, with proper attention, 
be picked up in a ball room.' — ' Then I hope,' 
said she, laughing, ' you will attribute my defi- 
ciency to my little experience of ball. I have 
only been at two.' — ' Only two ! and one of 
them I suppose a race ball. Then you have 
not yet experienced any of the pleasures of a 
London season? Never had the dear delight 
of seeing and being seen, in a well of tall 
people at a rout, or passed a pleasant hour at 
a ball upon a staircase 1 I envy you. You 
have much to enjoy.' — ' You do not mean that 
I really have V — ' Yes — really. But let me 
give you a caution or two. Never dance with 
any man without first knowing his character 
and condition, on the word of two credible 
chaperons. At balls, too, consider what you 
come for — to dance of course, and not to con- 
verse ; therefore, never talk yourself, nor 
encourage it in others.' — ' I'm afraid I can only 
answer for myself.' — ' Why, if foolish, w-ell- 
. meaning people will choose to be entertaining, 
44 



I question if you have the power of frowning 
them down in a very forbidden manner : but I 
would give them no countenance neverthe- 
less.' — ' Your advice seems a little ironical.' — 
' Oh, you may either follow it or reverse it — 
that is its chief beauty. It is equally good ' 
taken either way.' — After a slight pause, be 
continued — ' I hope you do not sing, or play, 
or draw, or do any thing that every body else 
does.' — ' I am obliged to confess that I do a 
little — very little — in each.' — 'I understand ^ 
your " very little :" I'm afraid you are accom- 
plished.' — ' You need have no fear of that. * 
But why are you an enemy to all accomplish- 
ments V — ' All accomplishments 1 Nay, surely, 
you do not think me an enemy to all? What 
can )'^ou possibly take me for V — ' I do not 
know,' said she, laughing slightly. — 'Yes, I see 
you do not know exactly what to make of me 
— and you are not without your apprehensions. 
I can perceive that, though you try to conceal 
them. — But never mind. I am a safe person 
to sit near — sometimes. I am to-day. This is ■ 
one of my lucid intervals. I'm much better, 
thanks to my keeper. There he is, on the 
other side of the table — the tall man in black,' 
(pointing out Mr. Bennet,) 'a highly respect- 
able kind of person. I came with him here 
for change of air. How do you think I look 
at present?' — Caroline could not answer him 
for laughing. — ' Nay,' said he, 'it is cruel to 
laugh on such a subject. It is very hard that 
you should do that, and misrepresent my 
meaning too.' — 'Well then,' said Caroline, 
resuming a respectable portion of gravity; 
' that I may not be guilty of that again, what 
accomplishments do you allow to be tolerable?' 
— ' Let me see,' said he, with a look of consi- 
deration ; ' you may play a waltz with one 
hand, and dance as little as you think conve- 
nient. You may draw caricatures of your 
intimate friends. You may not sing a note of 
Rossini; nor sketch gateposts and donkeys 
after nature. You may sit to a harp, but you 
need not play it. You must not paint minia- 
tures nor copy Swiss costumes. But you may 
manufacture any thing — from a cap down to 
a pair of shoes — always remembering that the 
less useful your work the better. Can you 
remember all this ?' — ' I do not know,' said 
she, ' it comprehends so much ; and I am 
rather puzzled between the "mays" and "must 
nots." However, it seems, according to your 
code, that very little is to be required of me ; 
for you have not mentioned any thing that I 
positively must do' — ' Ah, well, I can reduce 
all to a very small compass. You must be an 
archeress in the summer, and a skater in the 
winter, and play well at billiards all the year ; 
and if you do these extremely well, my admira- 
tion will have no bounds.' — ' I believe I must 
forfeit all claim to your admiration then, for 
unfortunately I am not so gifted.' — ' Then you 
must place it to the account of your other 
gifts.' — ' Certainly — when it comes.' — ' Oh it is 
sure to come, as you well know : but, never- 
theless, I like that incredulous look extremely.' 
—He then turned away, thinking probably 
that he had -paid her the compliment of suffi- 
cient attention, and began a conversation with 
the duchess, which was carried on in such a 



346 



WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. 



Avell-regulated under tone, as to be perfectly 
inaudible to any but themselves." — (pp. 92 — 
99.) 

The bustling importance of Sir Thomas 
Jermyn, the fat duke and his right hand man, 
the blunt toad-eater, Mr. Charlecote, a loud 
noisy sportsman, and Lady Jermyn's worldly 
prudence, are all displayed and managed with 
considerable skill and great power of amusing. 
One little sin against good taste, our author 
sometimes commits — an error from Avhich Sir 
Walter Scott is not exempt. We mean the 
humour of giving characteristic names to per- 
sons and places; for instance. Sir Thomas 
Jermyn is Member of Parliament for the town 
of Rottenborough. This very easy and appel- 
lative jocularity seems to us, we confess, to 
savour a little of vulgarity; and is therefore 
quite as unworthy of Mr. Lister, as Dr. Dryas- 
dust is of Sir Walter Scott. The plainest 
names which can be found (Smith, Thomson, 
Johnson, and Simson, always excepted) are 
the best for novels. Lord Chesterton we have 
often met with ; and suffered a good deal from 
his lordship : a heavy, pompous, meddling 
peer, occupying a great share of the conversa- 
tion — saying things in ten words which re- 
quired only two, and evidently convinced that 
he is making a great impression ; a large man, 
with a large head, and very landed manner; 
knowing enough to torment his fellow-crea- 
tures, not to instruct them — the ridicule of 
young ladies, and the natural butt and target 
of wit. It is easy to talk of carnivorous ani- 
mals and beasts of prey ; but does such a man, 
who lays waste a whole party of civilized 
beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy he 
spoils, and the misery he creates, in the course 
of his life'? and that any one who listens to 
him through politeness, would prefer tooth- 
ache or earache to his conversation T Does 
he consider the extreme uneasiness which 
ensues, when the company have discovered a 
man to be an extremely absurd person, at the 
same time that it is absolutely impossible to 
convey, by words or manner, the most distant 
suspicion of the discovery 1 And then, who 
punishes this bore 1 What sessions and what 
assizes for him 1 What bill is found against 
him? Who indicts him? When the judges 
have gone their vernal and autumnal rounds 
— the sheep-stealer disappears — the swindler 
gets ready for the Bay — the solid parts of the 
murderer are preserved in anatomical collec- 
tions. But, after twenty years of crime, the 
bore is discovered in the same house, in the 
same attitude, eating the same soup, — unpu- 
nished, untried, undissected — no scaffold, no 
skeleton — no mob of gentlemen and ladies to 
gape over his last dying speech and confes- 
sion. 

The scene of quizzing the country neigh- 
bours is well imagined, and not ill executed ; 
though there are many more fortunate pas- 
sages in the book. The elderly widows of the 
metropolis beg, through us, to return their 
thanks to Mr. Lister for the following agree- 
able portrait of Mrs. Dormer. 

" It would be difhcult to find a more pleasing 
example than Mrs. Dormer, of that much 
libelled class of elderly ladies of the world. 



who are presumed to be happy only at the 
card table ; to grow in bitterness as they 
advanced in years, and to haunt, like restless 
ghosts, those busy circles which they no 
longer either enliven or adorn. Such there 
may be ; but of these she was not one. She 
was the frequenter of sooiety, but not its slave. 
She had great natural benevolence of disposi- 
tion ; a friendly vivacity of manners, which 
endeared her to the young, and a steady good 
sense, which commanded the respect of her 
contemporaries ; and many, who did not agree 
with her on particular points, were willing to 
allow that there was a good deal of reason in 
Mrs. Dormer's prejudices. She was, perhaps, a 
little blind to the faults of her friends ; a defect 
of which the world could not cure her; but 
she was very kind to their virtues. She ^vas 
fond of young people, and had an unimpaired 
gaiety about her, which seemed to expand in 
the contact with them ; and she was anxious 
to promote, for their sake, even those amuse- 
ments for which she had lost all taste herself. 
She was — but after all, she will be best de- 
scribed by negatives. She was not a match- 
maker, or mischief-maker; nor did she plume 
herself upon her charity, in implicitly believ- 
ing only just half of what the world says. 
She was no retailer of scandalous 'on dits.' 
She did not combat wrinkles with rouge ; nor 
did she labour to render years less respected 
by a miserable affectation of girlish fashions. 
She did not stickle for the inviolable exclusive- 
ness of certain sects ; nor was she afraid of 
being known to visit a friend in an unfashion- 
able quarter of the town. She was no wor- 
shipper of mere rank. She did not patronize 
oddities; hor sanction those who delight in 
braving the rules of common decency. She 
did not evince her sense of propriety, by 
shaking hands with the recent defendant in a 
crim. con. cause ; nor exhale her devotion in 
Sunday routs."— (pp. 243, 244.) 

Mrs. Clotworthy, we are afraid, will not be 
quite so well pleased with the description of 
her rout. Mrs. Clotworthy is one of those 
ladies who have ices, fiddlers, and fine rooms, 
but no fine friends. But fine friends may 
always be had, where there are ices, fiddlers, 
and fine rooms : and so, with ten or a dozen 
stars and an Oonalaska chief; and, followed 
by all vicious and salient London, Mrs. Clot- 
worthy takes the field. 

" The poor woman seemed half dead with 
fatigue already ; and we cannot venture to say 
whether the prospect of five hours more of 
this high-wrought enjoyment tended much to- 
brace her to the task. It was a brilliant sight, 
and an interesting one, if it could have been 
viewed from some fair vantage ground, with 
ample space, in coolness and in quiet. Rank, 
beauty, and splendour, were richly blended. 
The gay attire ; the glittering jewels ; the more 
resplendent features they adorned, and too 
frequently the rouged cheek of the sexage- 
narian ; the vigilant chaperon ; the fair but 
languid form which she conducted ; well curled 
heads, well propped with starch ; well whis- 
kered guardsmen; and here and there fat, good- 
humoured, elderly gentlemen, with stars upon 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



347 



their coats ; — all these united in one close 
medley — a ctirious piece of living mosaic. 
Most of them came to see and be seen ; some 
of the most youthful professedly to dance ; 
yet how could they 1 at any rate they tried. — 
They stood, if they could, with their vis-a-vis 
facing them,^ — and sidled across — and back 
again, and made one step — or two if there was 
room, to the right or left, and joined hands, 
and set — perhaps, and turned their partners, 
or dispensed with it if necessary — and so on 
to the end of ' La Finale ;' and then comes a 
waltz for the few who choose it — and then 
another squeezy quadrille — and so on — and on, 
till the weary many 'leave ample room and 
verge enough' for the persevering few to figure 
■ in with greater freedom. 

" But then they talk ; oh ! ay ! true, we must 
not forget the charms of conversation. And 
what passes between nine-tenths of them ! 
Remarks on the heat of the room ; the state 
of the crowd; the impossibility of dancing, 
and the propriety nevertheless of attempting 
it ; that on last Wednesday was a bad Almack's, 
and on Thursday a worse Opera ; that the new 
ballet is supposed to be good ; mutual inquiries 
how they like Pasta, or Catalani, or whoever 
the syren of the day may be ; whether they 
have been at Lady A.'s, and whether they are 
going to Mrs. B.'s ; whether they think Miss 
Such-a-one handsome ! and what is the name 
of the gentleman talking to her ; whether Ros- 
sini's music makes the best quadrilles, and 
whether Collinet's band are the best to play 
them. There are many who pay in better 
coin; but the small change is much of this 
description."— (L 249—251.) 

We consider the following description of 
London, as it appears to a person walking 
home after a rout, at four or five o'clock in 
the morning, to be as poetical as any thing 
written on the forests of Guiana, or the falls 
of Niagara: — 

" Granby followed them with his eyes ; and 
now, too full of happiness to be accessible to 
any feelings of jealousy or repining, after a 
short reverie of the purest satisfaction, he left 
the ball, and sallied out into the fresh cool air 
of a summer morning — suddenly passing from 
the red glare of lamp-light, to the clear sober 
brightness of returning day. He walked cheer- 
fully onward, refreshed and exhilarated by the 
air of morning, and interested with the scene 
around him. It was broad day-light, and he 
viewed the town under an aspect in which it 
is alike presented to the late retiring votary 
of pleasure, and to the early rising sons of 
husiness. He stopped .on the 'pavement of 
Oxford street, to contemplate the effect. The 
whole extent of that long vista, unclouded by 
the mid-day smoke, was distinctly visible to 
his eye at once. The houses shrunk to half 
their span, while the few visible spires of the 
adjacent churches seemed to rise less distant 
than before, gaily tipped with early sunshine, 
and much diminished in apparent size, but 
heightened in distinctness and in beauty. Had 
it not been for the cool gray tint which slightly 
mingled with every object, the brightness was 
almost that of noon. But the life, the bustle 



the busy din, the flowing tide of human exist- 
ence, were all wanting to complete the simili- 
tude. All was hushed and silent; and this 
mighty receptacle of human beings, which a 
few short hours would wake into active energy 
and motion, seemed like a city of the dead. 

" There was little to break this solemn illu- 
sion. Around were the monuments of human 
exertion, but the hands which formed them 
were no longer there. Few, if any, were the ^~ 
symptoms of life. No sounds were heard but 
the heavy creaking of a solitary wagon ; the 
twittering of an occasional sparrow ; the mo- 
notonous tone of the drowsy watchman ; and 
the distant rattle of the retiring carriage, fading 
on the ear till it melted into silence : and the 
eye that searched for living objects fell on 
nothing but the grim great-coated guardian of 
the night, muffled up into an appearance of 
doubtful character between bear and man, and 
scarcely distinguishable, by the colour of his 
dress, from the brown flags along which he 
sauntered."— (pp. 297—299.) 

One of the most prominent characters of 
the book, and the best drawn, is that of Tyrrel, 
son of Lord Malton, a noble blackleg, a titled 
gamester, and a profound plotting villain — a 
man, in comparison of whom, nine-tenths of 
the persons hung in Newgate are pure and per- 
fect. The profound dissimulation and wicked 
artifices of this diabolical person are painted 
with great energy and power of description. 
The party at whist made to take in Granby is 
very good, and that part of the story where 
Granby compels Tyrrel to refund what he has 
won of Courtenay is of first-rate dramatic ex- 
cellence; and if any one wishes for a short 
and convincing proof of the powers of the 
writer of this novel — to that scene we refer 
him. It shall be the taster of the cheese, and 
we are convinced it will sell the whole article. 
We are so much struck with it, that we advise 
the author to consider seriously whether he 
could not write a good play. It is many years 
since a good play has been written. It is about 
time, judging from the common economy of 
nature, that a good dramatic writer should ap- 
pear. We promise Mr. Lister sincerely, that 
the Edinburgh Review shall rapidly undeceive 
him if he mistakes his talents ; and that his 
delusion shall not last beyond the first tragedy 
or comedy. 

The picture at the exhibition is extremely 
well managed, and all the various love-tricks 
of attempting to appear indifferent, are, as 
well as we can remember, from the life. 
But it is thirty or forty years since we have 
been in love. 

The horror of an affectionate and dexterous 
mamma is a handsome young man without 
money : and the following lecture deserves to 
be committed to memory by all managing 
mothers, and repeated at proper intervals to 
the female progeny. 

" ' True, my love, but understand me. I don't 
wish you positively to avoid him. I would not 
go away, for instance, if I saw him coming, or 
even turn my head that I might not see him as 
he passed. That would be too broad and 
marked. People might notice it. It would , 



348 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



look particular. We should never do any thing 
that looks particular. No, I would answer him 
civilly and composedly whenever he spoke to 
me, and then pass on, just as you might in the 
case of any body else. But I leave all this to 
your own tact and discretion, of which nobody 
has more for her age. I am sure you can 
enter into all these niceties, and that m)^ obser- 
vations will not be lost upon you. And now, 
my love, let me mention another thing. You 
must get over that little embarrassment which 
I see you show whenever you meet him. It 
was very natural and excusable the first time, 
consideringourlongacquaintance with him and 
the General: but we must make our conduct 
conform to circumstances ; so try to get the bet- 
ter of this little flutter : it does not look well, and 
might be observed. There is no quality more 
valuable in a young person than self-posses- 
sion. So you must keep down these blushes,' 
said she, patting her on the cheek, ' or I believe 
I must rouge you: — though it would be a 
thousand pities, with the pretty natural colour 
you have. But you must remember what I 
have been saying. Be more composed in your 
behaviour. Try to adopt the manner which I 
do. It may be difficult ; but you see I con- 
trive it, and I have known Mr. Granby a great 
deal longer than you have, Caroline.' " — (pp. 
21, 22.) 

These principles are of the highest practical 
importance in an age when the art of manying 
daughters is carried to the highest pitch of 
excellence, when love must be made to the 
young men of fortune, not only by the young 
lady, who must appear to be dying for him, but 
by the father, mother, aunts, cousins, tutor, 
gamekeeper, and stable-boy — assisted by the 
parson of the parish, and the churchwardens. 
If any of these fail, Dives pouts, and the match 
is off. 

The merit of this writer is, that he catches 
delicate portraits, which a less skilful artist 
would pass over, from not thinking the fea- 
tures sufficiently marked. We are struck, 
however, with the resemblance, and are pleased 
with the conquest of difficulties — we remem- 
ber to have seen such faces, and are sensible 
that they form an agreeable variety to the ex- 
pression of more marked and decided cha- 
racter. Nobody, for instance, can deny that he 
is acquainted with Miss Darrell. 

" Miss Darrell was not strictly a beauty. She 
had not, as was frequently observed by her 
female friends, and unwillingly admitted by 
her male admirers, a single truly good feature 
in her face. But who could quarrel with the 
tout ensemble? who but must be dazzled with 
the graceful animation with which those fea- 
tures were lighted up 1 Let critics hesitate to 



pronounce her beautiful ; at any rate thej' 
must allow her to be fascinating. Place a 
perfect stranger in a crowded assembly, and 
she would first attract his eye ; correcter beau- 
ties would pass unnoticed, and his first atten- 
tion would be riveted by her. She was all 
brilliancy and eflfect ; but it were hard to say 
she studied it; so little did her spontaneous, 
airy graces convey the impression of premedi- 
tated practice. She was a sparkling tissue of 
little affectations, which, however, appeared so 
interwoven with herself, that their seeming 
artlessness disarmed one's censure. Strip 
them away, and you destroyed at once the 
brilliant being that so much attracted you ; and 
it thus became difficult to condemn what yea 
felt unable, and, indeed, unwilling, to remove. 
With positive affectation, malevolence itself 
could rarely charge her ; and prudish censure 
seldom exceeded the guarded limits of a dry 
remark, that Miss Darrell had ' a good deal 
of manner.' 

" Eclat she sought and gained. Indeed, she 
was both formed to gain it, and disposed to 
desire it. But she required an extensive sphere. 
A ball-room was her true arena; for she waltz- 
ed ' a ravir,' and could talk enchantingly about 
nothing. ■ She was devoted to fashion, and all 
its fickleness, and went to the extreme when- 
ever she could do so consistently with grace. 
But she aspired to be a leader as well as a fol- 
lower ; seldom, if ever, adopted a mode that 
was unbecoming to herself, and dressed to suit 
the genius of her face." — (pp. 28, 29.) 

Tremendous is the power of a novelist ! If 
four or five men are in a room, and show a 
disposition to break the peace, no human ma- 
gistrate (not even Mr. Justice Bayley) could 
do more than bind them over to keep the peace, 
and commit them if they refused. But the 
writer of the novel stands with a pen in his 
hand, and can run any of them through the 
body, — can knock down any one individual, 
and keep the others upon their legs ; or, like 
the last scene in the first tragedy written by a 
young man of genius, can put them all to 
death. Now, an author possessing such ex- 
traordinary privileges, should not have allowed 
Mr. Tyrrel to strike Granby. This is ill-ma- 
naged ; particularly as Granby does not return 
the blow, or turn him out of the house. Nobody 
should suffer his hero to have a black eye, or 
to be pulled by the nose. The Iliad would 
never have come down to these times if Aga- 
memnon had given Achilles a box on the 
ear. We should have trembled for the ^neid, 
if any Tyrian nobleman had kicked the pious 
^neas in the 4th book, ^neas may have de- 
served it ; but he could not have founded the 
Roman empire after so distressing an accident. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



349 



ISLAND OF CEYLON; 



[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



It is now little more than half a century 
since the Englishfirst began to establish them- 
selves in any force upon the peninsula of 
India; and we at present possess in that coun- 
try a more extensive territory, and a more nu- 
merous population, than any European power 
can boast of at home. In no instance has the 
gen*ius of the English, and their courage, shone 
forth more conspicuously than in their contest 
with the French for the empire of India. The 
numbers on both sides were always inconsider- 
able ; but the two nations were fairly matched 
against each other, in the cabinet and in the 
field ; the struggle was long and obstinate ; and, 
at the conclusion, the French remained mas- 
ters of a dismantled town, and the English of 
the grandest and most extensive colony that 
the world has ever seen. To attribute this 
success to the superior genius of Clive, is not 
to diminish the reputation it confers on his 



harbour. For it is a very singular fact, that, 
in the whole peninsula of India, Bombay is 
alone capable of affording a safe retreat to 
ships during the period of the monsoons. 

The geographical figure of our possessions 
in Ceylon is whimsical enough : we possess 
the whole of the sea-coast, and enclose in a pe- 
riphery the unfortunate King of Candia, whose 
rugged and mountainous dominions may be 
compared to a coarse mass of iron, set in a 
circle of silver. The Popilian ring, in which 
this votary of Buddha has been so long held 
by the Portriguese and Dutch, has infused the 
most vigilant jealousy into the government, 
and rendered it as difficult to enter the king- 
dom of Candia, as if it were Paradise or China ; 
and yet, once there, always there ; for the dif- 
ficulty of departing is just as great as the diffi- 
culty of arriving; and his Can dian excellency, 
who has used every device in his power to 



country, which reputation must of course be i keep them out, is seized with such an affection 



elevated by the number of great men to which 
it gives birth. But the French were b)'' no 
means deficient in casualties of genius at that 
period, unless Bussy is to be considered as a 
man of common stature of mind, or Dupleix to 
be classed with the vulgar herd of politicians. 
Neither was Clive (though he clearly stands 
forward as the most prominent figure in the 



for those who baffle his defensive artifices, 
that he can on no account suffer them to de- 
part. He has been known to detain a string 
of four or five Dutch embassies, till various 
members of the legation died of old age at his 
court, while they were expecting an answer to 
their questions, and a return to their presents :* 
and his majesty once exasperated a little 



rroup) without the aid of some military men French ambassador to such a degree, by the 
of very considerable talents. Clive extended 1 various pretences under which he kept him at 
our Indian empire ; but General Lawrence I his court, that this lively member of the corps 



preserved it to be extended; and the former 
caught, perhaps, from the latter, that military 
spirit by which he soon became a greater 
soldier than him, without whom he never 
would have been a soldier at all. 

Gratifying as these reflections upon our 
prowess in India are to national pride, they 
brinsT Avith them the painful reflection, that so 



diplomatique, one day, in a furious passion, 
attacked six or seven of his majesty's largest 
elephants sword in hand, and would, in all 
probability, have reduced them to mince-meat, 
if the poor beasts had not been saved from the 
unequal combat. 

The best and most ample account of Ceylon 
is contained in the narrative of Robert Knox, 



considerable a portion of our strength and ] Avho, in the middle of the 17th century, was 
wealth is vested upon such precarious founda- taken prisoner there (while refitting his ship) 
tions, and at such an immense distance from at the age of nineteen, and remained nineteen 



the parent country. The glittering fragments i years on the island, in slavery to the King of 



of the Portuguese empire, scattered up and 
down the East, should teach us the instability 
of such dominion. We are (it is true) better 
capable of preserving what we have obtained, 
than any other nation which has ever colonized 
in Southern Asia : but the object of ambition 
is so tempting, and the perils to which it is 
exposed so numerous, that no calculating mind 
can found any durable conclusions upon this 
branch of our commerce, and this source of 
oirt- strength. 

In the acquisition of Ceylon, we have ob- 
tained the greatest of all our wants — a good 



* jJn Account of the Island of Ceylon. By Robert 
Percival. Esq., of his Majesty's Nineteenth Regiment 
of Foot. London, C. and R. Baldwin. 



Candia. During this period, he learnt the 
language, and acquired a thorough knowledge 
of the people. The account he has given of 
them is extremely entertaining, and written in ' 
a veiy simple and unaffected style ; so much 
so, indeed, that he presents his reader with a 
very grave account of the noise the devil 
makes in the woods of Candia, and of the fre- 
quent opportunities he has had of hearing him. 
Mr. Percival does not pretend to deal with 
the devil ; but appears to have used the fair 
and natural resources of observation and good 
sense, to put together an interesting description 
of Ceylon. There is nothing in the book very 
animated, or very profound, but it is without 



* Knox's Ceylon. 
2G 



350 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



pretensions ; and if it does not excite attention 
by any unusual powers of description, it never 
disgusts by credulity, wearies by prolixity, or 
offends by affectation. It is such an account 
as a plain military man of diligence and com- 
mon sense might be expected to compose ; and 
narratives like these we must not despise. To 
military men we have been, and must be, in- 
debted for our first acquaintance with the inte- 
rior of many countries. Conquest has explored 
more than ever curiosity has done ; and the 
path for science has been commonly opened 
by the sword. 

We shall proceed to give a very summary 
abstract of the principal contents of Mr. Per- 
cival's book. 

The immense accessions of territory which 
the English have acquired in the East Indies 
since the American war, rendered it absolutely 
necessary, that some effort should be made to 
obtain possession of a station where ships might 
remain in safety during the violent storms in- 
cidental to that climate. As the whole of that 
large tract which we possess along the Coro- 
mandel coast presents nothing but open roads, 
all vessels are obliged, on the approach of 
the monsoons, to stand out in the open seas ; and 
there are many parts of the coast that can be 
approached only during a "few months of the 
year. As the harbour of Trincomalee, which 
is equally secure at all seasons, afforded the 
means of obviating these disadvantages, it is 
evident that, on the first rupture with the Dutch, 
our countrymen would attempt to gain posses- 
sion of it. A body of troops was, in conse- 
quence, detached in the year 1795, for the 
conquest of Ceylon, which (in consequence 
of the indiscipline which political dissension 
had introduced among the Dutch troops) was 
effected almost without opposition. 

Ceylon is now inhabited by the English ; 
the remains of the Dutch, and Portuguese, the 
Cinglese or natives, subject to the dominion 
of the Europeans ; the Candians, subject to the 
king of their own name ; and the Vaddahs, or 
"wild men, subject to no power. A Ceylonese 
Dutchman is a course, grotesque species of 
animal, whose native apathy and phlegm is 
animated only by the insolence of a colonial 
tyrant; his principal amusement appears to 
consist in smoking; but his pipe, according to 
Mr. Percival's account, is so seldom out of his 
mouth, that his smoking appears to be almost 
as much a necessary function of animal life as 
his breathing. His day is eked out with gin, 
ceremonious visits, and prodigious quantities of 
gross food, dripping with oil and butter; his mind, 
just able to reach from one meal to another, is 
incapableof farther exertion ; and, after the pant- 
ing and deglutition of a long protracted dinner, 
reposes on the sweet expeciation that, in a few 
hours, the carnivorous toil will be renewed. 
He lives only to digest, and, while the organs 
of gluttony perform their office, he has not a 
wish beyond ; and is the happy man which 
Horace describes: — 

in scipso iotus, teres, atque rotuudiis. 



The descendants of the Portuguese differ 
materially from the Moors, Malabars, and other 
Mahometans. Their great object is to show 



the world they are Europeans and Christians. 
Unfortunately, their ideas of Christianity are so 
imperfect, that the only mode they can hit upon 
of displaying their faith, is by wearing hats and 
breeches, and by these habiliments they con- 
sider themselves as showing a proper degree 
of contempt, on various parts of the body, to- 
wards Mahomet and Buddha. They are lazy, 
treacherous, effeminate, and passionate to ex- 
cess ; and are, in fact, a locomotive and ani- 
mated farrago of the bad qualities of all 
tongues, people, and nations,* on the face of 
the earth. 

The Malays, whom we forgot before to enu- 
merate, form a very considerable portion of 
the inhabitants of Ceylon. Their original em- 
pire lies in the peninsula of Malacca, from 
whence they have extended themselves ovfer 
Java, Sumatra, the Moluccas, and a vast num- 
ber of other islands in the peninsula of India. 
It has been many years customary for the 
Dutch to bring them to Ceylon, for the purpose 
of carrying on various branches of trade and 
manufacture, and in order also to employ them 
as soldiers and servants. The Malays are the 
most vindictive and ferocious of living beings. 
They set little or no value on their own exist- 
ence, in the prosecution of their odious pas- 
sions ; and having thus broken the great tie 
which renders man a being capable of being 
governed, and fit for society, they are a constant 
source of terror to all those who have any 
kind of connection or relation with them. A 
Malay servant, from the apprehension excited 
by his vindictive disposition, often becomes 
the master of his master. It is as dangerous 
to dismiss him as to punish him; and the 
rightful despot, in order to avoid assassination, 
is almost compelled to exchange characters 
with his slave. It is singular, however, that 
the Malay, incapable of submission on any 
other occasion, and ever ready to avenge in- 
sult with death, submits to the severest military 
discipline with the utmost resignation and 
meekness. The truth is, obedience to his offi- 
cers forms part of his religious creed ; and 
the same man who would repay the most in- 
significant insult with death, will submit to be 
lacerated at the halbert with the patience of a 
martyr. This is truly a tremendous people ! 
When assassins and blood-hounds will fall into 
rank and file, and the most furious savages 
submit (with no diminution of their ferocity) 
to the science and discipline of war, they only 
want a Malay Bonaparte to lead them to the 
conquest of the world. Our curiosity has al- 
ways been very highly excited by the accounts 
of this singular people; and we cannot help 
thinking, that, one day or another, when they 
are more full of opium than usual, they tnii 
run a muck from Cape Comorin to the Caspian. 

Mr. Percival does not consider the Ceylonese 
as descended from the continentals of the 
peninsula, but rather from the inhabitants of 
the Maldive Islands, whom they very much 
resemble in complexion, features, language, 
and manners. 

''The Ceylonese (says Mr. Percival) are 
courteous and polite in their demeanour, even 
to a degree far exceeding their civilization. In 
several qualities they are greatly superior to 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



351 



all other Indians who have fallen within the 
sphere of my observation. I have already ex- 
empted them from the censure of stealing and 
lying, which seem to be almost inherent in the 
nature of an Indian. They are mild, and by 
no means captious or passionate in their in- 
tercourse with each other; though, when once 
their anger is roused, it is proportionably fu- 
rious and lasting. Their hatred is indeed 
mortal, and they will frequently destroy them- 
selves to obtain the destruction of the detested 
object. One instance will serve to show the 
extent to which this passion is carried. If a 
Ceylonese cannot obtain money due to him by 
another, he goes to his debtor, and threatens 
to kill himself if he is not instantly paid. This 
threat, which is sometimes put in execution, 
reduces the debtor, if it be in his power, to 
immediate compliance with the demand: as, 
by their law, if any man causes the loss of 
another man's life, his own is the forfeit. ' An 
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' is a pro- 
verbial expression continually in their mouths. 
This is, on other occasions, a very common 
mode of revenge among them ; and a Cey- 
lonese has often been known to contrive to kill 
himself in the company of his enemy, that the 
latter might sutler for it. 

" This dreadful spirit of revenge, so incon- 
sistent wifh the usually mild and humane sen- 
timents of the Ceylonese, and much more con- 
genial to the bloody temper of a Malay, still 
continues to be fostered by the sacred cus- 
toms of the Candians. Among the Cinglese, 
however, it has been greatly mitigated by 
their intercourse with Europeans. The despe- 
rate mode of obtaining revenge which I have 
just described, has been given up, from having 
been disappointed of its object ; as, in all those 
parts under our dominion, the European modes 
of investigating and punishing crimes are en- 
forced. A case of this nature occurred at 
Caltura in 1799. A Cinglese peasant hap- 
pening to have a suit or controversy with an- 
other, watched an opportunity of going to bathe 
in company with him, and drowned himself, 
with the view of having his adversary put to 
death. The latter was upon this taken up, and 
sent to Columbo -to take his trial for making 
away with the deceased, upon the principle of 
having been the last seen in his company. 
There was, however, nothing more than pre- 
sumptive proof against the culprit, and he was 
of course acquitted. This decision, however, 
did not by any means tally with the sentiments 
of the Cinglese, who are as much inclined to 
continue their ancient barbarous practice, as 
their brethren the Candians, although they are 
deprived of the power." — (pp. 70 — 72.) 

The warlike habits of the Candians make 
them look with contempt on the Cinglese, 
who are almost entirely unacquainted with the 
management of arms. They have the habit 
and character of mountaineers — Avarlike, hardy, 
enterprising, and obstinate. They have, at 
various times, proved themselves very formi- 
dable enemies to the Dutch; and in that kind 
of desultory warfare, which is the only one 
their rugged country will admit of, have cut 
off large parties of the troops of both these 
nations. The King of Candia, as we have be- 



fore mentioned, possesses only the middle of 
the island, which nature, and his Candian ma- 
jesty, have rendered as inaccessible as possi- 
ble. It is traversable only by narrow wood- 
paths, known to nobody but the ''natives, 
strictly watched in peace and war, and where 
the best troops in the world might be shot in 
any quantities by the Candian marksmen, 
without the smallest possibility of resisting 
their enemies ; because there would not be the 
smallest possibility of finding them. The King 
of Candia is of course despotic ; and the his- 
tory of his life and reign presents the same 
monotonous ostentation, and baby-like caprice, 
which characterize oriental governments. In 
public audiences he appears like a great fool, 
squatting on his hams ; far surpassing ginger- 
bread in splendour ; and, after asking some 
such idiotical question, as whether Europe is 
in Asia or Africa, retires with a flourish of 
trumpets very much out of tune. For his pri- 
vate amusements, he rides on the nose of an 
elephant, plays with his jewels, sprinkles his 
courtiers with rose-water, and feeds his gold 
and silver fish. If his tea is not sweet enough, 
he impales his footman ; and smites off the 
heads of half a dozen of his noblemen, if he 
has a pain in his own. 

— iLa-TTsg yctg (says Aristotle) Ts^a^flsi' /Ssxt/o-tov tw 

^ii^ia-Tov TTsLvrmv. Polit. 

The only exportable articles of any import- 
ance which Ceylon produces, are pearls, cinna- 
mon, and elephants. Mr. Percival has pre- 
sented us with an extremely interesting account 
of the pearl fishery, held in Condatchy Bite, 
near the island of Manaar, in the straits which 
separate Ceylon from the main land. 

" There is perhaps no spectacle which the 
island of Ceylon affords more striking to an 
European, than the bay of Condatchy, during 
the season of the pearl fishery. This desert 
and barren spot is at that time converted into 
a scene, which exceeds, in novelty and vai-iety, 
almost any thing I ever witnessed. Several 
thousands of people of different colours, coun- 
tries, castes, and occupations, continually pass- 
ing 3,nd repassing in a busy crowd ; the vast 
number of small tents and huts erected on the 
shore, with the bazaar or market-place before 
each ; the multitude of boats returning in the 
afternoon from the pearl banks, some of them 
laden with riches ; the anxious expecting coun- 
tenances of the boat-owners, while the boats 
are approaching the shore, and the eagerness 
and avidity with which they run to them when 
arrived, in hopes of a rich cargo ; the vast 
numbers of jewellers, brokers, merchants of 
all colours and all descriptions, both natives 
and foreigners, who are occupied in some way 
or other with the pearls, some separating and 
assorting them, others weighing and ascer- 
taining their niimber and value, u'hile others 
are hawking them about, or drilling and boring 
them for future use ; — all these circumstances 
tend to impress the mind with the value and 
importance of that object, which can of itself 
create this scene. 

"The bay of Condatchy is the most central 
rendezvous for the boats employed in, the 



353 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDIVEY SMITH. 



fishery. The banks where it is carried on ex- 
tend several miles along the coast from Manaar 
southward off Arippo, Condatchy, and Pompa- 
ripo. The principal bank is opposite to Con- 
datchy, and lies out at sea about twenty miles. 
The first step, previous to the commencement 
of the fishery, is to have the different oyster 
banks surveyed, the state of the oysters ascer- 
tained, and a report made on the subject to 
government. If it has been found that the 
quantity is sufficient, and that they are arrived 
at a proper degree of maturity, the particular 
banks to be fished that year are put up for sale 
to the highest bidder, and are usually pur- 
chased by a black merchant. This, however, 
is not always the course pursued : government 
sometimes judges it more advantageous to fish 
the banks on its own account, and to dispose 
of the pearls afterwards to the merchants. 
When this plan is adopted, boats are hired for 
the season on account of government, from 
different quarters ; the price varies considera- 
bly according to circumstances, but is usually 
from five to eight hundred pagodas for each 
boat. There are, however, no stated prices, 
and the best bargain possible is made for each 
boat separately. The Dutch generally followed 
this last system ; the banks were fished on 
government account, and the pearls disposed 
of in different parts of India or sent to Europe. 
When this plan was pursued, the governor and 
council of Ceylon claimed a certain per cent- 
age on the value of the pearls ; or, if the 
fishing of the banks was disposed of by public 
sale, they bargained for a stipulated sum to 
themselves over and above what was paid on 
account of government. The pretence on 
which they founded their claims for this per- 
quisite, was their trouble in surveying and 
valuing the banks." — (pp. 59 — 61.) 

The banks are divided into six or seven por- 
tions, in order to give the oysters time to grow, 
which are supposed to attain their maturity in 
about seven years. The period allowed to the 
merchant to complete his fishery is about six 
weeks, during which period all the boats go 
out and return together, and are subject to 
very rigorous laws. The dexterity of the di- 
vers is very striking ; they are as adroit in the 
use of their feet as their hands ; and can pick 
up the smallest object under water with their 
toes. Their descent is aided by a great stone, 
which they slip from their feet when they ar- 
rive at the bottom, where they can remain 
about two minutes. There are instances, how- 
ever, of divers, who have so much of the. 
aquatic in their nature, as to remain under 
water for five or six minutes. Their great 
enemy is the ground-shark ; for the rule of 
eat and be eaten, which Dr. Darwin called the 
great law of nature, obtains in as much force 
fathoms deep beneath the waves as above 
them : this animal is as fond of the legs of 
Hindoos, as Hindoos are of the pearls of oys- 
ters ; and as one appetite appears to him much 
more natural, and less capricious than the 
other, he never fails to indulge it. Where for- 
tune has so much to do with peril and profit, 
of course there is no deficiency of conjurers, 
who, by divers enigmatical grimaces, endea- 
vour \p ostracise this submarine invader. If 



they are successful they are well paid in pearls ; 
and when a shark indulges himself with the 
leg of a Hindoo, there is a witch who lives at 
Colang, on the Malabar coast, who always 
bears the blame. 

A common mode of theft practised by the 
common people engaged in the pearl fishery, 
is by swallowing the pearls. Whenever any 
one is suspected of having swallowed these pre- 
cious pills of Cleopatra, the police apotheca- 
ries are instantly sent for ; a brisk cathartic is 
immediately despatched after the truant pearl, 
with the strictest orders to apprehend it, in 
whatever corner of the viscera it may be found 
lurking. Oyster lotteries are carried on here to 
a great extent. They consist in purchasing a 
quantity of the oysters unopened, and running 
the chance of either finding or not finding 
pearls in them. The European gentlemen 
and oflicers who attend the pearl fishery, 
through duty or curiosity, are particularly 
fond of these lotteries, and frequently make 
purchases of this sort. The whole of this ac- 
count is very well written, and has afforded us 
a great degree of amusement. By what curious 
links, and fantastical relations, are mankind 
connected together ! At the distance of half 
the globe, a Hindoo gains his support by 
groping* at the bottom of the sea, for the mor- 
bid concretion of shell-fish, to decorate the 
throat of a London alderman's wife. It is said 
that the great Linnaeus had discovered the 
secret of infecting oysters with this perligenous 
disease : what is become of the secret we do 
not know, as the only interest we take in 
oysters is of a much more vulgar, though, per' 
haps, a more humane nature. 

The principal woods of cinnamon lie in the 
neighbourhood of Columbo. They reach to 
within half a mile of the fort, and fill the 
whole surrounding prospect. The grand gar- 
den near the town is so extensive, as to occu- 
py a tract of countrj' from 10 to 15 miles in 
length. 

" Nature has here concentrated both the 
beauty and the riches of the island. Nothing 
can be more delightful to the eye than the 
prospect which stretches around Columbo. 
The low cinnamon trees which cover the plain, 
allow the view to reach the groves of ever- 
greens, interspersed with tall clumps, and 
bounded everywhere with extensive ranges of 
cocoa-nut and other large trees. The whole 
is diversified with small lakes and green 
marshes, skirted all round with rice and pas- 
ture. fields. In one part, the intertwining cin- 
namon trees appear completely to clothe the 
face of the plain ; in another, the openings 
made by the intersecting footpaths just serve 
to show that the thick underwood has been 
penetrated. One large road, which goes out 
at the west gate of the fort, and returns by the 
gate on the south, makes a winding circuit of 
seven miles among the woods. It is here that 
the officers and gentlemen belonging to the 
garrison of Columbo take their morning ride, 
and enjov one of the finest scenes in nature." — 
(pp. 336,' 337.) 

As this spice constitutes the wealth of Cey- 
lon, great pains are teiken to ascertain its 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



353 



qualities, and propagate its choicest kinds. 
The prime sort is obtained from the Laurus 
Cinnamonum. The leaf resembles the laurel 
in shape, but is not of so deep a green. When 
chewed it has the smell and taste of cloves. 
There are several diffei-ent species of cinna- 
mon trees on the island ; but four sorts only 
are cultivated and barked. The picture which 
we have just quoted from Mr. Percival, of a 
morning ride in a cinnamon wood, is so en- 
chanting, that we are extremely sorry the 
addition of aromatic odours cannot with ve- 
racity be made to it. The cinnamon has, un- 
fortunately, no smell at all but to the nostrils of 
the poet. Mr. Percival gives us a very inte- 
resting account of the process of making up 
cinnamon for the market, in which we are 
sorry our limits will not permit us to follow 
him. The diiferent qualities of the cinnamon 
bundles can only be estimated by the taste ; 
an office which devolves upon the medical 
men of the settlement, who are employed for 
several days together in chetving cinnamon, the acrid 
juice of which excoriates the mouth, and puts 
them to the most dreadful tortures. 

The island of Ceylon is completely divided 
into two parts by a very high range of moun- 
tains, on the two sides of which the climate 
and the seasons are entirely different. These 
mountains also terminate completely the effect 
of the monsoons, which set in periodically 
from opposite sides of them. On the west 
side, the rains prevail in the months of May, 
June, and July, the season when they are felt 
on the Malabar coast. This monsoon is usual- 
ly extremely violent during its continuance. 
The northern parts of the island are very little 
affected. In the months of October and No- 
vember, when the opposite monsoon sets in 
on the Coromandel coast, the north of the 
island is attacked ; and scarcely any impres- 
sion reaches the southern parts. The heat 
during the day is nearly the same throughout 
the year : the rainy season renders the nights 
much cooler. The climate, upon the v/hole, 
is much more temperate than on the continent 
of India. The temperate and healthy climate 
of Ceylon is, however, confined to the sea- 
coast. In the interior of the country, the ob- 
structions which the thick woods oppose to 
the free circulation of air, render the heat al- 
most insupportable, and genei'ate a low and 
malignant fever, known to Europeans by the 
name of the Jungle fever. The chief harbours 
of Ceylon are Trincomalee, Point de Galle, 
and, at certain seasons of the year, Columbo. 
The former of these, from its nature and situa- 
tion, is that which stamps Ceylon one of our 
most valuable acquisitions in the East Indies. 
As soon as the monsoons commence, every 
vessel caught by them in any other part of the 
Bay of Bengal is obliged to put to sea imme- 
diately, in order to avoid destruction. At these 
seasons, Trincomalee alone, of all the parts 
on this side of the peninsula, is capable of 
affording to vessels a safe retreat; which a 
vessel from Madras may reach in two days. 
These circumstances render the value of 
Ti-incomalee much greater than that of the 
whole island; the revenue of which Avill cer- 
tainly be hardly sufficient to defray the expense 
45 



of the establishments kept up there. The 
agriculture of Ceylon is, in fact, in such an 
imperfect state, and the natives have so little 
availed themselves of its natural fertility, that 
great part of the provisions necessary for its 
support are imported from Bengal. 

Ceylon produces the elephant, the buffalo, 
tiger, elk, wild-hog, rabbit, hare, flying-fox, and 
musk-rat. Many articles are rendered entirely 
useless by the smell of musk, which this latter 
animal communicates in merely running over 
them. Mr. Percival asserts (and the fact has 
been confirmed to us by the most respectable 
authority), that if it even pass over a bottle of 
wine, however well corked and sealed up, the 
wine becomes so strongly tainted with musk, 
that it cannot be jised ; and a whole cask may 
be rendered useless in the same manner. 
Among the great variety of birds, we were 
struck with Mr. Percival's account of the 
honey-bird, into whose body the soul of a com- 
mon informer appears to have migrated. It 
makes a loud and shrill noise, to attract the 
notice of anybody whom it may perceive; and 
thus inducing him to follow the course it 
points out, leads him to the tree where the bees 
have concealed their treasure ; after the apiary 
has been robbed, this feathered scoundrel 
gleans his reward from the hive. The list of 
Ceylonese snakes is hideous ; and we become 
reconciled to the crude and cloudy land in 
which we live, from reflecting, that the indis- 
criminate activity of the sun generates what is 
loathsome, as well as what is lovely; that the 
asp reposes under the rose ; and the scorpion 
crawls under the fragrant flower and the lus- 
cious fruit. 

The usual stories are repeated here, of the 
immense size and voracious appetite of a cer- 
tain species of serpent. The best history of 
this kind we ever remember to have read, was 
of a serpent killed near one of our settlements, 
in the East Indies ; in whose body they found 
the chaplain of the garrison, all in black, the 

Rev. Mr. (somebody or other, whose name 

we have forgotten), and who, after having been 
missing for above a week, was discovered in 
this very inconvenient situation. The domi- 
nions of the King of Candia are partly defended 
by leeches, which abound in the woods, and 
from which our soldiers suffered in the most 
dreadful manner. The Ceylonese, in compen- 
sation for their animated plagues, are endowed 
with two vegetable blessings, the cocoa-nut 
tree and the talipot tree. The latter ^ords a 
prodigious leaf, impenetrable to sun or rain, 
and large enough to shelter ten men. It is a 
natural umbrella, and is of as eminent service 
in that country as a great-coat tree would be 
in this. A leaf of the talipot tree is a tent to 
the soldier, a parasol to the traveller, and a 
book to the scholar.* The cocoa tree affords 
bread, milk, oil, wine, spirits, vinegar, yeast, 
sugar, cloth, paper, huts, and ships. 
■ We could with great pleasure proceed to 
give a farther abstract of this very agreeable 
and interesting publication, which we very 
strongly recommend to the public. It is writ- 
ten with great modesty, entirely without pre- 

* All books are written upon it in Ceylon 
2g 2 



354 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tensions, and abounds with curious and import- 
ant information. Mr. Percival will accept our 
best thanks for the amusement he has afforded 
us. When we can praise with such justice, 
we are always happy to do it; and regret that 
the rigid and independent honesty which we 



have made the very basis of our literary un- 
dertaking, should so frequently compel us to 
speak of the authors who come before us, in a 
style so different from that in which we have 
vindicated the merits of Mr. Percival. 



DELPHINE. 



[Edinbur&h Review, 1803.] 



This dismal trash, which has nearly dislo- 
cated the jaws of every critic among us with 
gaping, has so alarmed Bonaparte, that he has 
seized the whole impression, sent Madame de 
Stael out of Paris, and, for aught we know, 
sleeps in a night-cap of steel, and dagger- 
proof blankets. To us it appears rather an 
attack upon the Ten Commandments than the 
government of Bonaparte, and calculated not 
so much to enforce the rights of the Bourbons, 
as the benefits of adultery, murder, and a great 
number of other vices, which have been some- 
how or other strangely neglected in this coun- 
try, and too much so (according to the ap- 
parent opinion of Madame de Stael) even in 
France. 

It happens, however, fortunately enough, 
that her book is as dull as it could have been 
if her intentions had been good; for wit, dex- 
terity, and the pleasant energies of the mind, 
seldom rank themselves on the side of virtue 
and social order; while vice is spiritual, elo- 
quent, and alert, ever choice in expression, 
happy in allusion, and judicious in arrange- 
ment. 

The story is simply this. — Delphine, a rich 
young widow, presents her cousin Matilda de 
Vernon with a considerable estate, in order to 
enable her to marry Leonce Mondeville. To 
this action she is excited by the arts and the 
intrigues of Madame de A'^ernon, an hackneyed 
Parisian lady, who hopes, by this marriage, to 
be able to discharge her numerous and pressing 
debts. Leonce, who, like all other heroes of 
novels, has fine limbs, and fine qualities, comes 
to Paris— dislikes Matilda — falls in love with 
Delphine, Delphine with him ; and they are 
upon the eve of jilting poor Matilda, when, 
from some false reports spread abroad respect- 
ing the character of Delphine (which are ag- 
gravated by her own imprudences, and by the 
artifices of Madame Vernon), Leonce, not in a 
fit of honesty, but of revenge, marries the lady 
whom he came to marry. Soon after, Madame 
de Vernon dies — discovers the artifices by 
which she had prevented the union of Leonce 
and Delphine — and then, after this catastrophe, 
which ought to have terminated the novel, 
come two long volumes of complaint and 
despair. Delphine becomes a nun — runs 



* Delphine. By Madame de Stael Holstein. 
don, Mawman. '6 vols. 12mo. 



Lon- 



away from the nunnery with Leonce, who is 
taken by some French soldiers, upon the sup- 
position that he has been serving in the French 
emigrant army against his country — is shot, 
and upon his dead body falls Delphine as dead 
as he. 

Making every allowance for reading this 
book in a translation, and in a very bad trans- 
lation, we cannot but deem it a heavy per- 
formance. The incidents are vulgar; the cha- 
racters vulgar, too, except those of Delphine 
and Madame de Vernon. Madame de Stael 
has not the artifice to hide what is coming. 
In travelling through a flat country, or a flat 
book, ve see our road before us for half the 
distance we are going. There are no agree- 
able sinuosities, and no speculations whether 
we are to ascend next, or descend ; what new 
sight we are to enjoy, or to which side we are 
to bend. Leonce is robbed and half murdered; 
the apothecary of the place is certain he will 
not live ; we were absolutely certain that he 
would live, and could predict to an hour the 
time of his recovery. In the same manner 
we could have prophesied every event of the 
book a whole volume before its occurrence. 

This novel is a perfect Alexandrian. The 
two last volumes are redundant, and drag their 
wounded length: it should certainly have ter- 
minated where the interest ceases, at the death 
of Madame de Vernon ; but, instead of this, 
the scene-shifters come and pick up the dead 
bodies, wash the stage, sweep it, and do every 
thing which the timely fall of the curtain 
should have excluded from the sight, and left 
to the imagination of the audience. We hum- 
bly apprehend, that young gentlemen do not in 
general make their tutors the confidants of 
their passion ; at least we can find no rule of 
that kind laid down either by Miss Hamilton 
or Miss Edgeworth, in their treatises on educa- 
tion. The tutor of Leonce is Mr. Barton, a 
grave old gentleman, in a peruke and snuff- 
coloured clothes. Instead of writing to this 
solemn personage about second causes, the 
ten categories, and the eternal fitness of things, 
the young lover raves to him, for whole pages, 
about the white neck and auburn hair of his 
Delphine; and, shame to tell! the liquorish 
old pedagogue seems to think these amorous 
ebullitions the pleasantest sort of writing in 
usum Delpluni that he has yet met with. 

By altering one word, and making only one 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



365 



false quantity,* we shall change the rule of 
Horace to 

" Nee febris intersjt nisi dignus vlndice nodus 
Inciderit." 

Delphine and Leonce have eight very bad ty- 
phus fevers between them, besides hamoptoe, 
hemorrhage, deliquiu/ni animi, singtdtus, hysteria, 
and faminei ululatus, or screams innumerable. 
Now, that there should be a reasonable allow- 
ance of sickness in every novel, we are will- 
ing to admit, and will cheerfully permit the 
heroine to be once given over, and at the point 
of death; but we cannot consent, that the in- 
terest Avhich ought to be excited by the feel- 
ings of the mind should be transferred to the 
sufferings of the body, and a crisis of perspi- 
ration be substituted for a crisis of passion. 
Let us see difficulties overcome, if our appro- 
bation is required; we cannot grant it to such 
cheap and sterile artifices as these. 

The characters in this novel are all said to 
be drawn from real life ; and the persons for 
whom they are intended are loudly whispered 
at Paris. Most of them we have forgotten; 
but Delphine is said to be jntended for the au- 
thoress, and Madame de Vernon (by a slight 
sexual metamorphosis) for Talleyrand, minis- 
ter of the French republic for foreign affairs. 
As this lady (once the friend of the authoress) 
may probably exercise a considerable influ- 
ence over the destinies of this country, we 
shall endeavour to make our readers a little 
better acquainted with her ; but we must first 
remind them that she was once a bishop, a 
higher dignity in the church than was ever at- 
tained by any of her sex since the days of 
Pope Joan ; and that though she swindles 
Delphine out of her estate with a considerable 
degree of address, her dexterity sometimes 
fails her, as in the memorable instance of the 
American commissioners. Madame de Stael 
gives the following description of this pasto- 
ral metropolitan female : 

" Though she is at least forty, she still ap- 
pears charming even among the young and 
beautiful of her own sex. The paleness of 
her complexion, the slight relaxation of her 
features, indicate the languor of indisposition, 
and not the decay of years ; the easy negli- 
gence of her dress accords with this impres- 
sion. Every one concludes, that when her 
health is recovered, and she dresses with more 
care, she must be completely beautiful : this 
change, however, never happens, but it is al- 
ways expected; and that is sufficient to make 
the imagination still add something more to the 
natural effect of her charms." — (Vol. I. p. 21.) 

Nothing can be more execrable than the 
manner in which this book is translated. The 
bookseller has employed one of our country- 
men for that purpose, who appears to have 
been very lately caught. The contrast between 
the passionate exclamations of Madame de 
Stael, and the barbarous vulgarities of poor 
Sawney, produces a mighty ludicrous effect. 
One of the heroes, a man of high fastidious 
temper, exclaims in a letter to Delphine, "I 



* Perhaps a fault of all others which the English are 
least disposed to pardon. A young man, who, on a pub- 
lic occasion, makes a false quantity at the outset of life, 
earn seldom or never get over it. 



cannot endure this Paris ; I have met urith ever 
so many people whom my soul abhors." And the 
accomplished and enraptured Leonce termi- 
nates one of his letters thus: "Adieu! Adieu, 
my dearest Delphine ! I will give you a call to- 
morrow." We doubt if Grub street ever im- 
ported from Caledonia a more abominable 
translator. 

We admit the character of Madame de Ver- 
non to be drawn with considerable skill. There 
are occasional traits of eloquence and pathos 
in this novel, and very many of those obser- 
vations upon manners and character, which* 
are totally out of the reach of all who have 
lived not long in the world, and observed it 
well. 

The immorality of any book (in our estima- 
tion) is to be determined by the general im- 
pression it leaves on those minds, whose prin- 
ciples, not yet ossified, are capable of affording 
a less powerful defence to its influence. The 
most dangerous effect that any fictitious cha- 
racter can produce, is when two or three of its 
popular vices are varnished over with every 
thing that is captivating and gracious in the 
exterior, and ennobled by association with 
splendid virtues : this apology will be more 
sure of its effect, if the faults are not against 
nature, but against society. The aversion to 
murder and cruelty could not perhaps be so 
overcome ; but a regard to the sanctity of mar- 
riage vows, to the sacred and sensitive delicacy 
of the female character, and to numberless re- 
strictions important to the well-being of our 
species, may easily be relaxed by this subtle and 
voluptuous confusion of good and evil. It is 
in vain to say the fable evinces, in the last act, 
that vice is productive of misery. We may 
decorate a villain with graces and felicities 
for nine volumes, and hang him in the last 
page. This is not teaching virtue, but gilding 
the gallows, and raising up splendid associa- 
tions in favour of being hanged. In such an 
union of the amiable and the vicious, (espe- 
cially if the vices are such, to the commission 
of which there is no want of natural disposi- 
tion,) the vice will not degrade the man, but 
the man will ennoble the vice. We shall 
wish to be him we admire, in spite of his vices, 
and, if the novel be well written, even in con- 
sequence of his vice. There exists, through the 
whole of this novel, a show of exquisite sen- 
sibility to the evils which individuals suffer by 
the inflexible rules of virtue prescribed by so- 
ciety, and an eager disposition to apologize 
for particular transgressions. Such doctrine 
is not confined to Madame de Stael; an Arca- 
dian cant is gaining fast upon Spartan gravity; 
and the happiness diffused, and the beautiful 
order established in society, by this unbending 
discipline, are wholly swallowed up in com- 
passion for the unfortunate and interesting in- 
dividual. Either the exceptions or the rule 
must be given up : eveiy highwayman who 
thrusts his pistol into a chaise window has 
va.etw\t\i unforeseen misfortunes: and every loose 
matron who flies into the arms of her Greville 
was compelled to marry an old man whom she 
detested, by an avaricious and unfeeling fa- 
ther. The passions want not accelerating, but 
retarding machinery. This fatal and foolish 



356 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



sophistry has power enough over every heart, 
not to need the aid of fine composition, and 
well-contrived incident — auxiliaries which Ma- 
dame de Stael intended to bring forward in the 
cause, though she has fortunately not suc- 
ceeded. 

M. de Serbellone is received as a guest into 
the house of M. d'Ervins, whose wife he de- 
bauches as a recompense for his hospitality. 
Is it possible to be disgusted with ingratitude 
and injustice, when united to such an assem- 
blage of talents and virtues as this man of pa- 
per possesses 1 Was there ever a more de- 
lightful, fascinating adulteress than Madame 
d'Ervins is intended to be"? or apovero comuto 
less capable of exciting compassion than her 
husband ] The morality of all this is the old 
morality of Farquhar, Vanburgh, and Con- 
greve — that every witty man may transgress 
the seventh commandment, which was never 
meant for the protection of husbands who la- 
bour under the incapacity of making repartees. 
In Matilda, religion is always as unamiable as 
dissimulation is graceful in Madame de Ver- 
non, and imprudence generous in Delphine. 
This said Delphine, with her fine auburn hair, 
and her beautiful blue or green eyes (we forget 
which), cheats her cousin Matilda out of her 
lover, alienates the affections of her husband, 
and keeps a sort of assignation house for Ser- 
bellone and his rhere amie, justifying herself 
by the most touching complaints against the 
rigour of the world, and using the customary 
phrases, nmon of souls, married in the eye of hea- 
ven, &c. &c. &c., and such like diction, the 



types of which Mr. Lane, of the Minerva Press, 
very prudently keeps ready composed, in order 
to facilitate the printing of the Adventures of 
Captain C and Miss F , and other in- 
teresting stories, of which he, the said inimi- 
table Mr. Lane, of the Minerva Press, well 
knows these sentiments must make a part. 
Another perilous absurdity which this useful 
production tends to cherish, is the common no- 
tion, that contempt of rule and order is a proof 
of greatness of mind. Delphine is everywhere 
a great spirit struggling with the shackles im- 
posed upon her in common with the little 
world around her; and it is managed so that 
her contempt of restrictions shall always ap- 
pear to flow from the extent, variety, and splen- 
dour of her talents. The vulgarity of this he- 
roism ought in some degree to diminish its 
value. Mr. Colquhoun, in his Police of the 
Metropolis, reckons up above 40,000 heroines 
of this species, most of whom, we dare to say, 
have at one time or another reasoned like the 
sentimental Delphine about the judgments of 
the world. 

To conclude — Our general opinion of this 
book is, that it is calculated to shed a mild 
lustre over adultery ; by gentle and convenient 
gradation, to destroy the modesty and the cau- 
tion of women ; to facilitate the acquisition of 
easy vices, and encumber the difficulty of vir- 
tue. What a wretched qualification of this 
censure to add, that the badness of the princi- 
ple is alone corrected by the badness of the 
style, and that this celebrated lady would have 
been very guilty, if she had not been very dull J 



MISSION TO ASHANTEE.* 



[Edinburgh Review, 1819.] 



Cape Coast Castle, or Cape Corso, is a 
factory of Africa, on the Gold Coast. The 
Portuguese settled here in 1610, and built the 
citadel ; from which, in a few years after- 
wards, they were dislodged by the Dutch. In 
1661, it was demolished by the English under 
Admiral Holmes ; and by the treat}^ of Breda, 
it was made over to our government. The 
latitude of Cape Coast Castle is 5° 6' north ; 
the longitude 1° 51' west. The capital of the 
kingdom of' Ashantee is Coomassie, the lati- 
tude of which is about 6° 30' 20" north, and 
the longitude 2° 6' 30" west. The mission 
quitted Cape Coast Castle on the 22d of April, 
and arrived at Coomassie about the 16th of 
May — halting two or three days on the route, 
and walking the whole distance, or carried by 
hammock-bearers at a foot-pace. The dis- 
tance between the fort and the capital is not 
more than 150 miles, or about as far as from 



* Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, with a 
Statistical Mccouvt of that Kingdom, and Geographical 
Notices of other Parts of the Interior of Africa. By T. 
Edward Bowdich, Esq., Conductor. London, Mur- 
ray, 1819. 



Durham to Edinburgh ; and yet the kingdom 
of Ashantee was, before the mission of Mr. 
Bowdich, almost as much unknoA^Ti to us as 
if it had been situated in some other planet. 
The country which surrounds Cape Coast 
Castle belongs to the Fantees ; and, about the 
year 1807, an Ashantee army reached the 
coast for the first time. They invaded Fantee 
again in 1811, and, for the third time, in 1816. 
To put a stop to the horrible cruelties com- 
mitted by the stronger on the weaker nation ; 
to secure their own safety, endangered by the 
Ashantees ; and to enlarge our knowledge of 
Africa — the government of Cape Coast Castle 
persuaded the African committee to send a 
deputation to the kingdom of Ashantee ; and 
of this embassy the publication now before us 
is the narrative. The embassy walked through 
a beautiful country, laid waste by the recent 
wars, and arrived in the time we have men- 
tioned, and without meeting with any remark- 
able accident at Coomassie, the capital. The 
account of their first reception there we shall 
lay before our readers. 
" We entered Coomassie at two o'clock, pass- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



357 



ing under a fetish, or sacrifice of a dead sheep, 
■wrapped up in red silk, and suspended be- 
tween two lofty poles. Upwards of 5000 peo- 
ple, the greater part warriors, met us with 
awful bursts of martial music, discordant only 
in its mixture ; for horns, drums, rattles, and 
gong-gongs, were all exerted ^vith a zeal bor- 
dering on frenzy, to subdue us by the first im- 
pression. The smoke which encircled us from 
the incessant discharges of musketry, confined 
our glimpses to the foreground ; and we were 
halted whilst the captains performed their 
Pyrrhic dance, in the centre of a circle formed 
by their warriors ; where a confusion of flags, 
English, Dutch, and Danish, were waved and 
flourished in all directions ; the bearers plung- 
ing and springing from side to side, with a 
passion of enthusiasm only equalled by the 
captains, who followed them, discharging their 
shining blunderbusses so close, that the flags 
now and then were in a blaze ; and emerging 
from the smoke with all the gesture and dis- 
tortion of maniacs. Their followers kept up 
the firing around us in the rear. The dress 
of the captains was a war cap, with gilded 
rams' honis projecting in front, the sides ex- 
tended beyond all proportion by immense 
plumes of eagles' feathers, and fastened under 
the chin with bands of cowries. Their vest 
was of red cloth, covered with fetishes and 
saphies in gold and silver ; and embroidered 
cases of almost every coloui", which flapped 
against their bodies as they moved, intermixed 
■with small brass bells, the horns and tails of 
animals, shells, and knives ; long leopards' 
tails hung down their backs, over a small bow 
covered with fetishes. They wore loose cot- 
ton trowsers, with immense boots of a dull red 
leather, coming half way up the thigh, and 
fastened by small chains to their cartouch or 
waist belt ; these were also ornamented with 
bells, horses' tails, strings of amulets, and in- 
numerable shreds of leather ; a small quiver 
of poisoned arrows hung from their right 
wrist, and they held a long iron chain between 
their teeth with a scrap of Moorish writing 
affixed to the end of it. A small spear was 
in their left hands, covered with red cloth and 
silk tassels ; their black countenances height- 
ened the effect of this attire and completed a 
figure scarcely human. 

"This exhibition continued about half an 
hour, when we were allowed to proceed, en- 
circled by the warriors, whose numbers, with 
the crowds of people, made our movement as 
gradual as if it had taken place in Cheapside ; 
the several streets branching off to the right 
presented long vistas crammed with people ; 
and those on the left hand being on an accli- 
vity, innumerable rows of heads rose one 
above another : the large open porches of the 
houses, like the fronts of stages in small thea- 
tres, were filled with the better sort of females 
and children, all impatient to behold white 
men for the first time ; their exclamations were 
drowned in the firing and music, but their ges- 
tures were in character with the scene. When 
we reached the palace, about half a mile from 
the place where we entered, we were again 
halted, and an open file was made, through 
which the bearers were passed, to deposit the 



presents and baggage in the house assigned to 
us. Here we were gratified by observing seve- 
ral of the caboceers (chiefs) pass by with their 
trains, the novel splendour of which astonished 
us. The bands, principally composed of 
horns and flutes, trained to play in concert, 
seemed to soothe our hearing into its natural 
tone again by their wild melodies ; whilst the 
immense umbrellas, made to sink and rise 
from the jerkings of the bearers, and the 
large fans waving around, refreshed us with 
small currents of air, under a burning sun, 
clouds of dust, and a density of atmosphere 
almost suffocating. We were then squeezed, 
at the same funeral pace, up a long street, to 
an open-fronted house, where we were desired 
by a royal messenger to wait a further invita- 
tion from the king." — (pp.31 — 33.) 

The embassy remained about four months, 
leaving one of their members behind as a 
permanent resident. Their treatment, though 
subjected to the fluctuating passions of bar- 
barians, was, upon the -whole, not bad ; and a 
foundation appears to have been laid for fu- 
ture intercourse with the Ashantees, and a 
mean opened, through them, of becoming bet- 
ter acquainted with the interior of Africa. 

The Moors, who seem (barbarians as they 
are) to be the civilizers of internal Africa, 
have penetrated to the capital of the Ashan- 
tees : they are bigoted and intolerant to Chris- 
tians, but not sacrificers of human victims in 
their religious ceremonies ; — nor averse to 
commerce; and civilized in comparison to 
most of the idolatrous natives of Africa. From 
their merchants who resorted from various 
parts of the interior, Mr. Bowdich employed 
himself in procuring all the geographical 
details which their travels enabled them to 
afford. Timbuctoo they described as inferior 
to Houssa, and not at all comparable to Boornoo. 
The Moorish influence was stated to be power- 
ful in it, but not predominant. A small river 
goes nearly round the town, overflowing in the 
rains, and obliging the people of the suburbs 
to move to an eminence in the centre of the 
town where the king lives. The king, a 
Moorish negro called Billabahada, had a few 
double-barrelled guns, which were fired on 
great occasions ; and gunpowder was as dear 
as gold. Mr. Bowdich calculates Houssa to 
be N. E. from the Niger 20 days' journey of 
18 miles each day; and the latitude and lon- 
gitude to be 18° 59' N. and 3° 59' E. Boornoo 
was spoken of as the first empire in Africa. 
The Mahometans of Sennaar reckon it among 
the four powerful empires of the world; 
the other three being Turkey, Persia, and 
Abyssinia. 

The Niger is only known to the Moors by 
the name of the Quolla, pronounced as Quorra 
by the negroes, who, from whatever countries 
they come, all spoke of this as the largest river 
■with which they were acquainted; and it was 
the grand feature in all the routes to Ashantee, 
whether from Houssa, Boornoo, or the interme- 
diate countries. The Niger, after leaving the 
lake Dibbri, was invariably described as divid- 
ing into two large streams ; the Quolla, or the 
greater division, pursuing its course south- 
eastward, till it joined the Bahr Abiad; and 



358 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the other branch running northward of east, 
near to Timbuctoo, and dividing again soon af- 
terwards — the smaller division running north- 
wards by Yahoodee, a place of great trade, and 
the larger running directly eastward, and en- 
tering the lake Caudi under the name of Gam- 
baroo. "The variety of this concurrent evi- 
dence respecting the Gambaroo, made an im- 
pression on my mind," says Mr. Bowdich, "al- 
most amounting to conviction." The same 
author adds, that he found the Moors very cau- 
tious in their accounts ; declining to speak un- 
less they were positive — and frequently refer- 
ring doubtful points to others whom they knew 
to be better acquainted with them. 

The character of the present king is, upon 
the whole, respectable; but he is ambitious, 
has conquered a great deal, and is conquering 
still. He has a love of knowledge ; and was 
always displeased when the European objects 
which attracted his attention were presented 
to him as gifts. His motives, he said, ought to 
be better understood, and more respect paid 
to his dignity and friendship. He is acute, 
capricious, and severe, but not devoid of hu- 
manity; and has incurred unpopularity on 
some occasions, by limiting the number of 
human sacrifices more than was compatible 
with strict orthodoxy. His general subjects 
of discourse with the mission were war, legis- 
lation, and mechanics. He seemed very de- 
sirous of standing well in the estimation of his 
European friends ; and put off a conversation 
once because he was a little tipsy, and at 
another time because he felt himself cross and 
out of temper. 

The king, four aristocratical assessors, and 
the assembly of captains, are the three estates 
of the Ashantee government. The noble quar- 
tumvirate, in all matters of foreign policy, 
have a veto on the king's decisions. They 
watch, rather than share, the domestic admi- 
nistration ; generally influencing it by their 
opinion, rather than controlling it by their au- 
thority. In exercising his judicial functions, 
the king always retires in private with the 
aristocracy, to hear their opinions. The course 
of succession in Ashantee is the brother, the 
sister's son, the son, and the chief slave. 

The king's sisters may marry, or intrigue 
with any person they please, provided he is 
very strong and handsome ; and these elevated 
and excellent women are always ready to set 
an example of submission to the laws of their 
country. The interest of money is about 300 
per cent. A man may kill his own slave ; or 
an inferior, for the price of seven slaves. Tri- 
fling thefts are punished by exposure. The 
property of the wife is distinct from that of the 
husband— though the king is heir to it. Those 
accused of witchcraft are tortured to death. 
Slaves, if ill treated, are allowed the liberty of 
transferring themselves to other masters. 

The Ashantees believe that an higher sort 
of god takes care of the whites, and that they 
^re left to the care of an inferior species of 
'deities. Still the black kings and black nobi- 
lity are to go to the upper gods after death, 
where they are to enjoy eternally the state and 
luxury which was their portion on earth. For 
this reason a certain number of cooks, butlers, 



and domestics of every description, are sacri- 
ficed on their tombs. They have two sets of 
priests: the one dwell in the temples, and 
communicate with the idols ; the other species 
do business as conjurors and cunning men, 
tell fortunes, and detect small thefts. Half 
the offerings to the idols are (as the priests 
say) thrown into the river, the other half they 
claim as their own. The doors Of the temples 
are, from motives of the highest humanity, 
open to runaway slaves; but shut, upon a fee 
paid by the master to the priest. Every per- 
son has a small set of household gods, bought 
of the Fetishmen. They please their gods by 
avoiding particular sorts of meat; but the 
prohibited viand is not always the same. 
Some curry favour by eating no veal ; some 
seek protection by avoiding pork ; others say, 
that the real monopoly Avhich the celestials 
wish to establish, is that of beef— and so they 
piously and prudently rush into a course of 
mutton. They have the customary nonsense 
of lucky days, trial by ordeal, and libations 
and relics. The most horrid and detestable 
of their customs is their sacrifice of human 
victims, and the tortures preparatory to it. 
This takes place at all their great festivals, or 
customs, as they are called.— Some of these 
occur every twenty-one days; and there are 
not fewer than a hundred victims immolated 
at each. Besides these, there are sacrifices at 
the death of every person of rank, more or less 
bloody according to their dignity. On the 
death of his mother, the king butchered no 
less than three thousand victims; and on his 
own death this number would probably he 
doubled. The funeral rites of a great captain 
were repeated weekly for three months ; and ' 
200 persons, it is said, were slaughtered each 
time, or 2400 in all. The author gives an ac- 
count of the manner of these abominations, in 
one instance of which he was an unwilling 
spectator. On the funeral of the mother of 
Quatchie Quofie, which was by no means a 
great one, — 

" A dash of sheep and rum was exchanged 
between the king and Quatchie Quofie, and 
the drums announced the sacrifice of the vic- 
tims. All the chiefs first visited them in turn ; 
I was not near enough to distinguish where- 
fore. The executioners wrangled and struggled 
for the office : and the indifference with which 
the first poor creature looked on, in the torture 
he was from the knife passed through his 
cheeks, was remarkable. The nearest execu- 
tioner snatched the sword from the others, the 
right hand of the victim was then lopped off, 
he was thrown down, and his head was sawed 
rather than cut off: it was cruelly prolonged, 



will not say wilfully. Twelve more were 
dragged forward, but we forced our way 
through the crowd, and retired to our quarters. 
Other sacrifices, principally female, were made 
in the bush where the body was buried. It is 
usual to ' wet the grave' with the blood of a 
freeman of respectability.- All the retainers 
of the family being present, an'd the heads of 
all the victims deposited in the bottom of the 
grave, several are unsuspectingly called on in 
a hurry to assist in placing the coffin or bas- 
ket ; and just as it rests on the head or skulls. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



359 



a slave from behind stuns one of these free- 
men by a violent blow, followed by a deep 
gash in the back part of the neck, and he is 
rolled in on the top of the body, and the grave 
instantly filled up."— (pp. 287, 288.) 

" About a hundred persons, mostly culprits 
reserved, are generally sacrificed, in different 
quarters of the town, at this custom (that is, 
at the feast for the new year). Several slaves 
were also sacrificed at Bantama, over the large 
brass pan, their blood mingling with the vari- 
ous vegetable and animal matter within (fresh 
and putrefied), to complete the charm, and 
produce invincible fetish. All the chiefs kill 
several slaves, that their blood may flow into 
the hole from whence the new yam is taken. 
Those who cannot afford to kill slaves, take 
the head of one already sacrificed, and place 
it on the hole."— (p. 279.) 

The Ashantees are very superior in disci- 
pline and courage to the water-side Africans : 
they never pursue when it is near sunset ; the 
general is always in the rear, and the fugi- 
tives are instantly put to death. The army is 
prohibited, during the active part of the cam- 
paign, from all food but meal, which each man 
carries in a small bag by his side, and mixes 
in his hands with the first water he comes to ; 
no fires are allowed, lest their position should 
be betrayed ; they eat little select bits of the 
first enemy's heart whom they kill; and all 
wear ornaments of his teeth and b()nes. 

In their buildings, a mould is made for re- 
ceiving the clay, by two rows of stakes placed 
at a distance equal to the intended thickness 
of the wall: the interval is then filled with 
gravelly clay mixed with water, which, with 
the outward surface of the frame-work, is plas- 
tered so as to exhibit the appearance of a thick 
mud wall. The captains have pillars which 
assist to support the roof, and form a prosce- 
nium, or open front. The steps and raised 
floors of the rooms are clay and stone, with a 
thick layer of red earth, washed and painted 
daily. 

" While the walls are still soft, they formed 
moulds or frame-works of the patterns in deli- 
cate slips of cane, connected by grass. The 
two first slips (one end of each being inserted 
in the soft wall) projected the relief, com- 
monly mezzo: the interstices were then filled 
up with the plaster, and assumed the appear- 
ance depicted. The poles or pillars were 
sometimes encircled by twists of cane, inter- 
secting each other, which, being filled up with 
thin plaster, resembled the lozenge and cable 
ornaments of the Anglo-Norman order; the 
quatre-foil was very common, and by no means 
rude, from the symmetrical bend of the cane 
which formed it. I saw a few pillars (after 
they had been squared with the plaster), with 
numerous slips of cane pressed perpendicular- 
ly on to the wet surface, which, being covered 
again with a very thin coat of plaster, closely 
resembled fluting. When they formed a large 
arch, they inserted one end of a thick piece of 
cane in the wet clay of the floor or base, and, 
bending the other over, inserted it in the same 
manner; the entablature was filled up with 
wattle-work plastered over. Arcades and 



piazzas were common. A white wash, very 
frequently renewed, was made from a clay in 
the neighbourhood. Of course the plastering 
is very frail, and in the relief frequently dis- 
closes the edges of the cane, giving, however, 
a piquant effect, auxiliary to the ornament. 
The doors were an entire piece of cotton wood, 
cut with great labour out of the stems or but- 
tresses of that tree ; battens variously cut and 
painted were afterwards nailed across. So 
disproportionate was the price of labour, to 
that of provision, that I gave but two tokoos 
for a slab of cotton wood, five feet by three. 
The locks they use are from Houssa, and quite 
original : one will be sent to the British Mu- 
seum. Where they raised a first floor, the 
under room was divided into two by an inter- 
secting wall, to support the rafters for the 
upper room, which were generally covered 
with a frame-work thickly plastered over with 
red ochre. I saw but one attempt at flooring 
with plank ; it was cotton wood shaped en- 
tirely with an adze, and looked like a ship's 
deck. The windows were open wood-work, 
carved in fanciful figures and intricate pat- 
terns, and painted red ; the frames were fre- 
quently cased in gold, about as thick as 
cartridge paper. What surprised me most, 
and is not the least of the many circumstances 
deciding their great superiority over the gene- 
rality of negroes, was the discovery that every 
house had its cloacae, besides the common 
ones for the lower orders without the town." 
—(pp. 305, 306.) 

The rubbish and offal of each house are 
burnt every morning at the back of the street ; 
and they are as nice in their dwellings as in 
their persons. The Ashantee loom is precisely 
on the same principles as the English : the 
firmness, variety, brilliancy, and size of their 
cloths are astonishing. They paint white 
cloths, not inelegantly, as fast as an European 
can write. They excel in pottery, and are 
good goldsmiths. Their weights are very 
neat brass casts of almost every animal, fruit, 
and vegetable, known in the country. The 
king's scales, blow-pan, boxes, weights, and 
pipe-tongs Avere neatly made of the purest 
gold. They Avork finely in iron, tan leather, 
and are excellent carpenters. 

Mr. BoAvdich computes the number of men 
capable of bearing arms to be 204,000. The 
disposable force is 150,000; the population a 
million ; the number of square miles 14,000. 
Polygamy is tolerated to the greatest extent; 
the king's alloAvance is 3333 wives ; and the 
full complement is always kept up. Four of 
the principal streets in Coomassie are half a 
mile long, and from 50 to 100 yards wide. 
The streets were all named, and a superior 
captain in charge of each. The street where 
the mission was lodged was called Apperemsoo, 
or Cannon Street; another street was called 
Daebrim, or Gh-eat Market Street ; another, Pri- 
son Street, and so on. A plan of the town is 
given. The Ashantees persisted in saying 
that the population of Coomassie was above 
100,000 ; but this is thought, by the gentlemen 
of the mission, to allude rather to the popula- 
tion collected on great occasions, than the 
permanent residents, not computed by them at 



360 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



more than 15,000. The markets were daily; 
and the articles for sale, beef, mutton, wild- 
hog, deer, monkeys' flesh, fowls, yams, plan- 
tains, corn, sugarcane, rice, peppers, vegetable 
butter, oranges, papans, pine-apples, bananas, 
salt and dried fish, large snails smoke-dried ; 
palm wine, rum, pipes, beads, looking-glasses ; 
sandals, silk, cotton cloth, powder, small pil- 
lars, white and blue thread, and calabashes. 
The cattle in Ashantee are as large as English 
cattle ; their sheep are hairy. They have no 
implement but the hoe ; have two crops of 
corn in the year ; plant their yams at Christ- 
mas, and dig them up in September. Their 
plantations, extensive and orderly, have the 
appearance of hop gardens well fenced in, and 
regularly planted in lines, with a broad walk 
around, and a hut at each wicker-gate, where 
a slave and his family reside to protect the 
plantation. All the fruits mentioned a:s sold in 
the market grew in spontaneous abundance, 
as did the sugarcane. The oranges were of a 
large size and exquisite flavour. There were 
no cocoa trees. The berry which gives to 
acids the flavour of sweets, making limes 
taste like honey, is common here. .The castor- 
oil plant rises to a large tree. The cotton tree 
sometimes rises to the height of 150 feet. 

The great obstacle to the improvement of 
commerce with the Ashantee people (besides 
the jealousy natural to barbarians) is our re- 
jection of the slave trade, and the continuance 
of that detestable traffic by the Spaniards. 
While the mission was in that country, one 
thousand slaves left Ashantee for two Spanish 
schooners on the coast. — How is an African 
monarch to be taught that he has not a right 
to turn human creatures into rum and tobacco 1 
or that the nation which prohibits such an in- 
tercourse are not his enemies 1 To have free 
access to Ashantee, would command Dag- 
wumba. The people of Inta and Dagwumba 
being commercial, rather than warlike, an in- 
tercourse with them would be an intercourse 
with the interior, as far as Timbuctoo and 
Houssa northwards, and Cassina, if not Boor- 
noo, eastwards. 

After the observations of Mr. Bowdich, se- 
nior officer of the mission, follows the narra- 
tive of Mr. Hutchinson, left as charge d'af- 
faires, upon the departure of the other gentle- 
men. Mr. Hutchinson mentions some white 
men residing at Yenne, whom he supposes to 
have been companions of Park ; and Ali Baba, 
a man of good character and consideration, 
itpon the eve of departure from these regions, 
assured him, that there were two Europeans 
then resident at Timbuctoo. — In his observa- 
tions on the river Gaboon, Mr. Bowdich has 
the following information on the present state 
of the slave trade : — 

" Three Portuguese, one French, and two 
large Spanish ships, visited the river for slaves 
during our stay; and the master of a Liver- 
pool vessel assured me that he had fallen in 
with twenty-two between Gaboon and the Con- 
go. Their grand rendezvous is Maynmba. 
The Portuguese of St. Thomas's and Prince's 
Islands send small schooner boats to Gaboon 
for slaves, which are kept, after they are trans- 
ported this short distance, until the coast is 



clear for shipping them to America. A third 
large Spanish ship, well armed, entered the 
river the night before we quitted it, and hurried 
our exit, for one of that character was commit- 
ting piracy in the neighbouring rivers. Having 
suffered from falling into their hands before, I 
felicitated myself on the escape. We were 
afterwards chased and boarded by a Spanish 
armed schooner, with three hundred slaves on 
hoard ; they only desired provisions." > 

These are the most important extracts from 
this publication, which is certainly of conside- 
rable importance, from the account it gives us 
of a people hitherto almost entirely unknown ; 
and from the light which the very diligent and 
laborious inquiries of Mr. Bowdich have 
thrown upon the geography of Africa, and the 
probability held out to us of approaching the 
great kingdoms on the Niger, by means of an 
intercourse by no means difficult to be esta- 
blished -with the kingdoms of Inta and Dag- 
wumba. The river Volta flows into the Gulf 
of Guinea, in latitude 7° north. It is naviga- 
ble, and by the natives navigated for ten days, 
to Odentee. Now, from Odentee to Sallagha, 
the capital of the kingdom of Inta, is but four 
days' journey; and seven days' journey from 
Sallagha, through the Inta Jam of Zengoo, is 
Yahndi, the capital of Dagwumba. Yahndi is ■ 
described to be beyond comparison larger than ^ 
Coomassie, the houses much better built and 
ornamented. The Ashantees who had visited 
it, told Mr. Bowdich they had frequently lost 
then^selves in the streets. The king has been 
converted by, the Moors, who have settled 
themselves there in great numbers. Mr. Lucas 
calls it the Mahometan kingdom of Degomba ; 
and it was represented to him as peculiarly 
wealthy and civilized. The markets of Yahndi 
are described as animated scenes of commerce, 
constantly croM^ded with merchants from al- 
most all the countries of the interior. It seems 
to us, that the best way of becoming acquainted 
with Africa, is not to plan such sweeping ex- 
peditions as have been lately sent out by go- 
vernment, but to submit to become acquainted 
with it by degrees, and to acquire by little and 
little a knowledge of the best methods of arrang- 
ing expeditions. The kingdom of Dagwumba, 
for instance, is not 200 miles from a well-known 
and regular water carriage, on the Volta. 
Perhaps it is nearer, but the distance is not 
greater than this. It is one of the most com- 
mercial nations in Africa, and one of the most 
civilized ; and yet it is utterly unknown, ex- 
cept by report, to Europeans. Then why not , 
plan an expedition to Dagwumba 7 The ex- '* 
pense of which would be very trifling, and the 
issue known in three or four months. The in- 
formation procured from such a wise and 
moderate undertaking, would enable any future 
mission to proceed with much greater ease 
and safety into the interior ; or prevent them 
from proceeding, as they hitherto have done, 
to their own destruction. We strongly be- 
lieve, with Mr. Bowdich, that this is the right 
road to the Niger. 

Nothing in this world is created in vain : 
lions, tigers, conquerors, have their use. Am- 
bitious monarchs, who are the curse of civi- 
lized nations, are the civilizers of savage people. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



361 



With a number of little independent hordes, 
civilization is impossible. They must have a 
common interest before there can be peace ; 
and be directed by one will before there can 
be order. Wben mankind are prevented from 
daily quarrelling and fighting, they first begin 
to improve; and all this, we are afraid, is 
only to be accomplished, in the first instance. 



by some great conqueror. We sympathize, 
therefore, with the victories of the King of 
Ashantee — and feel ourselves, for the first 
time, in love with military glory. The ex- 
emperor of the French would, at Coomassie, 
Dagwumba, or lata, be an eminent benefactor 
to the human race. 



WITTMAN'S travels; 

[Edinburgh Review, 1803.] 



Db. Wittman was sent abroad with the 
military mission to Turkey, towards the spring 
of 1799, and remained attached to it during 
its residence in the neighbourhood of Con- 
stantinople, its march through the desert, and 
its short operations in Egypt. The military 
mission, consisting of General Koehler, and 
some officers and privates of the artillery and 
engineers, amounting on the whole to seventy, 
were assembled at Constantinople, June, 1799, 
which they left in the same month of the fol- 
lowing year, joined the grand vizier at Jaffa in 
July, and entered Egypt with the Turks in 
April, 1801. After the military operatiohs 
were concluded there. Dr. Wittman returned 
home by Constantinople, Vienna, &c. 

The travels are written in the shape of a 
journal, which begins and concludes with the 
events which we have just mentioned. It is 
obvious that the route described by Dr. Wittman 
is not new : he could make no cursory and 
superficial observations upon the people whom 
he saw, or the countries through which he 
passed, with which the public are not already 
familiar. If his travels were to possess any 
merit at all, they were to derive that merit 
from accurate physical researches, from copi- 
ous information on the state of medicine, sur- 
gery, and disease in Turkey; and above all, 
perhaps, from gratifying the rational curiosity 
which all inquiring minds must feel upon the 
nature of the plague, and the indications of 
cure. Dr. Wittman, too, was passing over 
the same ground trodden by Bonaparte in 
his Syrian expedition, and had an ample 
opportunity of inquiring its probable object, 
and the probable success which (but for the 
heroic defence of Acre) might have attended 
it ; he was on the theatre of Bonaparte's im- 
puted crimes, as well as his notorious defeat ; 
'and might have brought us back, not anile 
conjecture, but sound evidence of events 
which must determine his character, who may 
determine our fate. We should have been 
happy also to have found in the travels of Dr. 
Wittman a full account of the tactics and 
manoeuvres of the Turkish army; and this it 
would not have been difficult to have obtained 
through the medium of his military com- 



* Travels in Turkey, Jlsia Minor, and Syria, ^c, and 
into Egypt. By William Wittman, M. D. 1803. Lon- 
don. PbillipE. 

46 



panions. Such appear to us to be the sub- 
jects, fi-om an able discussion of which, Dr. 
Wittman might have derived considerable 
reputation, by gratifying the ardour of tempo- 
rary curiosity, and adding to the stock of per- 
manent knowledge. 

Upon opening Dr. Wittman's book, we 
turned, with a considerable degree of interest, 
to the subject of Jafia ; and to do justice to the 
doctor, we shall quote all that he has said upon 
the subject of Bonaparte's conduct at this place. 

" After a breach had been efl^ected, the French 
troops stormed and carried the place. It was 
probably owing to the obstinate defence made 
by the Turks, that the French commander-in- 
chief was induced to give orders for the horrid 
massacre which succeeded. Four thousand 
of the wretched inhabitants who had sur- 
rendered, and who had in vain implored the 
mercy of their conquerors, Avere, together 
with a part of the late Turkish garrison of 
El-Arish (amounting, it has been said, to five 
or six hundred), dragged out in cold blood, 
four days after the French had obtained possession 
of Jaffa, to the sand hills, about a league dis- 
tant, in the way to Gaza, and there most 
inhumanly put to death. I have seen the 
skeletons of these unfortunate victims, which 
lie scattered over the hills ; a modern Golgotha, 
which remains a lasting disgrace to a nation 
calling itself civilized. It would give pleasure 
to the author of this work, as well as to every 
liberal mind, to hear these facts contradicted 
on substantial evidence. Indeed, I am sorry 
to add, that the charge of cruelty against the 
French general does not rest here. It having 
been reported, that, previously to the retreat 
of the French army from Syria, their com- 
mander-in-chief had ordered all the French 
sick at Jaffa to be poisoned, I was led to make 
the inquiry to which every one who should 
have visited the spot would naturally have 
been directed, respecting an act of such sin- 
gular, and, it should seem, wanton inhumanity. 
It concerns me to have to state, not only that 
such a circumstance was positively asserted 
to have happened, but that, while in Egypt, an 
individual was pointed out to us, as having 
been the executioner of these diabolical com- 
mands."— (p. 128.) 

Now, in this passage, Dr. Wittman oflfers no 
2H 



362 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



other evidence whatever of the massacre, than 
that he had seen the skeletons scattered over 
the hills, and that the fact was universally 
believed. But how does Dr. Wittman know 
what skeletons those were which he sawl 
An oriental camp, affected by the plague, 
leaves as many skeletons behind it as a mas- 
sacre. And though the Turks bury their dead, 
the doctor complains of the very little depth 
at which tRey are interred; so that jackals, 
high winds, and a sandy soil, might, with great 
facility, undo the work of Turkish sextons. 
Let any one read Dr. Wittman's account of 
the camp near Jaffa, where the Turks remained 
so long in company with the military mission, 
and he will immediately perceive that, a year 
after their departure, it might have been mis- 
taken, with great ease, for the scene of a 
massacre. The spot which Dr. Wittman saw 
might have been the spot where a battle had 
been fought. In the turbulent state of Syria, 
and amidst the variety of its barbarous inhabit- 
ants, can it be imagined that every bloody 
battle, with its precise limits and circumscrip- 
tion, is accurately committed to tradition, and 
faithfully reported to inquirers 1 Besides, why 
scattered among hills ? If 5000 men were 
marched out to a convenient spot and mas- 
sacred, their remains would be heaped up in a 
small space, a mountain of the murdered, a 
vast bridge of bones and rottenness. As the 
doctor has described the bone scenery, it has 
much more the appearance of a battle and 
pursuit than of a massacre. After all, this 
gentleman lay eight months under the walls 
of Jaffa; whence comes it he has given us 
no better evidence 1 Were 5000 men mur- 
dered in cold blood by a division of the French 
army, a year before, and did no man remain 
in Jaffa, who said, I saw it done — I was pre- 
sent when they were marched out — I went the 
next day, and saw the scarcely dead bodies of 
the victims'? If Dr. Wittman received any 
such evidence, why did he not bring it forward? 
If he never inquired for such evidence, how is 
he qualified to write upon the subject 1 If he 
inquired for it and could not find it, how is the 
fact credible 1 

This author cannot make the same excuse 
as Sir Robert Wilson, for the suppression of 
his evidence, as there could be no probability 
that Bonaparte would wreak his vengeance 
upon Soliman Aga, Mustapha Cawn, Sidi 
Mahomet, or any given Turks, upon whose 
positive evidence Dr. Wittman might have 
rested his accusation. Two such wicked acts 
as the poisoning and the massacre, have not 
been committed within the memory of man ; — 
within the same memory, no such extraordinary 
person has appeared, as he who is said to have 
committed them ; and yet, though their com- 
mission must have been public, no one has 
yet said, Vicli ego. The accusation still rests 
upon hearsay. 

At the same time, widely disseminated as 
this accusation has been over Europe, it is 
extraordinary that it has not been contradicted 
in print: and, though Sir Robert Wilson's 
book must have been read in France, that no 
officer of the division of Bon has come for- 
ward in vindication of a criminal who could 



repay incredulity so well. General Andreossi, 
who was with the First Consul in Syria, treats 
the accusations as contemptible falsehoods. 
But though we are convinced he is a man of 
character, his evidence has certainly less 
weight, as he may have been speaking in the 
mask of diplomacy. As to the general circu- 
lation of the report, he must think much 
higher of the sagacity of multitudes than we 
do, who would convert this into a reason of 
belief. Whoever thinks it so easy to get at 
truth in the midst of passion, should read the 
various histories of the recent rebellion in 
Ireland; or he may, if he chooses, believe, 
with thousands of worthy Frenchmen, that the 
infernale was planned by Mr. Pitt and Lord 
Melville. As for us, we will state what appears 
to us to be the truth, should it even chance to 
justify a man in whose lifetime Europe can 
know neither happiness nor peace. 

The story of the poisoning is given by Dr. 
Wittman precisely in the same desultory man- 
ner as that of the massacre. "An individual 
was pointed out to us as the executioner of 
these diabolical commands." By how many 
persons was he pointed out as the executioner 1 
by persons of what authority ? and of what 
credibility 1 Was it asserted from personal 
knowledge, or merely from rumour T Whence 
comes it that such an agent, after the flight of 
his employer, was not driven away by the 
general indignation of the army? If Dr. 
Wittman had combined this species of infor- 
mation with his stories, his conduct would 
have been more just, and his accusations 
would have carried greater weight. At pre- 
sent, when he, who had the opportunity of tell- 
ing us so much, has told us so little, we are 
rather less inclined to believe than we were 
before. We do not say these accusations are 
not true, but that Dr. Wittman has not proved 
them to be true. 

Dr. Wittman did not see more than two 
cases of plague : he has given both of them 
at full length. The symptoms were, thirst, 
headache, vertigo, pains in the limbs, bilious 
vomitings, and painful tumours in the groins. 
The means of cure adopted were, to evacuate 
the primae viae ; to give diluting and refreshing 
drinks ; to expel the redundant bile by emetics ; 
and to assuage the pain in the groin by fomenta- 
tions and anodynes; both cases proved fatal. 
In one of the cases, the friction with warm oil 
was tried in vain ; but it was thought useful 
in the prevention of plague : the immediate 
effect produced was, to throw the person 
rubbed into a very copious perspiration. A 
patient in typhus, M-ho was given over, re- 
covered after this discipline was administered. 

The boldness and enterprise of medical men 
are quite as striking as the courage displayed 
in battle, and evinces how niuch the power of 
encountering danger depends upon habit. — 
Many a military veteran would tremble to feed 
upon pvs; to sleep in sheets running with 
water ; or to draw up the breath of feverish 
patients. Dr. White might not, perhaps, have 
marched up to a battery with great alacrity; 
but Dr. White, in the year 1801, inoculated 
himself in the arms, with recent matter taken 
from the bubo of a pestiferous patient, and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



363 



rubbed the same matter upon different parts 
of his body. With somewhat less of courage, 
and more of injustice, he wrapt his Arab ser- 
vant in the bed of a person just dead of the 
plague. The doctor died; and the doctor's 
man (perhaps to prove his masters theory, 
that the plague was not contagious) ran away. 
The bravery of our naval officers never pro- 
duced any thing superior to this therapeutic 
heroism of the doctor's. 

Dr. Wittman has a chapter which he calls 
An Historical Journal of the Plague; but the in- 
formation which it contains amounts to nothing 
at all. He confesses that he has had no expe- 
rience in the complaint ; that he has no remedy 
to offer for its cure, and no theory for its 
cause.* The treatment of the minor plague 
of Egypt, ophthalmia, was precisely the me- 
thod common in this country ; and was gene- 
rally attended with success, where the remedies 
were applied in time. 

Nothing can be conceived more dreadful 
than was the situation of the military mission 
in the Turkish camp ; exposed to a mutinous 
Turkish soldier}^ to infection, famine, and a 
scene of the most abominable filth and putre- 
faction ; and this they endured for a year and 
a half, with the patience of apostles of peace, 
rather than war. Their occupation was to 
teach diseased barbarians, who despised them, 
and thought it no small favour that they should 
be permitted to exist in their neighbourhood. 
They had to witness the cruelties of despotism, 
and the passions of armed and ignorant multi- 
tudes ; and all this embellished with the fair 
probability of being swept off, in some grand 
engagement, by the superior tactics and ac- 
tivity of the enemy to whom the Turks were 
opposed. To the filth, irregularity, and tumult 
of a Turkish camp, as it appeared to the 
British officers in 1800, it is curious to oppose 
the picture of one drawn by Busbequius in the 
middle of the sixteenth century: "Turcse in 
proximis campis tendebant; cum vero in eo 
loco tribus mensibus vixerim,fuit mihi facultas 
videndorum ipsorum castrorum, et cognos- 
cendas aliqua ex parte disciplinas ; qua de re 
nisi panca attingam, habeas fortasse quod me 
accuses. Sumpto habitu Christianis homini- 
bus in illis locis usitato, cum uno aut altero 
comite quacunque vagabar ignotus : primum 
videbabi summo ordine cujusque corporis 
milites suis locis distributos, et, quod vix cre- 
dat, qui nostratis militiffi consuetudinem novit, 
summum eratubique silentium, summa quies, 
rixa nulla, nullum cujusquam insolens factum: 
sed ne nox quidem aut vitulatio per lasciviam 
aut ebrietatem emissa. Ad hcec summa mundi- 
ties, nulla sterquilinia, nulla purgamenta, nihil 
quod oculos aut nares oflenderet. Quicquid 
est hujusmodi, aut defodiunt Turcae, aut procul 
a conspectu submovent. Sed nee uUas com- 
potationes aut convivia, nullum alege genus, 
magnum nostratis militiee flagitium, videre 
erat: nulla lusoriarum chartarum, neque tes- 
serarum damna norunt Turcce." — Jlugeri Bus- 
bequii,Epist. 3, :p. 187. Hanoviee. 1622. There 

* One fart mentioned by Dr. Wittman appuars to be 
curious ;— that Constantinople was nearly free from 
plague during the interruption of its communication with 
Egypt. 



is at present, in the Turkish army, a curiouq 
mixture of the severest despotism in the com- 
mander, and the most rebellious insolence in 
the soldier. When the soldier misbehaves, 
the vizier cuts his head off, and places it un» 
der his arm. When the soldier is dissatisfied 
with his vizier, he fires his ball through his 
tent, and admonishes him, by these messen- 
gers, to a more pleasant exercise of his au- 
thority. That such severe punishments should 
not confer a more powerful authority, and give 
birth to abetter discipline, is less extraordinary, 
if we reflect, that we hear only that the punish- 
ments are severe, not that they are steady, and 
that they are just ; for, if the Turkish soldiers 
were always punished with the same severity 
when they were in fault, and never but then, it is 
not in human nature to suppose, that the Turk- 
ish army would long remain in as contemptible 
a state as it now is. But the governed soon 
learn to distinguish between systematic energy, 
and the excesses of casual and capricious cru- 
elty; the one awes them into submission, the 
other rouses them to revenge. 

Dr. Wittman, in his chapter on the Turkish 
army, attributes much of its degradation to the 
altered state of the corps of Janissaries ; the 
original constitution of which corps was cer- 
tainly both curious and wise. The children 
of Christians made prisoners in the predatory 
incursions of the Turks, or procured in any 
other manner, were exposed in the public 
markets of Constantinople. Any farmer or 
artificer was at liberty to take one into his 
service, contracting with government to pro- 
duce him again when he should be wanted : 
and in the mean time to feed and clothe him, 
and to educate him to such works of labour as 
are calculated to strengthen the body. As the 
Janissaries were killed off, the government 
drew upon this stock of hardy orphans for its 
levies; who, instead of hanging upon weeping 
parents at their departure, came eagerly to the 
camp, as the situation which they had always 
been taught to look upon as the theatre of 
their future glory, and towards which all their 
passions and affections had been bent, from 
their earliest years. Arrived at the camp, they 
received at first low pay, and performed me- 
nial offices for the little division of Janissaries 
to which they were attached: "Ad Gianizaros 
rescriptus primo meret menstruo stipendio, 
paulo plus minus, unius ducati cum dimidio. 
Id enim militi novitio, et rudi satis esse cen- 
sent. Sed tamen ne quid victus necessitati 
desit, cum ea decuria, in cujus contuernium 
adscitus est, gratis cibum capit, eS conditione, 
ut in culina reliquoque ministerio ei decurias 
serviat; usura annorum adeptus tyro, cnedum 
tamen suis contubernalibus honore neque sti- 
pendio par unam in sola virtute, se illis cequan- 
di, spem habet: utpote si militigg quEE prima 
se obtulerit, tale specimen sui dederit, ut dignus 
judicetur, qui tyrocinio exemptus, honoris 
gradu et stipendii magnitudine, reliquis Gian- 
izaris par habeatur. Qua quidem spe plerique 
tyrones impulsi, multa prfeclare audent, et 
fortitudine cum veteranis certant." — Busbequi- 
us, De Re Mil. cant. Tiirc. Inslit. Consilium,* The 



* This is a very spirited appeal to his countrymen on 
the tremendous power of the Turks ; and, with the sub- 



364 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMTH. 



same authof observes, that there was no rank 
or dignity in the Turkish army, to which a 
common Janissary might not arrive, by his 
courage or his capacity. This last is a most 
powerful motive to exertion, and is, perhaps, 
one leading cause of the superiority of the 
French arms. Ancient governments promote, 
from numberless causes which ought to have 
no concern with promotion : revolutionary go- 
vernments, and military despotisms, can make 
generals of persons who are fit for generals : 
to enable them to be unjust in all other in- 
stances, they are forced to be just in this. 
What, in fact, are the sultans and pashas of 
Paris, but Janissaries raised from the ranks 1 
At present, the Janissaries are procured from 
the lowest of the people, and the spirit of the 
corps is evaporated. The low state of their 
armies is in some degree imputable to this ; 
but the principal reason why the Turks are no 
longer as powerful as they were, is, that they 
are no longer enthusiasts, and that war is now 
become more a business of science than of 
personal courage. 

The person of the greatest abilities in the 
Turkish empire is the capitan pasha; he has 
disciplined some ships and regiments in the 
European fashion, and would, if he were well 
seconded, bring about some important reforms 
in the Turkish empire. But what is become 
of all the reforms of the famous Gazi Hassan? 
The blaze of partial talents is soon extin- 
guished. Never was there so great a prospect 



stittition of France for Turkey, is so applicable to the 
present times that it might be spoken in Parliament with 
great effect. 



of improvement as that afforded by the exer- 
tions of this celebrated man, who, in spite of 
the ridicule thrown upon him by Baron de 
Tott, was such a man as the Turks cannot 
expect to see again once in a century. He 
had the whole power of the Turkish empire at 
his disposal for fifteen years; and, after re- 
peated efl^orts to improve the army, abandoned 
the scheme as totally impracticable. The cele- 
brated Bonneval, in his time, and De Tott 
since, made the same attempt with the same 
success. They are not to be taught ; and six 
months after his death, every thing the present 
capitan pasha has done will be immediately 
pulled to pieces. The present grand vizier is 
a man of no ability. There are some very 
entertaining instances of his gross ignorance 
cited in the 133d page of the Travels. Upon 
the news being communicated to him that the 
earth was round, he observed that this could 
not be the case : for the people and the objects 
on the other side would in that case fall off; 
and that the earth could not move round the 
sun ; for if so, a ship bound from Jaffa to Con- 
stantinople, instead of proceeding to the capital, 
would be carried to London, or elsewhere. We 
cannot end this article without confessing with 
great pleasure the entertainment we have re- 
ceived from the work which occasions it. It 
is an excellent lounging-book, full of pleasant 
details, never wearying by prolixity, or offend- 
ing by presumption, and is apparently the pro- 
duction of a respectable, worthy man. So far 
we can conscientiously recommend it to the 
public ; for any thing else, 

Non cuivia homini contingit adire, &c. &c. Sec. 



SPEECHES. 



CATHOLIC CLAIMS. 

A Speech at a Meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeacon? y of the East Riding of Yorkshire, held at Be- 
verley, in that Riding, on Monday, April 11, 1825, /or the Purpose of Petitioning Parliament, ^c* 



Mb. Akchdeacon, — It is very disagreeable to 
33ie to diifer from so many worthy and respect- 
able clergymen here assembled, and not only 
to differ from them, but, I am afraid, to stand 
alone among them. I would much rather vote 
in majorities, and join in this, or any other po- 
litical chorus, than to stand unassisted and 
alone, as I am now doing. I dislike such meet- 
ings for such purposes — I wish I could recon- 
cile it to my conscience to stay away from 
them, and to my temperament to be silent at 
them ; but if they are called by others, I deem 
it right to attend — if I attend I must say what 
I think. If it is unwise in us to meet in taverns 
to discuss political subjects, the fault is not 
mine, for I should never think of calling such 
a meeting. If the subject is trite, no blame is 
imputable to me : it is as dull to me to handle 
such subjects, as it is to you to hear them. 
The customary promise on the threshold of an 
inn is good entertainment for man and horse. 
— If there is any truth in any part of this sen- 
tence at the Tiger, at Beverley, our horses at 
this moment must certainly be in a state of 
much greater enjoyment than the masters who 
rode them. 

It will be some amusement, however, to this 
meeting, to observe the schism ' which this 
question has occasioned in my own parish of 
Londesborough. My excellent and respecta- 
ble curate, Mr. Milestones, alarmed at the effect 
of the pope upon the East Riding, has come 
here to oppose me, and there he stands, breath- 
ing war and vengeance on the Vatican. We 
had some previous conversation on this sub- 
ject, and, in imitation of our superiors, we 
agreed not to make it a cabinet question. — Mr. 
Milestones, indeed, with that delicacy and pro- 
priety which belong to his character, expressed 
some scruples upon the propriety of voting 
against his rector, but I insisted he should come 
and vote against me. I assured him nothing 
would give me more pain than to think I had 
prevented, in any man, the free assertion of 
honest opinions. That such conduct, on his 
part, instead of causing jealousy and animosi- 
ty between us, could not, and would not fail to 
increase my regard and respect for him. 

I beg leave, sir, before I proceed on this sub- 
ject, to state what I mean by Catholic emanci- 
pation. I mean eligibility of Catholics to all 
civil offices, with the usual exceptions intro- 



* I was left at this meeting in a minority of one. A 
poor clergyman whispered to me, that he was quite of 
my way of thinking, but had nine children. I begged 
he would remain a Protestant. 



duced into all bills — jealous safeguards for the 
preservation of the Protestant church, and for 
the regulation of the intercourse with Rome — 
and, lastly, provision for the Catholic clergy. 

I object, sir, to the law as it stands at pre- 
sent, because it is impolitic, and because it is 
unjust. It is impolitic, because it exposes this 
country to the greatest danger in time of war. 
Can you believe, sir, can any man of the most 
ordinary turn for observation, believe, that the 
monarchs of Europe mean to leave this coun- 
try in the quiet possession of the high station 
which it at present holds 1 Is it not obvious 
that a war is coming on between the govern- 
ments of law and the governments of despot- 
ism 1 — that the weak and tottering race of the 
Bourbons will (whatever our wishes may be) 
be compelled to gratify the wounded vanity of 
the French, by plunging them into a war with 
England. Already they are pitying the Irish 
people, as you pity the West Indian slaves — 
already they are opening colleges for the recep- 
tion of Irish priests. Will they wait for your 
tardy wisdom and reluctant liberality 1 Is not 
the present state of Ireland a premium upon 
early invasion 1 Does it not hold out the most 
alluring invitation to your enemies to begin 1 
And if the tlag of any hostile power in Europe 
is unfurled in that unhappy country, is there 
one Irish peasant who will not hasten to join 
it 1 — and not only the peasantry, sir ; the peas- 
antry begin these things, but the peasantry do 
not end them — they are soon joined by an |^ 
order a little above them — and then, after a 
trifling success, a still superior class think it 
worth while to try the risk: men are hurried 
into a rebellion, as the oxen are pulled into the 
cave of Cacus — tail foremost. The mob first, 
who have nothing to lose but their lives, of 
which every Irishman has nine — then comes 
the shopkeeper — then the parish priest — then 
the vicar-general — then Dr. Doyle, and, lastly, 
Daniel O'Connell. But if the French were to 
make the same blunders respecting Ireland as 
Napoleon committed, if wind and weather pre- . 
served Ireland for you a second time, still all 
your resources would be crippled by watching 
Ireland. The force employed for this might 
liberate Spain and Portugal, protect India, or 
accomplish any great ptirpose of offence or 
defence. 

War, sir, seems to be almost as natural a 
state to mankind as peace ; but if you could 
hope to escape war, is there a more powerful 
receipt for destroying the prosperity of any 
country than these eternal jealousies and dis- 
2 II 2 365 



366 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tinctions between the two religions ? What 
man will carry his industry and his capital 
into a country where his yard measure is a 
sword, his pounce-box a powder-flask, and his 
ledger a return of killed and wounded ? Where 
a cat will get, there I know a cotton-spinner 
■will penetrate ; but let these gentlemen wait till 
a few of their factories have been burnt down, 
till one or two respectable merchants of Man- 
chester have been carded, and till they have 
seen the cravatists hanging the shanavists in 
cotton twist. In the present fervour for spin- 
ning, ourang-outangs, sir, would be employed 
to spin, if they could be found in sufficient 
quantities ; but miserably will those reasoners 
be disappointed who repose upon cotton — not 
upon justice^and who imagine this great 
question can be put aside, because a few hun- 
dred Irish spinners are gaining a morsel of 
bread by the overflowing industry of the Eng- 
lish market. 

But what right have you to continue, these 
rules, sir, these laws of exclusion? What ne- 
cessity can you show for it "! Is the reigning 
monarch a concealed Catholici — Is his suc- 
cessor an open one ] — Is there a disputed suc- 
cession !— Is there a Catholic pretender 1 If 
some of these circumstances are said to have 
justified the introduction, and others the con- 
tinuation of these measures, why does not the 
disappearance of all these circumstances jus- 
tify the repeal of the restrictions 1 If you must 
be unjust — if it is a luxury you cannot live 
without — reserve your injustice for the weak, 
and not for the strong — persecute the Unitari- 
ans, muzzle the Ranters, be unjust to a few 
thousand sectaries, not to six millions — gal- 
vanize a frog, don't galvanize a tiger. 

If you go into a parsonage house in the 
country, Mr. Archdeacon, you see sometimes a 
style and fashion of furniture which does very 
well for us, but which has had its day in Lon- 
don. It is seen in London no more ; it is ban- 
ished to the provinces ; from the gentlemen's 
houses of the provinces these pieces of furni- 
ture, as soon as they are discovered to be un- 
fashionable, descend to the farm-houses, then 
to cottages, then to the faggot-heap, then to 
the dunghill. As it is with furniture, so is it 
with arguments. I hear at country meetings 
many arguments against the Catholics which 
are never heard in London ; their London ex- 
istence is over — they are only to be met with in 
the provinces, and there they are fast hastening 
down, with clumsy chairs and ill-fashioned 
sofas, to another order of men. But, sir, as 
they are not yet gone where I am sure they are 
going, I shall endeavour to point out their de- 
fects, and to accelerate their descent. 

Many gentlemen now assembled at the Tiger 
Inn, at Beverley, believe that the Catholics do 
not keep faith with heretics; these gentlemen 
ought to know that Mr. Pitt put this very ques- 
tion to six of the leading Catholic universities 
in Europe. He inquired of them whether this 
tenet did or did not constitute any part of the 
Catholic faith. The question received from 
these universities the most decided negative; 
they denied that such doctrine formed any part 
of the creed of Catholics. Such doctrine, sir, 
is denied upon oath, in the bill now pending in 



Parliament, a copy of which I hold in my hand. 
The denial of such a doctrine upon oath is the 
only means by which a Catholic can relieve 
himself from his present incapacities. If a 
Catholic, therefore, sir, will not take the oath, 
he is not relieved, and remains where you wish 
him to remain ; if he does take the oath, you 
are safe froin his peril : if he has no scruple 
about oaths, of what consequence is it whether 
this bill passes, the very object of which is to 
relieve him from oaths 1 Look at the fact, sir. 
Do the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, living 
under the same state with the Catholic cantons, 
complain that no faith is kept with heretics? 
Do not the Catholics and Protestants in the 
kingdom of the Netherlands meet in one com- 
mon Parliament ? Could they pursue a com- 
mon purpose, have common friends, and com- 
mon enemies, if there was a shadow of truth in 
this doctrine imputed to the Catholics 1 The 
religious afiairs of this last kingdom are man- 
aged with the strictest impartiality to both sects? 
ten Catholics and ten Protestants (gentlemen 
need not look so much surprised to hear it), 
positively meet together, sir, in the same room. 
They constitute what is called the religious 
committee for the kingdom of the Netherlands, 
and so extremely desirous are they of preserving 
the strictest impartiality, that they have chosen 
a Jew for their secretary. Their conduct has 
been unimpeachable and unimpeached; the 
two sects are at peace with each other ; and 
the doctrine, that no faith is kept with heretics, 
would, I assure you, be very little credited at 
Amsterdam or the Hague, cities as essentially 
Protestant as the town of Beverley. 

Wretched is our condition, and still more 
wretched the condition of Ireland, if the Catho- 
lic does not respect his oath. He serves on 
grand and petty juries in both countries ; we 
trust our lives, our liberties, and our properties, 
to his conscientious reverence of an oath, and 
yet, when it suits the purposes of party to bring 
forth this argument, we say he has no respect 
for oaths. The right to a landed estate of 
3000/. per annum was decided last week, in 
York, by a jury, the foreman of which was a 
Catholic ; does any human being; harbour a 
thought, that this gentleman, whom we all 
know and respect, would, under any circum- 
stances, have thought more lightly of the obli- 
gation of an oath, than his Protestant brethren 
of the box 1 We all disbelieve these arguments 
of Mr. A. the Catholic, and of Mr. B. the Catho- 
lic : but we believe them of Catholics in gen- 
eral, of the abstract Catholics, of the Catholic 
of the Tiger Inn, at Beverley, the formidable un- 
known Catholic, that is so apt to haunt our 
clerical meetings. 

I observe that some gentlemen who argue 
this question, are very bold about other offices, 
but very jealous lest Catholic gentlemen should 
become justices of the peace. If this jealousy 
is justifiable anywhere, it is justifiable in Ire- 
land, where some of the best and most respect- 
able magistrates are Catholics. 

It is not true that the Roman Catholic reli- 
gion is what it was. I meet that assertion with 
a plump denial. The pope does not dethrone 
kings, nor give away kingdoms, does not ex- 
tort money, has given up, in some instances. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



367 



the nomination of bishops to Catholic princes, 
in some, I believe, to Protestant princes; Pro- 
testant worship is now carried on at Rome. In 
the Low Countries, the seat of the Duke of 
Alva's cruelties, the Catholic tolerates the Pro- 
testant, and sits with him in the same Parlia- 
ment — the same in Hungary — the same in 
France. The iirst use which even the Spanish 
people made of their ephemeral liberty, was to 
destroy the Inquisition. It was destroyed also 
by the mob of Portugal. I am so far from 
thinking the Catholic not to be more tolerant 
than he was, that I am much afraid the English, 
who gave the first lesson of toleration to man- 
kind, will very soon have a great deal to learn 
from their pupils. 

Some men quarrel with the Catholics, be- 
cause their language was violent in the Asso- 
elation; but a groan or two, sir, after two hun- 
dred years of incessant tyranny, may surely be 
forgiven. A few warm phrases to compensate 
the legal massacre of a million of Irishmen are 
not unworthy of our pardon. All this hardly 
deserves the eternal incapacity of holding civil 
ofBces. Then they quarrel with the Bible Soci- 
ety; in other words they vindicate that ancient 
tenet of their church, that the Scriptures are not 
to be left to the unguided judgment of the laity. 
The objection to Catholics is, that they did what 
Catholics ought to do — and do not many pre- 
lates of our church object to the Bible Society, 
and contend that the Scriptures ought not to be 
circulated without the comment of the Prayer 
Book and the Articles ? If they are right, the 
Catholics are not wrong; and if the Catholics 
are wrong, they are in such good company, that 
we ought to respect their errors. 

Why not pay their clergy 1 the Presbyterian 
clergy in the north of Ireland are paid by the 
state : the Catholic clergy of Canada are pro- 
vided for: the priests of the Hindoos are, I 
believe, in some of their temples, paid by the 
Company. You must surely admit that the 
Catholic religion (the religion of two-thirds of 
Europe), is better than no religion. I do not 
regret that the Irish are under the dominion of 
the priests. I am glad that so savage a people 
as the lower orders of Irish are under the do- 
minion of their priests; for it is a step gained 
to place such beings under any influence, and 
the clergy are always the first civilizers of man- 
kind. The Irish are deserted by their natural 
aristocracy, and I should wish to make their 
priesthood respectable in their appearance, and 
easy in their circumstances. A government 
provision has produced the most important 
changes in the opinions of the Presbyterian 
clergy of the north of Ireland, and has changed 
them from levellers and Jacobins into reasona- 
ble men ; it would not fail to improve most 
materially the political opinions of the Catholic 
priests. This cannot, however, be done, with- 
out the emancipation of the laity. No priest 
would dare to accept a salary from government, 
unless this preliminary was settled. I am 
aware it would give to government a tremen- 
dous power in that country; but I must choose 
the least of two evils. The great point, as phy- 
sicians say, in some diseases, is to resist the 
tendency to death. The great object of our day 
as to prevent the loss of Ireland, aiid the con.se- 



quent ruin of England ; to obviate the tendency 
to death ; we will first keep the patient alive, 
and then dispute about his diet and his medi- 
cine. 

Suppose a law were passed, that no clergy- 
man who had ever held a living in the East 
Riding, could be made a bishop. Many gentle- 
men here (who have no hopes of ever being 
removed from their parishes) would feel the 
restriction of the law as a considerable degra- 
dation. We should soon be pointed at as a 
lower order of clergymen. It would not be 
long before the common people would find some 
fortunate epithet for us, and it would not be long 
either before we should observe in our brethren 
of the north and west an air of superiority, 
which would aggravate not a little the justice 
of the privation. Every man feels the insult 
thrown upon his caste ; the insulted party falls 
lower, every body else becomes higher. There 
are heart-burnings and recollections. Peace 
flies from that land. The volume of parlia- 
mentary evidence I have brought here is loaded 
with the testimony of witnesses of all ranks and 
occupations, stating to the House of Commons 
the undoubted effects produced upon the lower 
order of Catholics by these disqualifying laws, 
and the lively interest they take in their re- 
moval. I have seventeen quotations, sir, from 
this evidence, and am ready to give any gen- 
tleman my references ; but I forbear to read 
them, from compassion to my reverend breth- 
ren, who have trotted many miles to vote 
against the pope, and who will trot back in the 
dark, if I attempt to throw additional light upon 
the subject. 

I have also, sir, a high-spirited class of gen- 
tlemen to deal with, who will do nothing from 
fear, who admit the danger, but think it dis- 
graceful to act as if they feared it. There is a 
degree of fear, which destroys a man's faculties, 
renders him incapable of acting, and makes 
him ridiculous. There is another sort of fear, 
which enables a man to foresee a coming evil, 
to measure it, to examine his powers of resist- 
ance, to balance the evil of submission against 
the evils of opposition or defeat, and if he thinks 
he must be ultimately overpowered, leads him 
to find a good escape in a good time. I can see 
no possible disgrace in feeling this sort of fear, 
and in listening to its suggestions. But it is 
mere cant to say, that men will not be actuated 
by fear in such questions as these. Those who 
pretend not to fear now, would be the first to 
fear upon the approach of danger ; it is always 
the case with this distant valour. Most of the 
concessions which have been given to the Irish 
have been given to fear. Ireland would have 
been lost to this country, if the British legisla- 
ture had not, with all the rapidity and precipi- 
tation of the truest panic, passed those acts 
which Ireland did not ask, but demanded in the ^ 
time of her armed associations. I should not 
think a man brave, but mad, who did not fear 
the treasons and rebellions of Ireland in time 
of war. I should think him not dastardly, but 
consummately wise, who provided against them 
in time of peace. The Catholic question has 
made a greater progress since the opening of 
this Parliament than I ever remember it to have 
made, and it has made that progress froija fear 



368 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



alone. The House of Commons were aston- 
ished by the union of ihe Irish Catholics. They 
saw that Catholic Ireland had discovered her 
strength, and stretched out her limbs, and felt 
manly powers, and called for manly treatment ; 
and the House of Commons wisely and practi- 
cally yielded to the innovations of time, and the 
shifting attitude of human affairs. 

I admit the church, sir, to be in great danger. 
I am sure the state is so also. My remedy for 
these evils is, to enter into an alliance with the 
Irish people — to conciliate the clergy, by giving 
them pensions — to loyalize the laity, by putting 
them on a footing with the Protestant. My 
remedy is the old one, approved of from the 
beginning of the world, to lessen dangers, by 
increasing friends, and appeasing enemies. I 
think it most probable, that under this system 
of crown patronage, the clergy will be quiet. 
A Catholic layman, who finds all the honours of 
the state open to him, will not, I think, run into 
treason and rebellion — will not live with a rope 
about his neck, in order to turn our bishops out, 
and put his own in ; he may not, too, be of 
opinion that the utility of his bishop will be 
four times as great, because his income is four 
times as large ; but whether he is or not, he 
will never endanger his sweet acres (large mea- 
sure) for such questions as these. Anti-Trini- 
tarian Dissenters sit in the House of Com- 
mons, whom we believe to be condemned to the 
punishments of another world. There is no 
limit to the introduction of Dissenters into 
both houses — Dissenting Lords or Dissenting 
Commons. What mischief have Dissenters 
for this last century and a half plotted against 
the Church of England? The Catholic lord 
and the Catholic gentleman (restored to their 
fair rights) will never join with levellers and Ico- 
noclasts. You will find them defending you 
hereafter against your Protestant enemies. — 
The crosier in any hand, the mitre on any head, 
are more tolerable in the eyes of a Catholic 
than do;Eological Barebones and tonsured Crom- 
well. 

We preach to our congregations, sir, that a 
tree is known by its fruits. By the fruits it 
produces I will judge your system. What has 
it done for Ireland ] New Zealand is emerg- 
ing — Otaheite is emerging — Ireland is not 
enierging — she is still veiled in darkness — her 
children, safe under no law, live in the very 
shadow of death. Has your system of exclu- 
sion made Ireland rich 1 Has it made Ireland 
loyal 1 Has it made Ireland free? Has it 
made Ireland happy 1 How is the wealth of 
Ireland proved? Is it by the naked, idle, suf- 
fering savages, who are slumbering on the mud 
floor of their cabins ? In what does the loyalty 
of Ireland consist ? Is it in the eagerness with 
which they would range themselves under the 
hostile banner of any invader, for your destruc- 
tion and for your distress ? Is it liberty when 
men breathe and move among the bayonets of 
English soldiers ? Is their happiness and their 
history any thing but such a tissue of murders, 
burnings,hanging,famine, and disease, as never 
existed before in the annals of the world ? — 
This is the system which, I am sure, with very 
different intentions, and different views of its 
effects; you are met this day to uphold. These 



are the dreadful consequences, which those- 
laws your petition prays may be continued, 
have produced upon Ireland. From the prin- 
ciples of that system, from the cruelty of those 
laws, I turn, and turn with the homage of my 
whole heart, to that memorable proclamation 
which the head of our church — the present mo- 
narch of these realms — has lately made to his 
hereditary dominions of Hanover — That no man 
should be subjected to civil incapacities on account of 
religious opinions. Sir, there have been many- 
memorable things done in this reign. Hostile 
armies have been destroyed ; fleets have been 
captured ; formidable combinations have been 
broken to pieces — but this sentiment, in the mouth 
of a king, deserves more than all glories and 
victories the notice of that historian who is des- 
tined to tell to future ages the deeds of the Eng- 
lish people. I hope he will lavish upon it 
every gem which glitters in the cabinet of genius, 
and so uphold it to the world that it will be re- 
membered when Waterloo is forgotten, and 
when the fall of Paris is blotted out from the 
memory of man. Great as it is, sir, this is not 
the only pleasure I have received in these lat- 
ter days. I have seen, within these few weeks, 
a degree of wisdom in our mercantile laws, 
such superiority to vulgar prejudice, views so 
just and so profound, that it seemed to me as if 
I was reading the works of a speculative econo- 
mist, rather than the improvement of a practical 
politician, agreed to by a legislative assembly, 
and upon the eve of being carried into execu- 
tion, for the benefit of a great people. Let who 
will be their master, I honour and praise the 
ministers who have learnt such a lesson. I re- 
joice that I have lived >o see such an improve- 
ment in English affairs— that the stubborn resis- 
tance to all improvement — the contempt of all 
scientific reasoning, and the rigid adhesion to 
every stupid error which so long characterized 
the proceedings of this country, are fast giving 
away to better things, under better men, placed 
in better circumstances. 

I confess it is not without severe pain that, 
in the midst of all this expansion and improve- 
ment, I perceive that in our profession we are 
still calling for the same exclusion — still ask- 
ing that the same fetters may be riveted on our 
fellow-creatures — still mistaking what consti- 
tutes the weakness and misfortune of the 
church, for that which contributes to its glory, 
its dignity, and its strength. Sir, there are two 
petitions at this moment in this house, against 
two of the wisest and best measures which 
ever came into the British Parliament, against 
the impending corn law and against the Catholic 
emancipation — the one bill intended to increase 
the comforts, and the other to allay the bad pas- 
sions of man. — Sir, I am not in a situation of life 
to do much good, but I will take care that I will 
not willingly do any evil. — The wealth of the 
Riding should not tempt me to petition against 
either of those bills. With the corn bill, I have 
nothing to do at this time. Of the Catholic 
emancipation bill, I shall say, that it will be 
the foundation stone of a lasting religious 
peace; that it will give to Ireland not all that 
it wants, but what it most wants, and without 
which no other boon will be of any avail. 

When this bill passes, it will be a signal to 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



369 



all'the religious sects of that unhappy country I other flag will fly in the land of Erin than that 
to lay aside their mutual hatred, and to live in flag which blends the lion with the harp — that 
peace, as equal men should live under equal flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of 
law — when this bill passes, the Orange flag freedom and of joy — the only banner in Europe 
•will fall — when this bill passes, the Green flag which floats over a limited king and a free 
of the rebel will fall— when this bill passes, no I people. 



SPEECH AT THE TAUNTON REFOEM MEETING. 



Mk. Bailiff, — This is the greatest measure 
which has ever been before Parliament in my 
time, and the most pregnant with good or evil 
to the country ; and though I seldom meddle 
with political meetings, I could not reconcile it 
to my conscience to be absent from this. 

Every year, for this half century, the ques- 
tion of reform has been pressing upon us, till 
it has swelled up at last into this great and 
awful combination ; so that almost every city 
and every borough in England are at this mo- 
ment assembled for the same purpose, and are 
doing the same thing we are doing. It damps 
the ostentation of argument and mitigates the 
pain of doubt, to believe (as I believe) that the 
ineasure is inevitable ; the consequences may 
be good or bad, but done it must be ; I defy the 
most determined enemy of popular influence, 
either now or a little time from now, to prevent 
a reform in Parliament. Some years ago, by 
timely concession, it might have been prevent- 
ed. If members had been granted to Birming- 
ham, Leeds, and Manchester, and other great 
towns, as opportunities occurred, a spirit of 
conciliation would have been evinced, and the 
people might have been satisfied with a reform, 
which though remote would have been gi'adual ; 
but with the customary blindness and insolence 
of human beings, the day of adversity was for- 
gotten, the rapid improvement of the people 
was hot noticed; the object of a certain class 



* 1 was a sincere friend to reform ; I am so still. It 
was a great deal too violent — but the only justiiication 
is, that you cannot reform as you wish, by degrees ; 
you must avail yourself of the few opportunities that 
present themselves. The reform carried, it became the 
business of every honest man to turn it to good, and to 
see that the people (drunk with their new power) did 
not ruin our ancient institutions. We have been in 
considerable danger, and that danger is not over. What 
alarms me most is the large price paid by both parties 
for popular favour. The yeomanry were put down : 
nottiing could be more grossly absurd — the people were 
rising up against the poor-laws, and such an excellent 
and permanent force was abolished because they were 
not deemed a proper force to deal with popular insur- 
rections. You may just as well object to put out a fire 
with pond water because pump water is better for the 
purpose : I say, put out the fire with the first water you 
can get ; but the truth is, radicals don't like armed yeo- 
men : they have an ugly homicide appearance. Again, 
— a million of revenue is given up in the nonsensical 
penny-post scheme, to please my old, excellent, and 
universally dissentient friend. Noah Warburton. I ad- 
mirethe whig ministry, and think they have done more 
good things tlian all the ministries since the Revolu- 
tion ; but these concessions are sad and unworthy 
marks of weakness, and fill reasonable men with just 
alarm. All this folly has taken place since they have 
become ministers upon principles of chivalry and gal- 
lantry ; and the tories, too, for fear of the people, have 
been much too quiet. There is only one principle of 
public conduct — Do what you think ri^ht, and take place 
and power as an accident. Upon any other plan, office is 
ehabbiness, labour, and sorrow. 
47 



of politicians was to please the court and to 
gratify their own arrogance by treating every 
attempt to expand the representation, and to 
increase the popular influence, with every spe- 
cies. of contempt and obloquy: the golden op- 
portunity was lost ; and now proud lips must 
swallow bitter potions. 

The arguments and the practices (as I fe- 
member to have heard Mr. Huskisson say), ^ 
which did very well twenty years ago, will not * 
do now. The people read too much, think too 
much, see too many newspapers, hear too 
many speeches, have their eyes too intensely 
fixed upon political events. But if it was pos- 
sible to put off" parliamentary reform a week 
ago, is it possible nowl When a monarch 
(whose amiable and popular manners have, I 
verily believe, saved us from a revolution) ap- 
proves the measure — when a minister of exalt- 
ed character plans and fashions it — when a 
cabinet of such varied talent and disposition 
protects it — when such a body of the aristocra- 
cy vote for it — when the h'^ndred-horse power 
of the press is labouring lor it ; — who does not 
know, after this, (whatever be the decision of 
the present Parliament,) that the measure is 
virtually carried — and that all the struggle 
between such annunciation of such a plan, 
and its completion, is tumult, disorder, disaf- 
fection, and (it may be) political ruin 1 

An honourable member of the honourable 
house, much connected with this town, and 
once its representative, seems to be amazingly 
surprised, and equally dissatisfied, at this com- 
bination of king, ministers, nobles, and people, .> 
against his opinion: — like the gentleman who 
came home from serving on a jury very much 
disconcerted, and complaining he had met with 
eleven of the most obstinate people he had ever 
seen in his life, whom he found it absolutely 
impossible by the strongest arguments to bring 
over to his way of thinking. 

They tell you, gentlemen, that you have grown 
rich and powerful with these rotten boroughs, 
and that it would be madness to part with 
them, or to alter a constitution which had pro- 
duced such happy efiects. There happens, 
gentlemen, to live near my parsonage a labour- 
ing man, of very superior character and under- 
standing to his fellow-labourers ; and who has 
made such good use of that superiority, that 
he has saved what is (for his station in life) 
a very considerable sum of money, and if his 
existence is extended to the common period, 
he will die rich. It happens, however, that he 
is (and long has been) troubled with violent 
stomachic pains, for which he has hitherto ob- 



^70 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tained no relief, and which really are the bane 
and torment of his life. Now, if my excellent 
labourer were to send for a physician, and to 
consult him respecting this malady, would it 
not be very singular language if our doctor 
were to say to him, "My good friend, you sure. 
ly will not be so rash as to attempt to get rid of 
these pains in your stomach. Have you not 
grown rich with these pains in your stomach? 
have you not risen under them from poverty 
to prosperity ? has not your situation, since you 
were first attacked, been improving every year 1 
You surely will not be so foolish and so indis- 
creet as to part with the pains in your sto- 
juachl" — Why, what would be the answer of 
the rustic to this nonsensical monition 1 " Mon- 
ster of rhubarb ! (he would say) I am not rich 
in consequence of the pains in my stomach, 
but in spite of the pains in my stomach ; and 
I should have been ten times richer, and fifty 
times happier, if I had never had any pains in 
my stomach at all." Gentlemen, these rotten 
boroughs are your pains in the stomach — and 
you would have been a much richer and greater 
people if you had never had them at all. Your 
wealth and your power have been owing, 
not to the debased and corrupted parts of 
the House of Commons, but to the many inde- 
pendent and honourable members whom it has 
always contained within its walls. If there 
had been a few more of these very valuable 
members for close boroughs, we should, I verily 
believe, have been by this time about as free 
as Denmark, Sweden, or the Germanized states 
of Italy. 

They tell you of the few men of name and 
character who have sat for boroughs ; but no- 
thing is said of those mean and menial men 
who are sent down every day by their aristo- 
cratic masters to continue unjust and unneces- 
sary wars, to prevent inquiring into profligate 
expenditure, to take money out of your pock- 
ets, or to do any other bad or base thing which 
the minister of the day may require at their 
unclean hands. What mischief, it is asked, 
have these boroughs done 1 I believe there is 
not a day of your lives in which you are not 
suffering in all the taxed commodities of life 
from the accumulation of bad votes of bad 
men. But, Mr. Bailiff, if this loere otherwise, if 
it really were a great political invention, that 
cities of 100,000 men should have no repre- 
sentatives, because those representatives were 
wanted for political ditches, political walls, and 
political parks ; that the people .should be 
bought and sold like any other commodity; 
Ihat a retired merchant should be able to go 
into the market and buy ten shares in the go- 
vernment of twenty millions of his fellow- 
subjects ; yet can such asseverations be made 
openly before the people? Wise men, men 
conversant with human affairs, may whisper 
^ such theories to each other in retirement; but 
■^ can the people ever be taught that it is right 
they should be bought and sold ? Can the ve- 
hemence of eloquent democrats be met with 
such arguments and theories ? Can the doubts 
of honest and limited men be met by such ar- 
guments and theories? The moment such a 
government is looked at by all the people it is 
lost. It is impossible to explain, defend, and 



recommend it to the mass of mankind. And 
true enough it is, that as often as misfortune 
threatens us at home, or imitation excites us 
from abroad, political reform is clamored for 
by the people — there it stands, and ever will 
stand, in the, apprehension of the multitude — 
reform, the cure of every evil — corruption, the 
source of every misfortune — famine, defeat, 
decayed trade, depressed agriculture, will all 
lapse into the question of reform. Till that 
question is set at rest (and it may be set at 
rest), all will be disaffection, tumult, and per- 
haps (which God avert!) destruction. 

But democrats and agitators (and democrats 
and agitators there are in the world), will not 
be contented with this reform. Perhaps not, 
sir; I never hope to content men whose game 
is never to be contented — but if they are not 
contented, I am sure their discontent will then 
comparatively be of little importance. I am 
afraid of them now; I have no arguments to 
answer them : but I shall not be afraid of them 
after this bill, and would tell them boldly, in 
the middle of their mobs, that there was no 
longer cause for agitation and excitement, and 
that they were intending wickedly to the peo- 
ple. You may depend upon it such a measure 
would destroy their trade, as the repeal of du- 
ties would destroy the trade of the smuggler; 
their functions would be carried on faintly, and 
with little profit; you would soon feel that your 
position was stablfe, solid, and safe. 

All would be well, it is urged, if they would 
but let the people alone. But what chance is 
there,-I demand, of these wise politicians, that 
the people will ever be let alone ; that the ora- 
tor will lay down his craft, and the demagogue 
forget his cunning ? If many things were let 
alone, which never will be let alone, the aspect 
of human affairs would be a little varied. If 
the winds would let the waves alone, there 
would be no storms. If gentlemen would let 
ladies alone, there would be no unhappy mar- 
riages, and deserted damsels. If persons who 
can reason no better than this, would leave 
speaking alone, the school of eloquence might 
be improved. I have little hopes, however, of 
witnessing any of these acts of forbearance, 
particularly the last, and so we must (however 
foolish it may appear), proceed to make laws 
for a people who, we are sure, will not be let 
alone. 

We might really imagine, from the objec- 
tions made to the plan of reform, that the great 
mass of Englishmen were madmen, robbers, 
and murderers. The kingly power is to be de- 
stroyed, the House of Lords is to be annihilat- 
ed, the church is to be ruined, estates are to be 
confiscated. I am quite at a loss to find in 
these perpetrators of crimes — in this mass of 
pillagers and lunatics — the steady and respect- 
able tradesmen and farmers, who will have 
votes to confer, and the steady and respectable 
country gentlemen, who will probably have 
votes to receive ; — it may be true of the trades- 
men of Mauritania, it may be just of the coun- 
try gentlemen of Fez — it is any thing but true 
of the English people. The English are a 
tranquil, phlegmatic, money-loving, money-get- 
ting people, who want to be quiet — and would 
be quiet if they were not surrounded by evils 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



371 



of such magnitude, that it would be baseness | ment : and to put an end to these enormous 

abuses is called corporation robbery, and there 
are some persons wild enough to talk of com- 
pensation. This principle of compensation 
you will consider perhaps in the following in- 
stance to have been carried as far as sound 
discretion permits. When I was a young man, 
the place in England I remember as most no- 
torious for highwaymen and their exploits was 
Finchley Common, near the metropolis ; but 
Finchley Common, gentlemen, in the progress 
of improvement, came to be enclosed, and the 
highwaymen lost by these means the opportu- 
nity of exercising their gallant vocation. I 
remember a friend of mine proposed to draw- 
up for them a petition to the House of Com- 
mons for compensation, which ran in this man- 
ner— "We, your loyal highwaymen of Finch- 
ley Common, and its neighbourhood, having, 
at great expense, laid in a stock of blunder- 
busses, pistols, and othet instruments for plun- 
dering the public, and finding ourselves impeded 
in the exercise of our calling by the said en- 
closure of the said Common of Finchley, 
humbly petition your honourable house will be 
pleased to assign to us such compensation as 
your honourable house in its wisdom and jus- 
tice may think fit." Gentlemen, I must leave 
the application to you. 

An honourable baronet says, if Parliament 



and pusillanimity not to oppose to them the 
strongest constitutional resistance. 

Then it is said that there is to be a lack of 
talent in the new Parliament: it is to be com- 
. posed of ordinary and inferior persons, who 
will bring the government of the country into 
contempt. But the best of all talents, gentle- 
■ men, is to conduct our affairs honestly, dili- 
gently, and economically — and this talent will, 
I am sure, abound as much in the new Parlia- 
ment as in many previous parliaments. Par- 
liament is not a school for rhetoric and decla- 
mation, where a stranger would go to hear a 
speech, as he would go to the opera to hear a 
song ; but if it were otherwise — if eloquence 
be a necessary ornament of, and an indispen- 
sable adj unct to, popular assemblies — can it ever 
be absent from popular assemblies ? I have 
always found that all things moral or physical 
grow in the soil best suited for them. Show 
me a deep and tenacious earth — and I am sure 
the oak will spring up in it. In a low and damp 
soil I am equally certain of the alder and the 
willow^ Gentlemen, the free Parliament of a 
free people is the native soil of eloquence — 
and in that soil will it ever flourish and abound 
— there it will produce those intellectual effects 
which drive before them whole tribes and na- 
tions of the human race, and settle the desti- 



nies of man. And, gentlemen, if a few persons is dissolved, I will go to my borough with the 



of a less elegant and aristocratic description 
were to become members of the House of Com- 
mons, where would be the evil 1 They would 
probably understand the common people a 
great deal better, and in this way the feelings 
and interests of all classes of people would be 
better represented. The House of Commons, 
thus organized, will express more faithfully 
the opinions of the people. 

The people are sometimes, it is urged, gross- 
ly mistaken ; but are kings never mistaken 1 
Are the higher orders never mistaken 1 — never 
"wilfully corrupted by their own interests 1 The 
people have at least this superiority, that they 
always intend to do what is right. 

The argument of fear is very easily disposed 
of: he who is afraid of a knock on the head 
or a cut on the cheek is a coward ; he who is 
afraid of entailing greater evils on the country 
by refusing the remedy than by applying it, 
and who acts in pursuance of that conviction, 
is a wise and prudent man — nothing can be 
more different than personal and political fear ; 
it is the artifice of our opponents to confound 
them together. 

The right of disfranchisement, gentlemen, 
must exist somewhere, and where but in Par- 
liament 1 If not, how was the Scotch union, 
how was the Irish union, effected 1 The Duke 
of Wellington's administration disfranchised 
at one blow 200,000 Irish voters — for no fault 
of theirs, and for no other reason than the best 
of all reasons, that public expediency required 
it. These very same politicians are now look- 
ing in an agony of terror at the disfranchise- 
ment of corporations containing twenty or 
thirty persons, sold to their representatives, 
who are themselves perhaps sold to the govern- 



bill in my hand, and will say, "I know of no 
crime you have committed, I found nothing 
proved against you : I voted against the bill, 
and am come to fling myself upon your kind- 
ness, with the hope that my conduct will be 
approved, and that you will return me again to 
Parliament." That honourable baronet may, 
perhaps, receive from his borough an answer 
he little expects — "We are above being bribed 
by such a childish and unworthy artifice ; we 
do not choose to consult our own interest at 
the expense of the general peace and happi- 
ness of the country; we are thoroughly con- 
vinced a reform ought to take place; we are 
very willing to sacrifice a privilege we ought 
never to have possessed to the good of the 
community, and we will return no one to Par- 
liament who is not deeply impressed with the 
same feeling." This I hope is the answer that 
gentleman will receive, and this, I hope, will 
be the noble and generous feeling of every bo- 
rough in England. 

The greater part of human improvements, 
gentlemen, I am sorry to say, are made after 
war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: 
mankind seem to object to every species of 
gratuitous happiness, and to consider every 
advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased 
by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a sin- 
gular act of God's providence, if this great 
nation, guided by these warnings of history, 
not waiting till tumult for reform, nor trusting 
reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the 
people, shall amend their decayed institutions 
at a period when they are ruled by a popular 
monarch, guided by an upright minister, and 
blest with profound peace. 



372 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



SPEECH AT TAUNTON. 



Mb. Chairmaw, — I am particularly happy to 
assist on this occasion, because I think that the 
accession of the present king is a marked and 
important era in English history. Another 
coronation has taken place since T have been 
in the world, but I never assisted at its celebra- 
tion. I saw in it a change of masters, not a 
change of system. I did not understand the joy 
which it occasioned. I did not feel it, and I did 
not counterfeit what I did not feel. 

I think very differently of the accession of his 
present majesty. I believe I see in that acces- 
sion a great probability of serious improvement, 
and a great increase of public happiness. The 
evils which have been long complained of by 
bold and intelligent men are now universally 
admitted. The public feeling, which has been so 
often appealed to, is now intensely excited. The 
remedies which have so often been called for 
are now at last vigorously, wisely and faith- 
fully applied. I admire, gentlemen, in the pre- 
sent king, his love of peace — I admire in him 
his disposition to economy, and I admire in 
him, above all, his faithful and honorable con- 
duct to those who happen to be his ministers. 
He was, I believe, quite as faithful to the Duke 
of Wellington as to Lord Grey, and would, I 
have no doubt, be quite as faithful to the politi- 
cal enemies of Lord Grey (if he thought fit to 
employ them), as he is to Lord Grey himself. 
There is in this reign, no secret influence, no 
double ministry — on whomsoever he confers 
the office, to him he gives that confidence with- 
out which the office cannot be holden with 
honour, nor executed with effect. He is not 
only a peaceful king, and an economical king, 
but he is an honest king. So far, I believe, 
every individual of this company will go with 
me. There is another topic of eulogium, on 
which, before I sit down, I should like to say 
a few words — I mean the willingness of our 
present king to investigate abuses and to re- 
form them. If this subject is not unpleasant, I 
will offer upon it a very few observations — a 
few, because the subject is exhausted, and be- 
cause, if it were not, I have no right, from my 
standing or my situation in this county, to de- 
tain you long upon that or any other subject. 

In criticising this great question of reform, I 
think there is some injustice done to its authors. 
Men seem to suppose that a minister can sit 
down and make a plan of reform with as much 
ease and as much exactness, and with as com- 
plete a gratification of his own will, as an 
architect can do in building or altering a house. 
But a minister of state (it should be in justice 
observed), works in the midst of hatred, injus- 
tice, violence, and the Avorst of human passions 
— his works are not the works of calm and 
unembarrassed wisdom — they are not the best 
that a dreamer of dreams can imagine. It is 
enough if they are the best plans which the 
passions, parties, and prejudices of the times 
in which he acts will permit. In passing are- 
form bill, the minister overthrows the long and 
deep interest which powerful men have in 



existing abuses — he subjects himself to the 
deepest hatred, and encounters the bitterest op- 
position. Auxiliaries he must have, and auxili- 
aries he can only find among the people^ — not 
the mob — but the great mass of those who have 
opinions worth hearing, and property worth de- 
fending — a greater mass, I am happy to say, in 
this country than exists in any other country on 
the face of the earth. Now, before the mid- 
dling orders will come forward with one great 
impulse, they must see that something is of- 
fered them worth the price of contention ; they 
must see that the object is great and the gain 
serious. If you call them in at all, it must not 
be to displace one faction at the expense of 
another, but to put down all factions — to sub- 
stitute puritj' and principle for corruption — to 
give to the many that political power which the 
few have unjustly taken to themselves — to get 
i-id of evils so ancient and so vast that any 
other arm than the public arm would be lifted- 
up against them in vain. This, then, I say, is 
one of the reasons why ministers have be«i 
compelled to make their measures a little more 
vigorous and decisive than a speculative phi- 
losoper, sitting in his closet, might approve of. 
They had a mass of opposition to contend with 
which could be encountered only by a general 
exertion of public spirit — they had a long-suf- 
fering and an often deceived public to appeal 
to, who were determined to suffer no longer, 
and to be deceived no more. The alternative 
was to continue the ancient abuses, or to do 
what they have done — and most firmly do I be- 
lieve that you and I, and the latest posterity of 
us all, will rejoice in the decision they have 
made. Gradation has been called for in re- 
form : we might, it is said, have taken thirty or 
forty years to have accomplished what we have 
done in one year. ' It is not so much the mag- 
nitude of what you are doing we object to, as 
the suddenness.' But was not gradation ten- 
dered ] Was it not said by the friends of re- 
form — 'Give us Birmingham and Manchester, 
and we will be satisfied?' and what was the 
answer 1 ' No Manchester, no Birmingham, 
no reform in any degree — all abuses as they 
are — all perversions as we found them — the 
corruptions which our fathers bequeathed us 
we will hand down unimpaired and unpurified 
to our children.' But I would say to the gra- 
duate philosopher,—' How often does a reform- 
ing minister occur V and if such are so com- 
mon that you can command them when you 
please, how often does a reforming monarch 
occur 1 and how often does the conjunction 
occur 1 Are you sure that a people, bursting 
into new knowledge, and speculating on every 
public event, will wait for your protracted re- 
form ? Strike while the iron is hot — up with 
the arm, and down with the hammer, and up 
again with the arm, and down again with the 
hammer. The iron is hot — the opportunity 
exists now — if you neglect it, it may not return 
for an hundred years to come. 

There is an argument I have often heard, and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



37» 



that is this — Are we to be afraid ? — is this mea- 
sure to be carried by intimidation 1 — is the 
House of Lords to be overawed ? But this 
style of argument proceeds from confounding 
together two sets of feelings which are entirely 
distinct — personal fear and political fear. If 
I am afraid of voting against this bill, because 
a mob may gather about the house of Lords — 
because stones may be flung at my head — be- 
cause my house may be attacked by a mob, I 
am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public 
affairs ; but I may rationally be afraid of pro- 
ducing great public agitation — I may be honour- 
ably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs 
and conspiracies — I may be wisely afraid of 
making the aristocracy hateful to the great body 
of the people. This surely has no more to do 
with fear than a loose identity of name ; it is in 
fact prudence of the highest order; the delibe- 
rate reflection of a wise man who does not like 
what he is going to do, but likes still less the 
consequence of not doing it, and who, of two 
evils, chooses the least. 

There are some men much afraid of what is 
to happen : my lively hope of good is, I con- 
fess, mingled with very little apprehension, but 
of one thing I must be candid enough to say 
that I am much afraid, and that is of the opinion 
now increasing, that the people are become in- 
different to reform ; and of that opinion I am 
afraid, because I believe in an evil hour it may 
lead some misguided members of the upper 
house of Parliament to vote against the bill. 
As for the opinion itself, I hold it in the utmost I 



I contempt. The people are waiting in virtuous 
patience for the completion of the bill, because 
they know it is in the hands of men who do not 
mean to deceive them. 1 do not believe they have 
given up one atom of reform — I do not believe 
that a great people were ever before so firmly 
bent upon any one measure. I put it to any man. 
of common sense, whether he believes it possi- 
ble, after the king and Parliament have acted as 
they have done, that the people will ever be 
content with much less than the present bill 
contains. If a contrary principle is acted upon, 
and the bill attempted to be got rid of altogether, 
I confess I tremble for the consequences, which 
I believe will be of the worst and most painful 
description; and this I say deliberately, after 
the most diligent and extensive inquiry. — 
Upon that diligent inquiry I repeat again my 
firm conviction, that the desire of reform has 
increased, not diminished ; that the present re- 
pose is not indifference, but the calmness of 
victory, and the tranquillity of success. When 
I see all the wishes and appetites of created 
beings changed, when I see an eagle, that after 
long confinement, has escaped into the air, 
come back to his cage and his chains, — when 
I see the emancipated negro asking again for 
the hoe which has broken down his strength, 
and the lash which has tortured his body, I will 
then, and not till then, believe that the English 
people will return to their ancient degradation 
— that they will hold out their repentant hands 
for those manacles which at this moment lay 
broken into links at their feet. 



SPEECH AT TAUNTON. 



[From the " Taunton CotjEiER" of October 12th, 1831.] 



Thk Reverenb Stdnet Smith rose and said : 
— Mr. Bailiff, I have spoken so often on this 
subject, that I am sure both you and the gen- 
tlemen here present will be obliged to me for 
saying but little, and that favour I am as will- 
ing to confer, as you can be to receive it. I 
feel most deeply the event which has taken 
place, because, by putting the two houses of 
Parliament in collision with each other, it will 
impede the public business, and diminish the 
public prosperity. I feel it as a churchman, 
because I cannot but blush to see so many dig- 
nitaries of the church arrayed against the wishes 
and happiness of the people. I feel it more than 
all, because I believe it will sow the seeds of 
deadly hatred between the aristocracy and the 
great mass of the people. The loss of the bill 
I do not feel, and for the best of all possible 
reasons — because I have not the slightest idea 
that it is lost. I have no more doubt, before 
the expiration of the winter, that this bill will 
pass, than I have that the annual tax bills will 
pass, and greater certainty than this no man can 
have, for Franklin tells us, there are but two 
things certain in this world — death and taxes. 
As for the possibility of the House of Lords 
preventing ere long a reform of Parliament, I 



hold it to be the most absurd notion that ever 
entered into human imagination. I do not 
mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the 
lords to stop the progress of reform, reminds 
me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, 
and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Part- 
ington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, 
there set in a great flood upon that town — the 
tide rose to an incredible height — the waves 
rushed in upon the houses, and every thing 
was threatened with destruction. In the midst 
of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Part- 
ington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at 
the door of her house with mop and pattens, 
trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, 
and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic 
Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Part- 
ington's spirit was up ; but I need not tell you 
that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic 
Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excel- 
lent at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not 
have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be 
at your ease — be quiet and steady. You will 
beat Mrs. Partington. 

They tell you, gentlemen, in the debates by 
which we have been lately occupied, that the 
bill is not justified by experience. I do not 
2 I 



sm 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



think this true, but if it were true, nations are 
sometimes compelled to act without experience 
for their guide, and to trust to their own saga- 
city for the anticipation of consequences. The 
instances where this country has been compel- 
led thus to act have been so eminently success-: 
ful, that I see no cause for fear, even if we 
were acting in the manner imputed to us by our 
enemies. What precedents and what experi- 
ence were there at the Reformation, when the 
country, with one unanimous elfon, pushed out 
the pope, and his grasping and ambitious cler- 
gy 1 — What experience, when, at the Revolu- 
tion, we drove away our ancient race of kings, 
and chose another family more congenial to 
our free principles 1 — And yet to those two 
events, contrary to experience, and unguided 
by precedents, we owe all our domestic happi- 
ness, and civil and religious freedom — and 
having got rid of corrupt priests and despotic 
kings, by our sense and our courage, are we 
now to be intimidated by the awful danger of 
extinguishing boroughmongers, and shaking 
from our necks the ignominious yoke which 
their baseness has imposed upon us 1 Go on, 
they say, as you have done for these hundred 
years last past. I answer, it is impossible — 
five hundred people now write and read where 
one hundred wrote and read fifty years ago. 
The iniquities and enormities of the borough 
system are now known to the meanest of the 
people. You have a different sort of men to 
deal with — you must change because the beings 



whom you govern are changed. After all, and 
to be short, I must say that it has always ap- 
peared to me to be the most absolute nonsense 
that we cannot be a great, or a rich and happy 
nation, without suffering ourselves to be bought 
and sold every five years like a pack of negro 
slaves. I hope I am not a very rash man, but 
I would launch boldly into this experiment 
without any fear of consequences, and I believe 
there is not a man here present who would not 
cheerfully embark with me. As to the enemies 
of the bill, who pretend to be reformers, I know 
them, I believe, better than you do, and I ear- 
nestly caution you against them. You will have 
no more of reform than they are compelled to 
grant — you will have no reform at all, if they 
can avoid it — you will be hurried into a war ta 
turn your attention from reform. They do not 
understand you — they will not believe in the 
improvement you have made — they think the 
English of the present day are as the English 
of the times of Queen Anne or George the First, 
They know no more of the present state of their 
own country, than of the state o-f the Esquimaux 
Indians. Gentlemen, I view the ignorance of 
the present state of the country with the most 
serious concern, and I believe they will one day 
or another waken into conviction with horror 
and dismay. I will omit no means of rousing 
them to a sense of their danger ; for this object 
I cheerfully sign the petition proposed by Dr. 
Kinglake, which I consider to be the wisest and 
most moderate of the two. 



SPEECH BY THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Stick to the bill — it is your Magna Chafta, 
and your Runnymede. King John made a pre- 
sent to the barons. King William has made a 
similar present to you. Never mind, common 
qualities good in common times. If a man 
does not vote for the bill he is unclean — the 
plague-spot is upon him ; push him into the 
lazaretto of the last century, with Wetherell 
and Saddler ; purify the air before you approach 
him ; bathe your hands in chloride of lime, if 
you have been contaminated by his touch. 

So far from its being a merely theoretical 
improvement, I put it to any man, who is him- 
self embarked in a profession, or has sons in 
the same situation, if the unfair iniiuence of 
boroughmongers has not perpetually thwarted 
him in his lawful career of ambition, and pro- 
fessional emolument] "I have been in three 
general engagements at sea," said an old sailor 
— " have been twice wounded ; — I commanded 
the boats when the French frigate, the Astbo- 
LABE, was cut out SO gallantly." "Then you 
are made a post captain 1" " No. I was very 
near it ; but — Lieutenant Thomson cut me out, 
as I cut out the French frigate ; his father is 
town clerk of the borough of which Lord 

F is member, and there my chance 

was finished." In the same manner, all over 
England, you will find great scholars rotting on 
curacies — brave captains starving in garrets — 



profound lawyers decayed and mouldering in 
the inns of court, because the parsons, warriors, 
and advocates of boroughmongers must be 
crammed to saturation, before there is a morsel 
of bread for the man who does not sell his votes, 
and put his country up to auction ; and though 
this is of every day occurrence, the borough 
system, we are told, is no practical evil. 

Who can bear to walk through a slaughter- 
house 1 blood, garbage, stomachs, entrails, legs, 
tails, kidneys, horrors — I often walk a mile 
about to avoid it. What a scene of disgust and 
horror is an election — the base and infamous 
traffic of principles — a candidate of high cha- 
racter reduced to such means — the perjury and 
evasion of agents — the detestable rapacity of 
voters — the ten days' dominion of mammon 
and Belial. The bill lessens it — begins the 
destruction of such practices — affords some 
chance, and some means of turning public 
opinion against bribery, and of rendering it in- 
famous. 

But the thing I cannot, and will not bear, is 
this; — what right has this lord, or that marquis, 
to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the shape of 
boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me T 
And how are these masses of power re-distri- 
buted 1 The eldest son of my lord is just come 
from Eton — he knows a good deal about ^neas, 
and Dido, Apollo, and Daphne — and that is all; 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



375 



and to this boy, his father gives a six hundredth 
part of the power of making laws, as he would 
give him a horse, or a double-barreled gun. 
Then Vellum, the steward, is put in — an admi- 
rable man; — he has raised the estates — watched 
the progress of the family road, and canal bills 
— ^and Vellum shall help to rule over the people 
of Israel. A neighbouring country gentleman, 
Mr. Plumpkin, hunts with my lord — opens him 
a gate or two, while the hounds are running — 
dines with my lord — agrees with my lord — 
wishes he could rival the Southdown sheep of 
my lord — and upon Plumpkin is conferred a 
portion of the government. Then there is a 
distant relation of the same name, in the coun- 
ty militia, with white teeth, who calls up the 
carriage at the opera, and is always wishing 
O'Connell was hanged, drawn, and quartered— 
then a barrister, who has written an article in 
the Quarterly, and is very likely to speak, and 
refute M'Culloch ; and these five people, in 
whose nomination I have no more agency than 
I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of 
the Bosphorus, are to make laws for me and 
my family — to put their hands in my purse, and 
to sway the future destinies of this country ; 
and when the neighbours step in, and beg per- 
mission to say a few words before these persons 
are chosen, there is an universal cry of ruin, 
confusion, and destruction ; — we have become 
a great people under Vellum and Plumpkin — 
under Vellum and Plumpkin our ships have 
covered the ocean — under Vellum and Plump- 
kin our armies have secured the strength of the 
hills — to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not 
reform, but revolution. 

Was there ever such a ministry 1 Was there 
ever before a real ministry of the people 1 Look 
at the condition of the country when it was 
placed in their hands : the state of the house 
when the incoming tenant took possession : 
windows broken, cTiimneys on fire, mobs round 
the house threatening to pull it down, roof tum- 
bling, rain pouring in. Ii was courage to occu- 
py it; it was a miracle to save it; it will be the 
glory of glories to enlarge and expand it, and to 
make it the eternal palace of wise and temperate 
freedom. 

Proper examples have been made among the 
unhappy and misguided disciples of Swing : a 
rope had been carried round O'Connell's legs, 
and a ring inserted in Gobbett's nose. Then 
the game laws ! ! ! Was ever conduct so shabby 
as that of the two or three governments which 
preceded that of Lord Grey 1 The cruelties and 
enormities of this code had been thoroughly 
exposed ; and a general conviction existed of 
the necessity of a change. Bills were brought 
in by various gentlemen, containing some tri- 
fling alteration in this abominable code, and 
even these were sacrificed to the tricks and 
manoeuvres of some noble Nimrod, who availed 
himself of the emptiness of the town in July, 
and flung out the bill. Government never 
stirred a step. The fulness of the prisons, the 
wretchedness and demoralization of the poor, 
never came across them. The humane and 
considerate Peel never once offered to extend 
his aegis over them. It had nothing to do with 
the state of party; and some of their double- 
barreled voters might be oflended. In the mean 



time, for every ten pheasants which fluttered in 
the wood, one English peasant was rotting iu 
jail. No sooner is Lord Althorp chancellor of 
the exchequer, than he turns out of the house a 
trumpery and (perhaps) an insidious bill for 
the improvement of the game laws ; and in an 
instant offers the assistance of government for 
the abolition of the whole code. 

Then look at the gigantic Brougham, sworn 
in at 12 o'clock, and before 6, has a bill on the 
table abolishing the abuses of a court which 
has been the curse of the people of England 
for centuries. For twenty-five long years did 
Lord Eldon sit in that court, surrounded with 
misery and sorrow, which he never held up a 
finger to alleviate. The widow and the orphan 
cried to him as vainly as the town crier cries 
when he offers a small reward for a full purse ; 
the bankrupt of the court became the lunatic of 
the court ; estates mouldered away, and man- 
sions fell down ; but the fees came in, and all 
was well. But in an instant the iron mace of 
Brougham shivered to atoms this house of 
fraud and of delay ; and this is the man who 
will help to govern you ; who bottoms his repu- 
tation on doing good to you ; who knows, that 
to reform abuses is the safest basis of fame and 
the surest instrument of power; who uses the 
highest gifts of reason, and the most splendid 
efforts of genius, to rectify those abuses, which 
all the genius and talent of the profession* have 
hitherto been employed to justify, and to pro- 
tect. Look to Brougham, and turn you to that 
side where he waves his long and lean finger; 
and mark well that face which nature has mark- 
ed so forcibly — which dissolves pensions — 
turns jobbers into honest men — scares away 
the plunderer of the public— and is a terror to 
him who doeth evil to the people. But, above 
all, look to the northern earl, victim, before this 
honest and manly reign, of the spitefulness of 
the court. You may now, for the first time, 
learn to trust in the professions of a minister; 
you are directed by a man who prefers charac- 
ter to place, and who has given such unequivo- 
cal proofs of honesty and patriotism, that his 'f 
image ought to be amongst your household ^ 
gods, and his name- to be lisped by your chil- M 
dren ; two thousand years hence it will be a le- M 
gend like the fable of Perseus and Andromeda; 1| 
Britannia changed to a mountain — two hundred 
rotten animals menacing her destruction, till a 
tall earl, armed with schedule A., and followed 
by his page Russell, drives them into the deep, 
and delivers over Britannia in safety to crowds 
of ten-pound renters, who deafen the air with 
their acclamations. Forthwith, Latin verses 
upon this — school exercises — boys whipt, and 
all the usual absurdities of education. Don't 
part with an administration composed of Lord 
Grey and Lord Brougham; and not only these, 
but look at them all — the mild wisdom of Lans- 
downe — the genius and extensive knowledge of 
Holland, in whose bold and honest life there is 
no varying or shadow of change — the unexpect- 
ed and exemplary activity of Lord Melbourne 
— and the rising parliamentary talents of Stan- 
ley. You are ignorant of your best interests, 



* Lord Lyndliurst is an exception ; I firmly believe he 
had no wish to perpetuate the abuses of the Court of 
Chancery. 



an 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



if every vote you can bestow is not given to 
such a ministry as this. 

You will soon find an alteration of behaviour 
in the upper orders when elections become 
real. You will find that you are raised to the 
importance to which you ought to be raised. 
The merciless ejector, the rural tyrant, will be 
restrained within the limits of decency and hu- 
manity, and will improve their own characters, 
at the same time that they better your condition. 
It is not the power of aristocracy that will be 
destroyed by these measures, but the unfair 
power. If the Duke of Newcastle is kind and 
obliging to his neighbours, he will probably 
lead his neighbours ; if he is a man of sense, he 
will lead them more certainly, and to a better 
purpose. All this is as it should be ; but the 
^ Duke of Newcastle, at present, by buying cer- 
tain old houses, could govern his neighbours, 
and legislate for them, even if he had not five 
grains of understanding, and if he were the most 
churlish and brutal man under heaven. The 
present slate of things renders unnecessary all 
those important virtues, which rich and well- 
born men, under a better system, would exer- 
cise for the public good. The Duke of New- 
castle (I mention him only as an instance,) 
Lord Exeter will do as well, but either of those 
noblemen, depending not upon walls, arches, 
and abutments, for their power— but upon mer- 
cy, charity, forbearance, indulgence, and exam- 
ple — would pay this price, and lead the people 
by their affections ; one would be the god of 
Stamford, and the other of Newark. This union 
of the great with the many is the real healthy 
state of a country; such a country is strong to 
invincibility — and this strength the borough 
system entirely destroys. 

Cant words creep in, and affect quarrels ; the 
changes are rung between revolution and re- 
form ; but, first settle whether a wise govern- 
ment ought to attempt the measure — whether 
any thing is wanted — whether less would do — 
and, having settled this, mere nomenclature 
becomes of very little consequence. But, after 
all, if it is revolution, and not reform, it will 
only induce me to receive an old political toast, 
in a twofold meaning, and with twofold pleasure. 
^, When King William and the great and glorious 
11^' '^ Revolution are given, I shall think not only of 
■ -> escape from bigotry, but exemption from cor- 
ruption ; and I shall thank Providence, which 
has given us a second King William for the 
destruction of vice, as the other, of that name, 
was given us for the conservation of freedom. 
All formal political changes, proposed by 
these very men, it is said, were mild and gentle, 
compared to this ; true, but are you on Satur- 
day night to seize your apothecary by the throat, 
and to say to him, " Subtle compounder, frau- 
dulent posologist, did not you order me a drachm 
of this medicine on Monday morning, and now 
you declare that nothing short of an ounce can 
do me any good V " True enough," would he of 
the phials reply, " biol you did not take the drachm 
on Monday morning — that makes all the differ- 
ence, my dear sir ; if you had done as I advised 
you at first, the small quantity of medicine 
would have sufficed; and instead of being in a 
night-gown and slippers up stairs, you would 
have been walking vigorously in Piccadilly. Do 



as you please — and die if you please ; but don't 
blame me because you despised my advice, and 
by your own ignorance and obstinacy have ea- 
tailed upon yourself tenfold rhubarb, and unli- 
mited infusion of senna." 

Now see the consequences of having a manly 
leader, and a manly cabinet. Suppose ihey 
had come out with a little ill-fashoned seven 
months' reform ; what would have been the con- 
sequence 1 The same opposition from the to- 
nes — that would have been quite certain — and 
not a single reformer in England satisfied with 
the measure. You have now a real reform, 
and a fair share of power delegated to the people. 

The anti-reformers cite the increased power 
of the press — this is the very reason why I want 
an increased power in the House of Commons. 
The Times, Herald, Advertiser, Globe, Sun, 
Courier, and Chronicle, are an heptarchy, 
which govern this country, and govern it be- 
cause the people are so badly represented. I 
am perfectly satisfied, that with a fair and ho- 
nest House of Commons the power of the press 
would diminish — and that the greatest authority 
would centre in the highest place. 

Is it possible for a gentleman to get into 
Parliament, at present, without doing things he 
is utterly ashamed of — without mixing himself 
up with the lowest and basest of mankind? 
Hands, accustomed to the scented lubricity of 
soap, are defiled with pitch, and contaminated 
with filth. Is there not some inherent vice in a 
government, which cannot be carried on but 
with such abominable wickedness, in which no 
gentleman can mingle without moral degrada- 
tion ; and the practice of crimes, the very im- 
putation of which, on other occasions, he would 
repel at the hazard of his life 1 

What signifies a small majority in the house 1 
The miracle is, that there should have been 
any majority at all ; that there was not an im- 
mense majority on the other side. It was a 
very long period before the courts of justice in 
Jersey could put down smuggling; and why! 
The judges, counsel, attorneys, crier of the 
court, grand and petty jurymen, were all smug- 
glers, and the high sheriff and the constable 
were running goods every moonlight night. 

How are you to do without a government? 
And what other government, if this bill is ulti- 
mately lost, could possibly be found 1 How 
could any country defray the ruinous expense 
of protecting with troops and constables, the 
Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, who 
literally would not be able to walk from the 
Horse Guards to Grosvenor Square, without 
two or three regiments of foot to screen them 
from the mob ; and in these hollow squares the 
hero of Waterloo would have to spend his po- 
litical life. By the whole exercise of his splen- 
did military talents, by strong batteries at 
Bootle's, and White's, he might, on nights of 
great debate, reach the House of Lords ; but Sir 
Robert would probably be cut ofi", and nothing 
could save his Twist and Lewis. 

The great majority of persons returned by 
the new boroughs would either be men of high 
reputation for talents, or persons of fortune 
known in the neighborhood ; they have pro- 
perty and character to lose. Why are they to 
plunge into mad and revolutionary projects of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



377 



pillaging the public creditor! It is not the in- 
terest of any such man to do it ; he would lose 
more by the destruction of public credit thau 
what he would gain by a remission of what he 
paid for the interest of the public debt. And if 
it is not the interest of anyone to act in this 
manner, it is not the interest of the mass. How 
many, also, of these new legislators would there 
be, who were not themselves creditors of the 
stale 1 Is it the interest of such men to create 
a revolution, by destroying the constitutional 
power of the House of Lords, or of the king 1 
Does there exist in persons of that class, any 
disposition for such changes 1 Are not all 
feelings, and opinions, and prejudices, on the 
opposite side ? The majority of the new mem-, 
bers will be landed gentlemen : their genus is 
utterly distinct from the revolutionary tribe; 
they have molar teeth ; they are destitute of the 
carnivorous and incisive jaws of political ad- 
venturers. 

There will be mistakes at first, as there are 
in all changes. All young ladies will imagine 
(as soon as this bill is carried) that they will 
be instantly married. Schoolboys believe that 
gerunds and supines will be abolished, and 
that currant tarts must ultimately come down 
in price ; the corporal and sergeant are sure of 
double pay ; bad poets will expect a demand for 
their epics ; fools will be disappointed, as they 
always are ; reasonable men, who know what 
to expect, will find that a very serious good has 
been obtained. 

What good to the hewer of wood and the 
drawer of water 1 How is he benefited, if Old 
Sarum is abolished, and Birmingham members 
created! But if you ask this question of reform, 
you must ask it of a great number of other mea- 
sures. How is he benefited by Catholic emanci- 
pation, by the repeal of the Corporation and Test 
Act, by the Revolution of 168S, by any great po- 
litical change 1 by a good government ? In the 
firstplace, if many are benefited, and the lower 
orders are not injured, this alone is reason 
enough for the change. But the hewer of wood 
and the drawer of water are benefited by reform. 
Reform will produce economy and investiga- 
tion ; there will be fewer jobs, and a less lavish 
expenditure ; wars will not be persevered in for 
years after the people are tired of them ; taxes 
will be taken off" the poor and laid upon the rich : 
democratic habits will be more common in a 
country where the rich are forced to court the 
poor for political power; cruel and oppressive 
punishments (such as those for night poaching), 
will be abolished. If you steal a pheasant, you 
will be punished as you ought to be, but not sent 
away from your wife and children for seven 
years. Tobaccowillbe2f/. per lb. cheaper. Can- 
dles will fall in price. These last results of an 
improved government will be felt. We do not 
pretend to abolish poverty or to prevent wretch- 
edness ; but if peace, economy, and justice are 
the results of reform, a number of small bene- 
fits, or rather of benefits which appear small to 
us but not to them, will accrue to millions of 
people ; and the connection between the exis- 
tence of John Russell, and ihe reduced price of 
bread and cheese, will be as clear as it has been 
the object of his honest, wise, and useful life to 
make it. 

48 



Don't be led away by such nonsense ; all 
things are dearer under a bad government, and 
cheaper under a good one. The real question 
they ask you is. What difierence can any 
change of government make to youl They 
want to keep the bees from buzzing and sting- 
ing, in order that they may rob the hive iu 
peace. 

Work well ! How does it work well, when 
every human being in doors and out (except 
the Duke of Wellington), says it must be made 
to work better, or it will soon cease to work at 
all 1 It is little short of absolute nonsense to 
call a government good, which the great mass 
of Englishmen would before twenty years were 
elapsed, if reform were denied, rise up and 
destroy. Of what use have all the cruel laws 
been of' Perceval, Eldon, and Casllereagh, to 
extinguish reform 1 Lord John Russell and 
his abettors, would have been committed to jail 
twenty years ago for half only of his present 
reform ; and now relays of the people would drag 
them from London to Edinburgh ; at which latter 
city we are told by Mr. Dumlas, that there is no 
eagerness for reform. Five minutes before 
Moses struck the rock, this gentleman would 
have said that there was no eagerness for water. 

There are two methods of making altera- 
tions : the one is to despise the applicants, to 
begin with refusing every concession, then to 
relax by making concessions which are always 
too late ; by offering in 1831 what is then tor. 
late, but would have been cheerfully accepted 
in 18.% — gradually to O'Connellize the country, 
till at last, after this process has gone on for 
some time, the alarm becomes too great, and 
every thing is conceded in hurry and confusion. 
In the mean time fresh conspiracies have been 
hatched by the long delay, and no gratitude is 
expressed for what has been extorted by fear. 
In this way, peace was concluded with America, 
and emancipation granted to the Catholics ; and 
in this way the war of complexion will be 
finished in the West Indies. The other method 
is, to see at a distance that the thing must be 
done, and to do it effectually, and at once ; to 
take it out of the hands of the common people, 
and to carry the measure in a manly liberal 
manner, so as to satisfy the great majority.— 
The merit of this belongs to the administration 
of Lord Grey. He is the only minister I know 
of who has begun a great measure in good 
time, conceded at the beginning of twenty 
years what would have been extorted at the 
end of it, and prevented that folly, violence, 
and ignorance, which emanate from a long de- 
nial and extorted concession of justice to great 
masses of human beings. I believe the question 
of reform, or any dangerous agitation of it, is 
set at rest for thirty or forty years ; and this is 
an eternity in politics. 

Boroughs are not the power proceeding from 
wealth. Many men, who have no boroughs, are 
• infinitely richer than those who have — but it is 
the artifice of wealth in seizing hold of certain 
localities. The boroughmonger is like rheuma- 
tism, which oM'es its power not so much to the' 
intensity of the pain as to its peculiar position ; 
a little higher up, or a little lower down, the 
same pain would be trifling ; but it fixes in 
the joints, and gets into the head-quarters of 
2i2 



378 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



motion and activit}'. The boroiighmonger 
knows the importance of arthritic positions; 
be disdains muscle, gets into the joints, and 
lords it over the whole machine by felicity of 
place. Other men are as rich — but those 
riches are not fixed in the critical spot. 

I live a good deal with all ranks and descrip- 
tions of people ; I am thoroughly convinced 
that the party of democrats and republicans is 
very small and contemptible ; that the English 
love their institutions — that they love not only 
this king, (who would not love him 1) but the 
kingly office — that they have no hatred to the 
aristocracy. I am not afraid of trusting Eng- 
lish happiness to English gentlemen. I believe 
that the half million of new voters will choose 
much better for the public than the twenty or 
thirty peers, to whose usurped power they suc- 
ceed. 

If any man doubts the power of reform, let 
him take these two memorable proofs of its 
omnipotence. First, but for the declaration 
against it, I believe the Duke of Wellington 
might this day have been in office ; and, se- 
condl}% in the whole course of the debates at 
county meetings, and in Parliament, there are 
not twenty men who have declared against re- 
form. Some advance an inch, some a foot, 
some a yard — but nobody stands still — nobody 
says. We ought to remain just where we were 
— every body discovers that he is a reformer, 
and has long been so — and appears infinitely 
delighted with this new view of himself No- 
body appears without the cockade — bigger or 
less — but always the cockade. 

An exact and elaborate census is called for 
— vast information should have been laid upon 
the table of the House — great time should have 
been given for deliberation. All these objec- 
tions, being turned into English, simply mean, 
that the chances of another year should have 
been given for defeating the bill. In that time 
the Poles maybe crushed, the Belgians organ- 
ized, Louis Philip dethroned ; war may rage 
all over Europe — the popular spirit may be 
diverted to other objects. It is certainly pro- 
voking that the ministry foresaw all these pos- 
sibilities, and determined to model the iron 
while it was red and glowing. 

It is not enough that a political institution 



works well practically : it must be defensible ; 
it must be such as will bear discussion, and 
not excite ridicule and contempt. It might 
work well for aught I know, if, like the savages 
of Onelashka, we sent out to catch a king : but 1 
who could defend a coronation by chase 1 who I 
can defend tlie payment of 40,000/. for the 
three-hundredth part of the power of Parlia- 
ment, and the re-sale of this power to govern- 
ment for places to the Lord Williams, and 
Lord Charles's, and others of the Anglophagi 1 
Teach a million of the common people to read 
— and such a government (work it ever so 
well) must perish in twenty years. It is im- 
possible to persuade the mass of mankind, that 
there are not other and better methods of go- 
verning a country. It is so complicated, so 
wicked, such envy and hatred accumulate 
against the gentlemen who have fixed them- 
selves on the joints, that it cannot fail to perish, 
and to be driven as it is driven from the coun- 
try, by a general burst of hatred and detesta- 
tion. I meant, gentlemen, to have spoken for 
another half-hour, but I am old and tired. 
Thank me for ending — but, gentlemen, bear 
with me for another moment ; one word before 
I end. I am old, but I thank God I have lived 
to see more than my observations on human 
nature taught me I had any right to expect. 
I have lived to see an honest king, in whose 
word his ministers can trust; who disdains 
to deceive those men whom he has called 
to the public service, but makes common 
cause with them for the common good ; and 
exercises the highest powers of a ruler for the 
dearest interests of the state. I have lived to 
see a king with a good heart, who, surrounded 
by nobles, thinks of common men ; who loves 
the great mass of English people, and wishes 
to be loved by them ; who knows that his real 
power, as he feels that his happiness, is found- 
ed on their afiection. I have lived to see a 
king, who, without pretending to the pomp of 
superior intellect, has the wisdom to see, that 
the decayed institutions of human policy 
require amendment ; and who, in spite of cla- 
mor, interest, prejudice, and fear, has the man- 
liness to carry these wise changes into imme- 
diate execution. Gentlemen, farewell: shout, 
for the king. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



379 



BALLOT. 



It is possible, and perhaps not ven- difficult, f who exercises his right in a manner very in- 
to invent a machine, by the aid of which jurious to society. He may set up a religious 
electors may vote for a candidate, or for two or a political test for his tradesmen ; but ad- 



or three candidates, out of a greater number 
without its being discovered for whom they 
vole ; it is less easy than the rabid and foam- 
ing radical supposes ; but I have no doubt it 
may be accomplished. In Mr. Grote's dagger 
ballot box, Avhich has been carried round the 
country by eminent patriots, you stab the 
card of your favourite candidate with a dagger. 
I have seen another, called the mouse-trap 
ballot box, in which you poke your finger into 
the trap of the member a'ou prefer, and are j 



j mittmg his right, and deprecating all inter- 
ference of law, I must tell him he is making 
the aristocracy odious to the great mass, and 
that he is sowing the seeds of revolution. His 
purse may be full, and his fields may be wide ; 
but the moralist will still hold the rod of public 
opinion over his head, and tell the money- 
bloated blockhead that he is shaking those 
laws of property which it has taken ages to 
extort from the wretchedness and rapacit}- of 
mankind-; and that what he calls his own will 



caught and detained till the trap-clerk below , not long be his own, if he tramples too heavily 



(who knows by means of a wire when you are 
caught) marks your vote, pulls the liberator, 
and releases you. Which may be the most 
eligible of these two methods I do not pretend 
to determine, nor do I think my excellent friend 
Mr. Babbage has as yet made up his mind on 
the subject ; but, by some means or other, I 
have no doubt the thing may be done. 

Landed proprietors imagine they have a 
right to the votes of their tenants ; and in- 
stances, in every election, are numerous where 
tenants have been dismissed for voting con- 
trary to the wishes of their landlords. In the 
same manner strong combinations are made 
against tradesmen who have chosen to think 
and act for themselves in political matters, 
rather than yield their opinions to the solici- 
tations of their customers. There is a great 
deal of t)-ranny and injustice in all this. I 
should no more think of asking what the po- 
litical opinions of a shopkeeper were, than of 
asking whether he was tall or short, or large 
or small : for a difierence of 2i per cent., I 
would desert the most aristocratic butcher that 
ever existed, and deal with one who 

" Sbook tbe arsenal and fiilminedover Greece.'' 



upon human patience. 

Ail these practices are bad; but the facts 
and the consequences are exaggerated. 

In the first place, the plough is not a politi- 
cal machine : the loom and the steam-engine 
are furiously political, but the plough is not 
Nineteen tenants out of twenty care nothing 
about their votes, and pull ofi" their opinions as 
easily to their landlords as they do their hats. 
As far as the great majority of tenants are 
concerned, these histories of persecution are 
mere declamatory' nonsense ; they have no 
more predilection for whom they vote than the 
organ pipes have for what tunes they are to 
play. A tenant dismissed for a fair and just 
cause often attributes his dismissal to political 
motives, and endeavours to make himself a 
martyr with the public : a man who ploughs 
badly, or who pa3's badly, says he is dismissed 
for his vote. No candidate is willing to allow 
that he has lost his election by his demerits ; 
and he seizes hold of these stories, and circu- 
lates them with the greatest avidity : they are 
stated in the House of Commons ; John Rus- 
sel and Spring Rice fall a-cr}'ing : there is 
lamentation of liberals in the land ; and many 
groans for the territorial tyrants. 

A standing reason against the frequency of 
dismissal of tenants is, that it is alwa^'s inju- 
rious to the pecuniar)- interests of a landlord 
to dismiss a tenant ; the property always suf- 
fers in some decree by a going off tenant ; and 
it is therefore always the interest of a land- 
lord not to change when the tenant does his 
dut)'as an agriculturalist. 

To part with tenants for political reasons 
alwa5's makes a landlord unpopular. The Con- 



On the contrary, I would not adhere to the 
man who put me in uneasy habiliments, how- 
ever great his veneration for trial by jury, or 
however ardent his attachment to the liberty 
of the subject. A tenant I never had; but I 
firmly believe that if he had gone through cer- 
tain pecuniary formalities twice a year, I 
should have thought it a gross act of tyranny 
to have interfered either with his political or 
his religious opinions. 

I distinctly admit that every man has a right I stitutional, price 4</. ; the Cato. at 3^rf. ; and the 
to do what he pleases with his own. I cannot, : Lucius Junius Brutus, at '2d., all set upon the 
by law, prevent any one from discharging his I unhappy scutiger ; and the squire, unused to 
tenants and changing his tradesmen for po- ; be pointed at, and thinking that all Europe and 
iitical reasons ; but I may judge whether that j part of Asia are thinking of him and his farm- 
man exercises his right to the public detri- i ers, is driven to the brink' of suicide and de- 
ment, or for the public advantage. A man has i spair. That such things are done is not denied: 
a right to refuse dealing with any tradesman , that thev are scandalous when they are done 
who is not five feet eleven inches high ; but if i is equally true ; but these are reasons why 
he acts upon this rule, he is either a madman : such acts are less frequent than they are com- 
or a fool. He has a right to lay waste his 1 monlv represented to be. In the same manner, 
own estate, and to make it utterly barren ; but ' there are instances of shopkeepers being ina- 
I have also a right to point him out as one teriallv injured in their business from the 



380 



WORKS OF THE RFV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



, votes they have j^iven ; but the facts themselves, 
as well as the consequences, are grossly ex- 
aggerated. If shopkeepers lose tory, they gain 
whig customers ; and it is not always the vote 
which does the mischief, but the low, vulgar 
impertinence and the unbridled scurrility of a 
man who thinks that, by dividing to mankind 
their rations of butter and of cheese, he has 
qualified himself for legislation, and that he 
can hold the rod of empire because he has 
wielded the yard of mensuration. I detest all 
inquisition into political opinions, but I have 
very rarely seen a combination against any 
tradesman who modestly, quietly, and con- 
scientiously took his own line in politics. But 
Brutus and butterman, cheesemonger and Cato, 
do not harmonize well together; good taste is 
offended, the coxcomb loses his friends, and 
general disgust is mistaken for combined op- 
pression. Shopkeepers, too, are very apt to cry 
out before they are hurt: a man who sees, after 
an election, one of his customers buying a pair 
of gloves on the opposite side of the way, 
roars out that his honesty will make him a 
bankrupt, and the county papers are filled with 
letters from Brutus, Publicola, Hampden, and 
Pym. 

This interference with the freedom of voting, 
bad as it is, produces no political deliberation ; 
it does not make the tories stronger than the 
whigs, nor the whigs than the tories, for both 
are equally guilty of this species of tyranny ; 
and any particular system of measure fails or 
prevails, much as if no such practice existed. 
The practice had better not be at all, but if a 
certain quantity of the evil does exist, it is 
better that it should be equally divided among 
both parties, than that it should be exercised 
by one for the depression of the other. There 
are politicians always at a white heat, who 
suppose that there are landed tyrants only on 
one side of the question ; but human life has 
been distressingly abridged by the flood: there 
is no time to spare ; it is impossible to waste 
it upon such senseless bigotry. 

If a man is sheltered from intimidation, is it 
at all clear that he would vote from any better 
motive than intimidation 1 If you make so 
tremendous an experiment, are you sure of at- 
taining your object 1 The landlord has perhaps 
said a cross word to the tenant ; the candidate 
for whom the tenant votes in opposition to his 
landlord has taken his second son for a foot- 
man, or his father knew the candidate's grand- 
father : how many thousand votes, sheltered 
(as the ballotists suppose) from intimidation, 
would be given from such silly motives as 
these 1 how many would be given from the 
mere discontent of inferiority? or from that 
strange simious schoolboy passion of giving 
pain to others, even when the author cannot be 
lound out] — motives as pernicious as any 
which could proceed from intimidation. So 
that all voters screened by ballot would not be 
screened for any public good. 

The radicals, (I do not use this word in any 
offensive sense, for I know many honest and 
excellent men of this way of thinking), — but 
the radicals praise and admit the lawful influ- 
ence of wealth and power. They are quite 
•satii.fied if a rich man of popular manners 



gains the votes and affections of ms aependants; 
but why is this not as bad as intimidation? 
The real object is to vote for the good politi- 
cian, not for the kind-heartedor agreeable man; 
the mischief is just the same to the countiy 
whether I am smiled into a corrupt choice or 
frowned into a corrupt choice, — what is it to 
me whether my landlord is the best of land- 
lords, or the most agreeable of men ? I must 
vote for Joseph Hume, if I think Joseph more 
honest than the marquis. The more mitigated 
radical may pass over this, but the real carni- 
vorous variety of the animal should declaim 
as loudly against the fascinations as against 
the threats of the great. The man who pos- 
sesses the land should never speak to the man 
who tills it. The intercourse betM^een landlord 
and tenant should be as strictly guarded as that 
of the sexes in Turkey. A funded duenna 
should be placed over every landed grandee. — 
And then intimidation ! Is intimidation con- 
fined to the aristocracy 1 Can any thing be 
more scandalous and atrocious than the in- 
timidation of mobs 1 Did not the mob of Bris- 
tol occasion more ruin, wretchedness, death, 
and alarm, than all the ejection of tenants, and 
combinations against shopkeepers, from the 
beginning of the century ? and did not the 
Scotch philosophers tear off the clothes of the 
tories in Mintoshire 1 or at least such clothes 
as the customs of the country admit of being 
worn 1 — and did not they, without any reflec- 
tion at all upon the customs of the country, 
wash the tory voters in the river ? 

Some sanguine advocates of the ballot contend 
that it would put an end to all canvassing: 
why should it do so 1 Under the ballot, I can- 
vass (it is true) a person who may secretly 
deceive me. I cannot be sure he will not do 
so — but I am sure it is much less likely he will 
vote against me, when I have paid him all the 
deference and attention which a representative 
bestows on his constituents, than if I had total- 
ly neglected him: to any other objections he 
may have against me, at least I will not add 
that of personal incivility. 

Scarcely is any great virtue practised with- 
out some sacrifice; and the admiration which 
virtue excites seems to proceed from the con- 
templation of such sufferings, and of the exer- 
tions by which they are endured : a tradesman 
suffers some loss of trade by voting for his 
country ; is he not to vote ? he might suffer 
some loss of blood in fighting for his country ; 
is he not to fight 1 Every one would be a good 
Samaritan, if he was quite sure his compassion 
would cost him nothing. We should all be he- 
roes, if it was not for blood and fractures ; all 
saints, if it were not for the restrictions and priva- 
tions of sanctity ; all patriots, if it were not for 
the losses and misrepresentations to which pa- 
triotism exposes us. The ballotists are a set of 
Englishmen glowing with the love of England 
and the love of virtue, but determined to ha- 
zard the most dangerous experiments in politics, 
rather than' run the risk of losing a penny in 
defence of their exalted feelings. 

An abominable tyranny exercised by the bal- 
lot is, that it compels those persons to conceal 
their votes, who hate all concealment, and who 
glory in the cause they support. If you are 



WORKS OF THE KEY. SYDNEY SMITH. 



381 



afraid to go in at the front door, q,nd to say in 
a clear voice what you have to say, go in at 
the back door, and say it in a whisper — but 
this is not enough for you ; you make me, who 
am bold and honest, sneak in at the back door 
as well as yourself: because you are afraid of 
selling a dozen or two of gloves less than usual, 
you compel me, who have no gloves to sell, or 
who would dare and despise the loss, if I had, to 
hide the best feelings of my heart, and to lower 
myself down to your mean morals. It is as 
if a few cowards, who could only fight behind 
walls and houses, were to prevent the whole 
regiment from showing a bold front in the field: 
what light has the coward to degrade me who 
am no coward, and put me in the same shame- 
ful predicament with himself? If ballot is es- 
tablished, a zealous voter cannot do justice to 
his cause ; there will be so many false Hamp- 
dens, and spurious Catos, that all men's actions 
and motives will be mistrusted. It is in the 
power of any man to tell me that my colours 
are false, that I declaim with stimulated 
warmth, and canvass with fallacious zeal ; 
that I am a tory, though I call Russell for ever, 
or a whig, in spite of my obstreperous pane- 
gyrics of Peel. It is really a curious condition 
that all men must imitate the defects of a few, 
in order that it may not be known who have 
the natural imperfection, and who put it on 
.from conformity. In this way, in former days, 
to hide the gray hairs of the old, every body 
was forced to wear powder and pomatum. 

It must not be forgotten that, in the ballot, 
concealment must be absolutely compulsory. It 
would never do to let one man vote openly, 
and another secretly. You may go to the edge 
of the box, and say, " I vote for A.," but who 
knows that your ball is not put in for B.] 
There must be a clear, plain opportunity for 
telling an undiscoverable lie, or the whole in- 
vention is at an end. How beautiful is the 
progress of man ! — printing has abolished 
ignorance — gas put an end to darkness — 
steam has conquered time and distance — it 
remained for Grote and his box to remove the 
incumbrance of truth from human transac- 
tions. May we not look now for more little 
machines to abolish the other cardinal virtues. 

But if all men are suspected ; if things are 
so contrived that it is impossible to know what 
men really think, a serious impediment is 
created to the formation of good public opinion 
in the multitude. There is a town (No. 1.) in 
which live two very clever and respectable 
men, Johnson and Pelham, small tradesmen, 
men always willing to run some risk for the 
public good, and to be less rich, and more 
honest than their neighbours. It is of con- 
siderable consequence to the formation of opi- 
nion in this town, as an example, to know how 
Johnson and Pelham vote. It guides the af- 
fections, and directs the understandings, of the 
whole population, and materially affects public 
opinion in this town ; and in another borough. 
No. 2, it would be of the liighest importance 
to public opinion if it were certain how Mr. 
Smith, the ironmonger, and Mr. Rodgers, the 
London carrier, voted; because they are both 
thoroughly honest men, and of excellent under- 
standing for their condition of life. Now, the 



tendency of ballot would be to destroy all the 
Pelhams, Johnsons, Rodgers's, and Smiths, to 
sow a universal mistrust, and to exterminate 
the natural guides and leaders of the people : 
political influence, founded upon honour and 
ancient honesty in politics, could not grow up 
under such a system. No man's declarations 
could get believed. It would be easy to whis- 
per away the character of the best men ; and 
to assert, that in spite of all his declarations, 
which are nothing but a blind, the romantic 
Rodgers has voted on the other side, and is in 
secret league with our enemies. 

" Who brought that mischievous profligate 
villain into Parliament ] Let us see the names 
of his real supporters. Who stood out against 
the strong and uplifted arm of power 1 Who 
discovered this excellent and hitherto unknown 
person 1 Who opposed the man whom we all 
know to be one of the first men in the coun- 
try?" Are these fair and useful questions to 
be veiled hereafter in impenetrable mystery ? 
Is this sort of publicity of no good as a re- 
straint? is it of no good as an incitement to 
and a rew^ard for exertions ? Is not public 
opinion formed by such feelings ? and is it not 
a dark and demoralizing system to draw this 
veil over human actions; to say to the mass, 
be base, and you will not be despised ; be vir- 
tuous, and you will not be honoured ? Is this 
the way in which Mr. Grote would foster the 
spirit of a bold and indomitable people ? Was 
the liberty of that people established by fraud? 
Did America lie herself into independence? 
Was it treachery which enabled Holland to 
shake off" the yoke of Spain ? Is there any in- 
stance since the beginning of the world where 
human liberty has been established by little 
systems of trumpery and trick? These are 
the weapons of monarchs against the people, 
not of the people against monarchs. With 
their own right hand, and with their mighty 
arm, have the people gotten to themselves the 
victory, and upon them may they ever depend ; 
and then comes Mr. Grote, a scholar and gen- 
tleman, and knowing all the histories of public 
courage, preaches cowardice and treachery to 
England ; tells ns that the bold cannot be free, 
and bids us seek for liberty by clothing our- 
selves in the mask of falsehood, and trampling 
on the cross of truth.* 

If this shrinking from the performance of 
duties is to be tolerated, voters are not the only 
persons who would recur to the accommodat- 
ing convenience of ballot. A member of Par- 
liament, who votes against government, can 
get nothing in the army, navy, or church, or 
at the bar, for his children or himself; they 
are placed on the north wall, and starved for 
their honesty. Judges, too, suffer for their un- 
popularity — Lord Kilwarden was murdered. 
Lord Mansfield burnt down ; but voters, for- 
getting that they are only trustees for those 
who have no vote, require that they themselves 
should be virtuous with impunity, and that all 
the penalties of austerity and Catonism should 
fall upon others. I am awate 'hat it is of the 
greatest consequence to the constituent that 



* Mr. Grote is a very wortliy, honest, and able man ; 
and, if the world were a chess-board, .would be an im- 
portant politician. 



383 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.. 



he should be made acquainted with the con- 
duct of his representative ; but I maintain, that 
to know, witliout the fear of mistake, what the 
conduct of individuals has been in their fulfil- 
ment of the great trust of electing members of 
Parliament, is also of the greatest importance 
in the formation of public opinion ; and that, 
when men acted in the dark, the power of dis- 
tinguishing between the bad and the good 
would be at an end. 

To institute ballot, is to apply a very dan- 
gerous innovation to a temporary evil ; for it 
is seldom, but in very excited times, that these 
acts of power are complained of which the 
ballot is intended to remed3\ There never 
was an instance in this country where parties 
were so nearly balanced ; but all this will pass 
away, and, in a very few years, either Peel 
will swallow Lord John, or Lord John will pas- 
ture upon Peel ; parties will coalesce, the 
Duke of Wellington and Viscount Melbourne 
meet at the same board, and the lion lie down 
with the lamb. In the mean time a serious 
and dangerous political change is resorted to 
for the cure of a temporary evil, and we may 
be cursed with ballot when we do not want it, 
and cannot get rid of it. 

If there is ballot there can be no scrutiny, 
the controlling power of Parliament is lost, 
and the members are entirely in the hands of 
returning officers. 

An election is hard run — the returning offi- 
cer lets in twenty votes which he ought to have 
excluded, and the opposite candidate is un- 
justly returned. I petition, and as the law now 
stands, the return would be amended, and I, 
who had the legitimate majority, should be 
seated in Parliament. But how could justice 
be done if the ballot obtained, and if the re- 
turning officer were careless or corrupt 1 
Would you put all the electors upon their 
oath? Would it be advisable to accept any 
oath where detection was impossible 1 and 
could any approximation to truth be expected 
under such circumstances, from such an in- 
quisition 1 It is true, the present committees 
of the House of Commons are a very unfair 
tribunal, but that tribunal may and will be 
amended ; and bad as that tribunal is, nobody 
can be insane enough to propose that we are to 
take refuge in the blunders or the corruptions of 
600 returning officers, 100 of whom are Irish. 

It is certainly in the power of a committee, 
when incapacity or villany of the returning 
officer has produced an unfair return, to annul 
the whole election, and to proceed again de 
novo ; but how is this justl or what satisfaction 
is this to me, who have unquestionably a law- 
ful majority, and M^ho ask of the House of 
Commons to examine the votes, and to place 
in their house the man who has combined the 
greatest number of suffrages ] The answer of 
the House of Commons is, " One of you is un- 
doubtedly the rightful member, but we have so 
framed our laws of election, that it is impos- 
sible to find out which that man is ; the loss 
and penalties ought only to fall upon one, but 
they must fall upon both ; we put the well- 
doer and the evil-doer precisely in the same 
situation; there shall be no election;" and this 
may happen ten times running. 



Purity of election, the fair choice of repre- 
sentatives, must be guarded either by the co- 
ercing power of the House of Commons exer- 
cised upon petitions, or it must be guarded by 
the watchful jealousy of opposite parties at 
the registrations ; but if (as the radicals sup- 
pose) ballot gives a power of perfect conceal- 
ment, whose interest is it to watch the regis- 
trations? If I despair of distinguishing my 
friends from my foes, why should I take any 
trouble about registrations 1 Why not leave 
every thing to that great primum mobile of all 
human aflJairs, the barrister of six years' 
standing? 

The answer of the excellent Benthamites to 
all this is, " What you say may be true enough 
in the present state of registrations, but we 
have another scheme of registration to which 
these objections will not apply." There is 
really no answering this paulo-post legisla- 
tion. I reason now upon registration and re- 
form which are in existence, which I have 
seen at work for several years. What new 
improvements are in the womb of time, or (if 
time has no womb) in the more capacious 
pockets of the followers of Bentham, I know 
not : when I see them tried, I will reason upon 
them. There is no end to these eternal 
changes ; we have made an enormous revolu- 
tion within the last ten years, — let us stop a little 
and secure it, and prevent it from being turned 
into ruin ; I do not say the reform bill is final, 
but I want a little time for breathing; and if 
there are to be any more changes, let them be 
carried into execution hereafter by those little 
legislators who are now receiving every day 
after dinner a cake or a plumb, in happy ig- 
norance of Mr. Grote and his ballot. I long 
for the quiet times oi Log, when all the English 
common people are making calico, and all 
the English gentlemen are making long and 
short verses, with no other interruption of 
their happiness than Avhen false quantities are 
discovered in one or the other. 

What is to become of petitions if ballot is 
established ? Are they to be open as they now 
are, or are they to be conducted by ballot? 
Are the radical shopkeepers and the radical 
tenant to be exposed (as they say) to all the 
fury of incensed wealth and power, and is that 
protection to be denied to them in petitions, 
which is so loudly demanded in the choice of 
representatives ? Are there to be two distinct 
methods of ascertaining the opinions of the 
people, and these completely opposed to each 
other? A member is chosen this week by a 
large majority of voters who vote in the dark, 
and the next week, when men vote in the light 
of day, some petition is carried totally opposite 
to all those principles for which the member 
with invisible votes was returned to Parlia- 
ment. How, under such a system, can Parlia- 
ment ever ascertain what the wishes of the 
people really are? The representatives are 
radicals, the petitioners eminently conserva- 
tive ; the voice is the voice of Jacob, but the 
hands are the hands of Esau. 

And if the same protection is adopted for 
petitions as is given in elections, and if both 
are conducted by ballot, how is the House of 
Commons to deal with petitions ? When it is 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



383 



intended particularly that a petition should 
• attract the attention of the House of Commons, 
some member bears witness to the respecta- 
tility or the futility of the signatures ; and 
how IS it possible, without some guides of this 
kind, that the House could form any idea of 
the value and importance of the petition 1 

These observations apply with equal force 
to the communications between the represen- 
tative and the constituent. It is the radical 
doctrine that a representative is to obey the 
instructions of his constituents. He has been 
elected under the ballot by a large majority ; 
an open meeting is called, and he receives in- 
structions in direct opposition to all those 
principles upon which he has been elected. 
Is this the real opinion of his constituents ] 
and if he receives his instructions for a ballot 
meeting, who are his instructors 1 The lowest 
men in the town, or the wisest and the best ] — 
But if ballot is established for elections only, and 
all communications between the constituents 
on one side, and Parliainent and the represen- 
tatives on the other, are carried on in open meet- 
ings, then are there two publics according to 
the radical doctrines, essentially diflerent from 
each other ; the one acting under the influence 
of the rich and powerful, the other free ; and 
if all political petitions are to be carried on by 
ballot, how is Parliament to know who peti- 
tions, or the member to know who instructs ] 

I have hitherto spoken of ballot, as if it 
•were, as the radicals suppose it to be, a mean 
of secrecy ; their very cardinal position is, that 
landlords, after the ballot is established, will 
give up in despair all hopes of commanding 
the votes of their tenants. I scarcely ever 
heard a more foolish and gratuitous as- 
sumption. Given up ] Why should they be 
given up? I can give many reasons why 
landlords should never exercise this unrea- 
sonable power, but I can give no possible 
reason why a man determined to do so should 
be baffled by the ballot. When two great 
parties in the empire are combating for the 
supreme power, does Mr. Grote imagine, that 
the man of woods, forests, and rivers, — that 
they who have the strength of the hills, — are 
to be baffled by bumpkins thrusting a little pin 
into a little card in a little box 1 that England 
is to be governed by political acupunctura- 
tionl 

A landlord who would otherwise be guilty 
of the oppression will not change his purpose, 
because you attempt to outwit him by the in- 
vention of the ballot; he will become, on the 
contrary, doubly vigilant, inquisitive, and 
severe. " I am a professed radical," said the 
tenant of a great duke to a friend of mine, 
" and the duke knows it ; but if I vote for his 
candidates, he lets me talk as I please, live 
with whom I please, and does not care if I 
dine at a radical dinner every day in the week. 
If there was a ballot, nothing could persuade 
the duke, or the duke's master, the steward, 
that I was not deceiving them, and I should 
Jose my farm in a week." This is the real 
"history of what would take place. The single 
lie on the hustings would not suffice ; the con- 
cealed democrat who voted against his land- 
lord must talk with the wrong people, sub- 



scribe to the wrong club, huzza at the wrong 
dinner, break the wrong head, lead (if he 
wished to escape from the watchful jealousy 
of his landlord) a long life of lies between 
every election ; and he must do this, not only 
eundo, in his calm and prudential state, but re- 
deundo from the market, warmed with beer and 
expanded by alcohol ; and he must not only 
carry on his seven years of dissimulation be- 
fore the world, but in the very bosom of his 
family, or he must expose himself to the dan- 
gerous garrulity of wife, children, and ser- 
vants, from whose indiscretion every kind of 
evil report would be carried to the ears of the 
watchful steward. And when once the ballot 
is established, mere gentle, quiet lying will not 
do to hide the tenant who secretly votes 
against his landlord; the quiet passive liar 
will be suspected, and he will find, if he does 
not wave his bonnet and strain his throat in fur- 
therance of his bad faith, and lie loudly, that he 
has put in a false ball in the dark to very little 
purpose. I consider a long concealment of 
political opinion from the landlord to be nearly 
impossible for the tenant ; and if you conceal 
from the landlord the only proof he can have 
of his tenant's sincerity, you are taking from the 
tenant the only means he has of living quietly 
upon his farm. You are increasing the jea- 
lousy and irascibility of the tyrant, and mul- 
tiplying instead of lessening the number of 
his victims. 

Not only you do not protect the tenant who 
wishes to deceive his landlord, by promising 
one way and voting another, but you expose all 
the other tenants who have no intention of de- 
ceiving, to all the evils of mistake and misre- 
presentation. The steward hates a tenant, and 
a rival wants his farm : they begin to whisper 
him out of favour, and to propagate rumours 
of his disaffection to the blue or the yellow 
cause ; as matters now stand he can refer to 
the poll-book, and show how he has voted. 
Under the ballot his security is gone, and he 
is exposed, in common with his deceitful neigh- 
bour, to that suspicion from which none can 
be exempt when all vote in secret. If ballot 
then answered the purpose for which it was 
intended, the number of honest tenants whom 
it exposed to danger would be as great as the 
number of deceitful tenants whom it screened. 

But if landlords could be prevented from 
influencing their tenants in voting, by threat- 
ening them with the loss of farms ; — if public 
opinion were too strong to allow of such threats, 
what would prevent a landlord from refusing 
to take, as a tenant, a man whose political 
opinion did not agree with his own 1 what 
would prevent him from questioning, long 
before the election, and cross-examining his 
tenant, and demanding certificates of his be- 
haviour and opinions, till he had, according 
to all human probability, found a man who 
felt as strongly as himself upon political sub- 
jects, and who would adhere to those opinions 
with as much firmness and tenacity 1 What 
would prevent, for instance, an Orange landlord 
from filling his farms with Orange tenants, and 
from cautiously rejecting every Catholic tenant 
who presented himself plough in hand ? But 
if this practice were to obtain generally, of 



384 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



cautiously selecting tenants from, their politi- 
cal opinion, what would beconae of the seven- 
fold shield of the ballot ? Not only this tenant 
is not continued in the farm he already holds, 
but he finds, from the severe inquisition into 
which men of property are driven by the in- 
vention of ballot, that it is extremely difficult 
for a man whose principles are opposed to 
those of his landlord, to get any farm at all. 

The noise and jollity of a ballot mob must 
be such as the very devils would look on with 
delight. A set of deceitful wretches, wearing 
the wrong colours, abusing their friends, pelt- 
ing the man for whom they voted, drinking 
their enemies' punch, knocking down persons 
with whom they entirely agreed, and roaring 
out eternal duration to principles they abhor- 
red. A scene of wholesale bacchanalian fraud, 
a posse cmnitaius of liars, which would disgust 
any man with a free government, and make 
him sigh for the monocracy of Constantinople. 

All the arguments which apply to suspected 
tenants apply to suspected shopkeepers. Their 
condition under the ballot would be infinitely 
worse than under the present system ; the 
veracious shopkeeper would be suspected, 
perhaps without having his vote to appeal to 
for his protection, and the shopkeeper who 
meant to deceive must prop up his fraud, by 
accommodating his whole life to the first de- 
ceit, or he would have told a disgraceful false- 
hood in vain. The political persecutors would 
not be batfled by the ballot ; customers, who 
think they have a right to persecute tradesmen 
now, would do it then ; the only difl^erence 
would be that more would be persecuted then 
on suspicion, than are persecuted now from a 
full knowledge of every man's vote. Inquisi- 
tors would be exasperated by this attempt of 
their victims to become invisible, and the 
search for delinquents would be more sharp 
and incessant. 

A state of things may (to be sure) occur 
where the aristocratic part of the voters may 
be desirous, by concealing their votes, of pro- 
tecting themselves from the fury of the multi- 
tude ; but precisely the same objection obtains 
against ballot, whoever may be the oppressor 
or the oppressed. It is no defence ; the single 
falsehood at the hustings will not suffice. Hy- 
pocrisy for seven years is impossible ; the 
multitude will be just as jealous of preserving 
the power of intimidation, as aristocrats are 
of preserving the power of property, and will 
in the same way redouble their vicious activity 
from the attempt at destroying their empire 
by ballot. 

Ballot could not prevent the disfranchise- 
ment of a great number of voters. The shop- 
keeper, harassed by men of both parties, 
equally consuming the articles in which he 
dealt, would seek security in not voting at all, 
and of course, the ballot could not screen the 
disobedient tenant whom the landlord re- 
quested to stay away from the poll. Mr. Grote 
has no box for this ; but a remedy for securing 
the freedom of election, which has no power 
to prevent the voter from losing the exercise 
of his franchise altogether, can scarcely be 
considered as a remedy at all. There is a 
method, indeed, by which this might be reme- 



died, if the great soul of Mr. Grote will stoop- 
to adopt it. Why are the acts of concealment 
to be confined to putting in a ball? Why not 
vote in a domino, taking off" the vizor to the 
returning officer only 1 or as tenant Jenkins 
or tenant Hodge might be detected by their 
stature, why not poll in sedan chairs with the 
curtains closely drawn, choosing the chairman 
by ballot 1 

What a flood of deceit and villany comes in 
with ballot ! I admit there are great moral 
faults under the present system. It is a serious 
violation of duty to vote for A. when you think 
B. the more worthy representative ; but the 
open voter, acting under the influence of his 
landlord, commits only this one fault, great as 
it is : — if he vote for his candidate, the land- 
lord is satisfied, and asks no other sacrifice of 
truth and opinion; but if. the tenant votes 
against his landlord under the ballot, he is 
practising every day some fraud to conceal 
his first deviation from truth. The present 
method may produce a vicious act, but the 
ballot establishes a vicious habit ; and then it 
is of some consequence, that the law should 
not range itself on the side of vice. In the 
open voting, the law leaves you fairly to 
choose between the dangers of giving an 
honest, or the convenience of giving a dis- 
honest vote ; but the ballot law opens a booth 
and asylum for fraud, calling upon all men to 
lie by beat of drum, forbidding open honesty, 
promising impunity for the most scandalous 
deceit, and encouraging men to take no other 
view of virtue than whether it pays or does 
not pay ; for it must always be remembered 
and often repeated, and said and sung to Mr. 
Grote, that it is to the degraded liar only that 
the box will be useful. The man who per- 
forms what he promises needs no box. The 
man who refuses to do what he is asked to do 
despises the box. The liar, who says he will 
do what he never means to do, is the only man 
to whom the box is useful, and for whom this 
leaf out of the Punic pandects is to be inserted 
in our statute book; the other vices will begin 
to look up, and to think themselves neglected,, 
if falsehood obtains such flattering distinction, 
and is thus defended by the solemn enact- 
ments of law. 

Old John Randolph, the American orator; 
was asked one day at a dinner party in Lon- 
don, whether the ballot prevailed in his state 
of Virginia — "I scarcely believe," he said, 
" we have such a fool in all Virginia, as to 
mention even the vote by ballot ; and I do not: 
hesitate to say that the adoption of the ballot 
would make any nation a nation of scoundrels, 
if it did not find them so." John Randolph 
was right ; he felt that it was not necessary 
that a people should be false in order to be 
free ; universal hypocrisy would be the conse- 
quence of ballot : we should soon say oa 
deliberation what David only asserted in his 
haste, that all men were liars. 

This exclamation of old Randolph applied 
to the method of popular elections, which I 
believe has always been by open voice in 
Virginia; but the assemblies voted, and thft 
judges were chosen by ballot; and in the year 
1830, upon a solemn review of their institu- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



385 



tions, ballot was entirely abolished in every 
instance throughout the state, and open voting 
substituted in its place. 

Not only would the tenant under ballot be 
constantly exposed to the suspicions of the 
landlord, but the landlord would be exposed to 
the constant suspicions and the unjust misre- 
presentation of the tenant. Every tenant who 
was dismissed for a fair and a just cause, 
would presume he was suspected, would attri- 
bute his dismissal' to political motives, and 
endeavour to make himself a martyr with the 
public ; and in this way violent hatred would 
be by the ballot disseminated among classes 
of men on whose agreement the order and 
happiness of England depend. 

All objections to ballot which are important 
in England apply with much greater force to 
Ireland, a country of intense agitation, fierce 
passions, and quick movements. Then how 
would the ballot box of Mr. Grote harmonize 
with the confessional box of Father O'Learyl 

I observe Lord John Russell, and some im- 
portant men as well as him, saying, "We hate 
ballot, but if these practices continue, we shall 
be compelled to vote fnr it." What ! vote for 
it, if ballot is no remedy of these evils T Vote 
for it, if ballot produces still greater evils than 
it cures 1 That is (says the physician), if 
fevers increase in this alarming manner, I 
shall be compelled to make use of some medi- 
cine which will be of no use to fevers, and 
will at the same time bring on diseases of a 
much more serious nature. I shall be under 
the absolute necessity of putting out your 
eyes, because I cannot prevent you from being 
lame. In fact, this sort of language is utterly 
unworthy of the sense and courage of Lord 
John ; he gives hopes where he ought to create 
absolute despair. This is that hovering be- 
tween two principles which ruins political 
strength by lowering political character, and 
creates a notion that his enemies need not 
fear such a man, and that his friends cannot 
trust him. No opinion could be more unjust 
as applied to Lord John ; but such an opinion 
will grow if he begins to value himself more 
upon his dexterity and finesse, than upon those 
fine, manly, hisforico-Russell qualities he most 
undoubtedly possesses. There are two beauti- 
ful words in the English language, — yes and 
no; he must pronounce them boldly and em- 
phatically ; stick to yes and no to the death ; 
for yes and no lay his head down upon the 
scaffold, where his ancestors have laid their 
heads before, and cling to his yes and no in 
spite of Robert Peel and John Wilson, and 
Joseph, and Daniel, and Fergus, and Stevens 
himself. He must do as the Russells always 
have done, advance his firm foot on the field 
of honour, plant it on the line marked out by 
justice, and determine in that cause to perish 
or to prevail. 

In clubs, ballot preserves secrecy ; but in 
clubs, after the barrister has blackballed the 
colonel, he most likely never hears of the 
colonel again : he does not live among people 
who are calling out for seven years the colonel 
for ever ; nor is there any one who, thinking 
he has a right to the barrister's suffrage, ex- 
ercises the most incessant vigilance to detect 
49 



whether or not he has been defrauded of it. I 
do not say that ballot can never in any in- 
stance be made a mean of secrecy and safety, 
but that it cannot be so in popular elections. 
Even in elections, a consummate hypocrite 
who was unmarried, and drank water, might 
perhaps exercise his timid patriotism with. 
irapunity ; but the instances would be so rare, 
as to render ballot utterly ineflicient as a ge- 
neral protection against the abuses of power. 

In America, ballot is nearly a dead letter ; 
no protection is wanted : if the ballot protects 
any one, it is the master, not the man. Some 
of the states have no ballot, — some have ex- ■ 
changed the ballot for open voting. 

Bribery carried on in any town now would 
probably be carried on with equal success 
under the ballot. The attorney (if such a sys- 
tem prevailed) would say to the candidate, 
" There is my list of promises ; if you come in 
I will have 5000/., and if you do not, you shall 
pay me nothing." To this list, to which I 
suppose all the venal rabble of the town to 
have put their names, there either is an oppo- 
sition bribery list, or there is not : if there is 
not, the promisers, looking only to make 
money by their vote, have every inducement 
to keep their word. If there is an opposite 
list, the only trick which a promiser can play 
is to put down his name upon both lists : but 
this trick would be so easily detected, so much 
watched and suspected, and would even in the 
vote market render a man so infamous, that it 
never would be attempted to any great extent. 
At present, if a man promises his vote to A., 
and votes for B., because he can get more 
money by it, he does not become infamous 
among the bribed, because they lose no money 
by him ; but where a list is found, and a cer- 
tain sum of money is to be divided among that 
list, every interloper lessens the receipts of all 
the rest ; it becomes their interest to guard 
against fraudulent intrusion ; and a man who 
puts his name upon more lists than the votes 
he was entitled to give, would soon be hunted., 
down by those he had robbed. Of course- 
there would be no pay till after the election, 
and the man who having one vote had put' 
himself down on two lists, or having two votes 
had put himself down on three lists, could" 
hardly fail to be detected, and would, of course,- 
lose his political accldama. There must be 
honour among thieves ; the mob regularly 
inured to bribery under the canopy of the bal- 
lot, would for their own sake soon introduce 
rules for the distribution of the plunder, and 
infuse, with their customary energy, the 
morality of not being sold more than once at 
every election. 

If ballot were established, it would be re- 
ceived by the upper classes with the greatest 
possible suspicion, and every effort would be 
made to counteract it and to get rid of it^ 
Against those attacks the inferior orders would 
naturally wish to strengthen themselves, and 
the obvious means would be by extending the. 
number of voters ; and so comes on universal 
suffrage. The ballot would fail : it would be 
found neither to prevent intimidation nor 
bribery. Universal suffrage would cure both, 
as a teaspoonful of prussic acid is a certaiir 
2 K 



386 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



cure for the most formidable diseases; but 
universal suffrage would in all probability be 
the next step. "The 200 richest voters of 
Bridport shall not beat the 400 poorest voters. 
Every body who has a house shall vote, or 
€very body who is twenty-one shall vote, and 
then the people will be sure to have their way 
— we will blackball every member standing 
for Bridgewater who does not promise to vote 
for universal suffrage." 

The ballot and universal suffrage are never 
mentioned by the radicals without being 
coupled together. Nobody ever thinks of 
separating them. Any person who attempted 
to separate them at torchlight or sunlight 
meetings would be hooted down. It is pro- 
fessedly avowed that ballot is only wanted for 
ulterior purposes, and no one makes a secret 
of what those ulterior purposes are : not only 
would the gift of ballot, if universal suffrage 
were refused, not be received with gratitude, 
but it would be received with furious indigna- 
tion and contempt, and universal suffrage be 
speedily extorted from you. 

There would be this argument also for uni- 
versal suffrage, to which I do not think it very 
easy to find an answer. The son of a man 
who rents a house of ten pounds a year is 
often a much cleverer man than his father ; 
the wife more intelligent than the husband. 
Under the system of open voting, these persons 
are not excluded from want of intellect, but for 
want of independence, for they would neces- 
sarily vote with their principal ; but the mo- 
ment the ballot is established, according to the 
reasoning of the Grote school, one man is as 
independent as another, because all are con- 
cealed, and so all are equally entitled to offer 
their suffrages. This cannot sow dissensions 
in families ; for how, ballotically reasoning, 
can the father find it outl or, if he did find it 
out, how has any father, ballotically speaking, 
a right to control the votes of his family ? 

I have often drawn a picture in my own 
mind of a Balloto-Grotical family voting and 
promising under the new system. There is 
one vacancy, and three candidates, tory, whig, 
and radical. Walter Wiggins, a small artificer 
of shoes, for the moderate gratuity of five 
pounds promises his own vote, and that of the 
chaste Arabella his wife, to the tory candidate; 
he, Walter Wiggins, having also sold, for one 
sovereign, the vote of the before-named Ara- 
bella to the whigs. Mr. John Wiggins, a tailor, 
the male progeny of Walter and Arabella, at 
the solicitation of his master, promises his 
vote to ■ the whigs, and persuades his sister 
Honoria to make a similar promise in the same 
cause. Arabella, the wife, yields implicitly to 
the wishes of her husband. In this way, be- 
fore the election, stand committed the highly 
moral family of Mr. Wiggins. The periodfor 
lying arrives, and the mendacity machine is 
exhibited to the view of the Wigginses. What 
happens ] Arabella, Avho has in the interim 
been chastised by her drunken husband, votes 
secretly for the radicals, having been sold both 
to whig and tory. Mr. John Wiggins, pledged 
beyond redemption to whigs, votes for the 
lory ; and Honoria, extrinsically furious in the 
■ cause of whigs, is persuaded by her lover to 



vote for the radical member. The following 
table exhibits the state of this moral family 
before and after the election : — 

Walter Wiggins sells himself once and his wife twice. 
Arabella Wiggins, sold to tory and whig, votes for rad- 
ical. 
.Tohn Wiggins, promised to whig, votes for tory. 
Honoria Wiggins, promised to whig, votes for radical. 

In this way the families of the poor, under the 
legislation of Mr. Grote, will become schools 
for good faith, openness, and truth. What are 
Chrysippus and Grantor, and all the moralists 
of the whole world, compared to Mr. Grote 1 

It is urged that the lower order of voters, 
proud of such a distinction, will not be anxious 
to extend it to others ; but the lower order of 
voters will often find that they possess this 
distinction in vain — that wealth and education 
are too strong for them ; and they will call in 
the multitude as auxiliaries, firmly believing 
that they can curb their inferiors and conquer 
their superiors. Ballot is a mere illusion, but 
universal suffrage is not an illusion. The 
common people will get nothing by the one, 
but they will gain every thing, and ruin every 
thing, by the last. 

Some members of Parliament who mean to 
vote for ballot, in the fear of losing their seats, 
and who are desirous of reconciling to their 
conscience such an act of disloyaltj' to man- 
kind, are fond of saying that ballot is harm- 
less ; that it will neither do the good nor the 
evil that is expected from it ; and that the peo- 
ple may fairly be indulged in such an innocent 
piece of legislation. Never was such folly and 
madness as this ; ballot will be the cause of 
interminable hatred and jealousy among the 
different orders of mankind ; it will familiarize 
the English people to a longtenour of deceit; 
it will not answer its purpose of protecting the 
independent voter; and the people, exasperated 
and disappointed by the failure, will indemnify 
themselves by insisting upon unlimited suffrage^ 
And then it is talked of as an experiment, as 
if men were talking of acids and alkalies, and 
the galvanic pile ; as if Lord John could get 
on the hustings and say, " Gentlemen, you see 
this ballot does not answer ; do me the favour 
to give it up, and to allow yourselves to be re- 
placed in the same situation as the ballot found 
you." Such, no doubt, is the history of na- 
tions and the march of human affairs ; and, in 
this way, the error of a sudden and foolish 
largess of power to the people might, no doubt, 
be easily retrieved. The most unpleasant of 
all bodily feelings is a cold sweat; nothing 
brings it on so surely as perilous nonsense in 
politics. I lose all warmth from the bodily 
frame when I hear the ballot talked of as an 
experiment, 

I cannot at all understand what is meant by 
this indolent opinion. Votes are coerced now ; 
if votes are free, will the elected be the same 1 
if not, will the difference of the elected be un- 
important? Will not the ballot stimulate the 
upper orders to fresh exertions 1 and are their 
increased jealousy and interference of no im- 
portance 1 If ballot, after all, is found to hold 
out a real protection to the voter, is universal 
lying of no importance ? I can understand 
what is meant by calling ballot a great good, 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



387 



or a great evil ; but, in the mighty contention 
for power which is raging in this country, to 
call it indifferent appears to me extremely 
foolish in all those in whom it is not extremely 
dishonest. 

If the ballot did succeed in enabling the 
lower order of voters to conquer their betters, 
so much the worse. In a town consisting of 
700 voters, the 300 most opulent and powerful 
(and therefore probably the best instructed) 
would make a much better choice than the 
remaining 400 ; and the ballot would, in that 
case, do more harm than good. In nineteen 
cases out of twenty, the most numerous party 
would be in the wrong. If this is the case, 
why give the franchise to all ? why not con- 
fine it to the first division 1 because even with all 
the abuses which occur, and in spite of them, the 
great mass of the people are much more satisfied 
icith having a vote occasionally controlled than with 
having none. Many agree, with their superiors, 
and therefore feel no control. Many are per- 
suaded by their superiors, and not controlled. 
Some are indifferent which way they exercise 
the power, though they would not like to be 
utterly deprived of it. Some guzzle away their 
vote, some sell it, some brave their superiors, 
a few are threatened and controlled. The 
election, in different ways, is affected by the 
superior influence of the upper orders ; and 
the great mass (occasionally and justly com- 
plaining) are, beyond all doubt, better pleased 
than if they had no votes at all. The lower 
orders always have it in their power to rebel 
against their superiors ; and occasionally they 
will do so, and have done so, and occasionally 
and justly carried elections* against gold, and 
birth, and education. But it is madness to 
make laws of society which attempt to shake 
off the great laws of nature. As long as men 
love bread, and mutton, and broadcloth, wealth, 
in a long series of years, must have enormous 
effects upon human affairs, and the strong box 
will beat the ballot box. Mr. Grote has both, 
but he miscalculates their respective powers. 
Mr. Grote knows the relative values of gold 
and silver ; but by what moral rate of exchange 
is he able to tell us the relative vaiues of li- 
berty and truth 1 

It is hardly necessary to say any thing about 



* The 400 or 500 voting against the 200 are right about 
as often as juries are right in differing from judges ; and 
that is very seldom. 



universal suffrage, as there is no act of folly 
or madness which it may not in the beginning 
produce. There would be the greatest risk 
that the monarchy, as at present constituted, 
the funded debt, the established church, titles, 
and hereditarj' peerage, would give way before 
it. Many really honest men may wish for 
these changes ; I know, or at least believe, 
that wheat and barley would grow if there was 
no Archbishop of Canterbury, and domestic 
fowls would breed if our Viscount Melbourne 
was again called Mr. Lamb; but they have 
stronger nerves than I have who would ven- 
ture to bring these changes about. So few 
nations have been free, it is so difficult to 
guard freedom from kings, and mobs, and pa- 
triotic gentlemen ; and we are in such a very 
tolerable state of happiness in England, that I 
think such changes would be very rash ; and I 
have an utter mistrust in the sagacity and pene- 
tration of political reasoners who pretend to 
foresee all the consequences to which they 
would give birth. When I speak of the toler- 
able state of happiness in which we live in 
England, I do not speak merely of nobles, 
squires, and canons of St. Paul's, but of dri- 
vers of coaches, clerks in offices, carpenters, 
blacksmiths, butchers, and bakers, and most 
men who do not marry upon nothing, and 
become burdened with large families before 
they have arrived at years of maturity. The 
earth is not sufficiently fertile for this : 
Dithcilem victum fundit durissima tellus. 

After all, the great art in politics and war is 
to choose a good position for making a stand. 
The Duke of Wellington examined and forti- 
fied the lines of Torres Vedras a year before 
he had any occasion to make use of them, and 
he had previously marked out Waterloo as the 
probable scene of some future exploit. The 
people seem to be hurrying on through all the 
well-known steps to anarchy; they must be 
stopped at some pass or another : the first is 
the best and most easily defended. The peo- 
ple have a right to ballot or to any thing else 
which will make them happy ; and they have 
a right to nothing which will make them un- 
happy. They are the best judges of their im- 
mediate gratifications, and the worst judges of 
what would best conduce to their interests for 
a series of years. Most earnestly and consci- 
entiously wishing their good, I say, No Ballot. 



388 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



1 



FIEST LETTEE TO ARCHDEACON SINGLETON, 



ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION. 



Mt dear Sir, ] 

As you do me the honour to ask my opinion 
respecting the constitution and proceedings of 
the ecclesiastical commission, and of their con- 
duct to the dignitaries of the church, I shall 
write to you without any reserve upon this 
subject. 

The first thing which excited my surprise, 
was the constitution of the commission. As 
the reform was to comprehend every branch 
of churchmen, bishops, dignitaries, and paro- 
chial clergymen, I cannot but think it would 
have been much niore advisable to have added 
to the commission some members of the two 
lower- orders of the church — they would have 
supplied that partial knowledge which appears 
in so many of the proceedings of the commis- 
sioners to have been wanting — they Avould 
have attended to those interests (not episcopal) 
which appear to have been so completely over- 
looked — and they would have screened the 
commission from those charges of injustice 
and partiality which are now so generally 
brought against it. There can be no charm in 
the name of bishop — the man who was a cu- 
rate yesterday is a bishop to-day. There are 
many prebendaries, many rectors, and many 
vicars, who would have come to the reform 
of the church with as much integrity, wisdom, 
and vigour as any bishop on the bench ; and 
I believe, with a much stronger recollection 
that all the orders of the church were not to 
be sacrificed to the highest ; and that to make 
their work respectable, and lasting, it should 
in all (even in its minutest provisions), be 
founded upon justice. 

All the interests . of the church in the com- 
mutation of tithes are entrusted to one paro- 
chial clergyman ;* and I have no doubt, from 
what I hear of him, that they will be well pro- 
tected. Why could not one or two such men 
have been added to the commission, and a ge- 
neral impression been created, that government 
in this momentous change had a parental feel- 
ing for all orders of men whose interests might 
be affected by it 1 A ministry may laugh at 
this, and think if they cultivate bishops, that 
they may treat the other orders of the church 
with contempt and neglect ; but I say, that to 
create a general impression of justice, if it be 
not what common honesty requires from any 
ministry, is what common sense points out to 
them. It is strength and duration — it is the 



♦ The Rev. Mr. Jones is the commissioner appointed 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury to watch over the in- 
terests of the church. 



only power which is worth having — in the 
struggle of parties it gives victory, and is re- 
membered, and goes down to other times. 

A mixture of diflerent orders of clergy in the 
commission would at least have secured a de- 
cent attention to the representations of all ; for 
of seven communications made to the com- 
mission by cathedrals, and involving very se- 
rious representations respecting high interests, 
six were totally disregarded, and the receipt 
of the papers not even acknowledged. 

I cannot help thinking that the commission- 
ers have done a great deal too much. Reform 
of the church was absolutely necessary — it 
cannot be avoided, and ought not to be post- 
poned ; but I would have found out what really 
gave offence, have applied a remedy, removed 
the nuisance, and done no more. I would not 
have operated so largely on an old, and (I 
fear) a decaying building. I would not, in 
days of such strong political excitement, and 
amidst such a disposition to universal change,, 
have done one thing more than was absolutely 
necessary to remove the odium against the 
establishment, the only sensible reason for is- 
suing any commission at all; and the means 
which I took to effect this, should have agreed, 
as much as possible, with institutions already 
established. For instance, the public were 
disgusted with the spectacle of rich prebenda- 
ries enjoying large incomes, and doing little 
or nothing for them. The real remedy for 
this would have been to have combined wealth 
and labour ; and as each of the present preben- 
daries fell off, to have annexed the stall to 
some large and populous parish. A preben- 
dary of Canterbury or of St. Paul's, in his pre- 
sent state, may make the church unpopular ; 
but place him as rector of a parish, with 8000 
or 9000 people, and in a benefice of little or 
no value, he works for his wealth, and the 
odium is removed. In like manner the pre- 
bends, which are not the property of the resi- 
dentiaries, might have been annexed to the 
smallest livings of the neighbourhood where 
the prebendal estate was situated. The inter- 
val which has elapsed since the first furious 
demand for reform, would have enabled the 
commissioners to adopt a scheme of much 
greater moderation than might perhaps have 
been possible at the first outbreak of popular 
indignation against the church ; and this sort 
of distribution would have given much more 
general satisfaction than the plan adopted by 
commissioners ; for though money, in the es- 
timation of philosophers, has no ear-mark, it 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



389 



has a very deep one in the opinion of the mul- 
titude. The riches of the church of Durham 
were most hated in the neighbourhood of Dur- 
ham ; and there such changes as I have pointed 
out would have been most gladly received, 
and would have conciliated the greatest favour 
to the church. The people of Kent cannot 
see why their Kentish estates, given to the ca- 
thedral of Canterbury, are to augment livings 
in Cornwall. The citizens of London see 
some of their ministers starving in the city, 
and the profits of the extinguished prebends 
sent into Northumberland. These feelings 
may be very unphilosophical, but they are the 
feelings of the mass ; and to the feelings of 
the mass the reforms of the church ought to 
be directed. In this way the evil would have 
been corrected where it was most seen and 
noticed. All patronage would have been left 
as it was. One order of the church would not 
have plundered the other. Nor would all the 
cathedrals in England have been subjected to 
the unconciliating empire, and unwearied en- 
ergy of one man. 

Instead of this quiet and cautious mode of 
proceeding, all is change, fusion and confu- 
sion. New bishops, new dioceses, confiscated 
prebends — clergymen changing bishops, and 
bishops clergymen — mitres in Manchester, 
Gloucester turned into Bristol. Such a scene 
of revolution and commutation as has not been 
seen since the days of Ireton and Cromwell! and 
the singularity is, that all this has been effected 
by men selected from their age, their dignity, 
and their known principles, and from whom 
the considerate part of the community ex- 
pected all the caution and calmness -w^hich 
these high requisites seemed to promise, and 
ought to have secured. 

The plea of making a fund is utterly unte- 
nable — the great object was not to make a fund ; 
and there is the mistake into which the com- 
mission have fallen : the object was not to add 
lOl. or 20/. per annum to a thousand small liv- 
ings, and to diminish inequalities in a ratio so 
trifling that the public will hardly notice it ; a 
very proper thing to do if higher interests were 
not sacrificed to it; but the great object was to 
remove the causes of hatred from the church, 
by lessening such incomes as those of Canter- 
bury, Durham, and London, exorbitantly and 
absurdly great — by making idleness work — and 
by these means to lessen the envy of laymen. 
It is impossible to make a fund which will raise 
the smaller livings of the church into any thing 
like a decent support for those who possess 
them. The whole income of the church, epis- 
copal, prebendal, and parochial, divided among 
the clergy, would not give to each clergyman 
an income equal to that which is enjoyed by 
the upper domestic of a great nobleman. The 
method in which the church has been paid, and 
must continue to be paid, is by unequal divi- 
sions. All the enormous changes which the 
commission is making will produce a very tri- 
fling difference in the inequality, while it will 
accustom more and more those enemies of the 
church, who are studying under their right 
rev. masters, to the boldest revolutions in ec- 
clesiastical aflfairs. Out of 10,478 benefices, 
there are 297 of about 40/. per annum value, 



1,629 at about 75/. and 1,602 at about 125/.; to 
raise all these benefices to 200/. per annum,would 
require an annual sum of 371,293/.; and upon 
2,878of those benefices there are no houses ,-and 
upon 1,728 no houses fit for residence. What dif- 
ference in the apparent inequality of the church 
would this sum of 371,293/. produce, if it could 
be raised 1 or in what degree would it lessen 
the odium which that inequality creates 1 The 
case is utterly hopeless ; and yet with all their 
confiscations the commissioners are so far 
from being able to raise the annual sum of 
371,000/., that the utmost they expect to gain is 
130,000/. per annum. 

It seems a paradoxical statement, but the 
fact is, that the respectability of the church, as 
well as of the bar, is almost entirely preserved 
by the unequal division of their revenues. A 
bar of one hundred lawyers travel the northern 
circuit, enlightening provincial ignorance, cur- 
ing local partialities, diflfusing knowledge, 
and dispensing justice in their route : it is 
quite certain that all they gain is not equal to 
all that they spend ; if the profits were equally 
divided there would not be six and eight-pence 
for each person, and there would be no bar at all. 
At present, the success of the leader animates 
them all — each man hopes to be a Scarlett or 
a Brougham — and takes out his ticket in a lot- 
tery by which the mass must infallibly lose, 
trusting (as mankind are so apt to do) to his 
good fortune, and believing that the prize is re- 
served for him, disappointment and defeat for 
others. So it is with the clergy ; the whole in- 
come of the church, if equally divided, would 
be about 250/. for each minister. Who would 
go into the church and spend 1,200/. or 1,500/. 
upon his education, if such were the highest 
remuneration he could ever look to 1 At pre- 
sent, men are tempted into the church by the 
prizes of the church, and bring into that church 
a great deal of capital, which enables them to 
live in decency, supporting themselves, not 
with the money of the public, but with their 
own money, which, but for this temptation, 
would have been carried into some retail trade. 
The officers of the church would then fall down 
to men little less coarse and ignorant than 
agricultural labourers— the clergyman of the 
parish would soon be seen in the squire's 
kitchen; and all this would take place in a 
country where poverty is infamous. 

In fact, nothing can be more unjust and idle 
than the reasoning of many laymen upon 
church matters. You choose to have an es- 
tablishment — God forbid you should choose 
otherwise ! and you wish to have men of de- 
cent manners, and good education, as the min- 
isters of that establishment; all this is very 
right : but are you willing to pay them as such 
men ought to be paid? Are you willing to pay 
to each clergyman, confining himself to one 
spot, and giving up all his time to the care of 
one parish, a salary of 500/. per annum 1 To do 
this would require three millions to be added 
to the present revenues of the church; and 
such an expenditure is impossible! What 
then remains, if you will have a clergy and 
will not pay them equitably and separately, 
than to pay them unequally and by lottery? 
and yet this very inequality, which secures to 
SIk2 



390 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



you a respectable clergy upon the most eco- 
nomical terms, is considered by laymen as a 
gross abuse. It is an abuse, however, which 
they have not the spirit to extinguish by in- 
creased munificence to their clergy, nor jus- 
tice to consider as the only other method by 
which all the advantages of a respectable es- 
tablishment can be procured; but they use it 
at the same time as a topic for sarcasm, and 
a source of economy. 

This, it will be said, is a mammonish view 
of the subject; it is so, but those who make 
this objection, forget the immense effect which 
mammon produces upon religion itself. Shall 
the Gospel be preached by men paid by the 
state ? shall these men be taken from the lower 
orders and be meanly paid 1 shall they be men 
of learning and education? and shall there be 
some magnificent endowments to allure such 
men into the church 1 Which of these methods 
is the best for diffusing the rational doctrines 
of Christianity 1 not in the age of the apostles, 
not in the abstract, timeless, nameless, place- 
less land of the philosophers, but in the year 
1837, in the porter-brewing, cotton-spinning, 
tallow-melting kingdom of Great Britain, burst- 
ing with opulence, and flying from poverty as 
the greatest of human evils. Many different 
answers may be given to these questions, but 
they are questions which, not ending in mam- 
mon, have a powerful bearing on religion, and 
deserve the deepest consideration from its 
disciples and friends. Let the comforts of the 
clergy go for nothing. Consider their state 
only as religion is affected by it. If upon this 
principle I am forced to allot to some an opu- 
lence which my clever friend the Examiner 
would pronounce to be apostolical, I cannot 
help it; I must take this people with all their 
follies, and prejudices, and circumstances, and 
carve out an establishment best suited for 
them, however unfit for early Christianity in 
barren and. conquered Judea. 

Not only will this measure of the commis- 
sion bring into the church a lower and worse 
educated set of men, but it will have a ten- 
dency to make the clergy fanatical. You 
will have a set of ranting, raving pastors, who 
will wage war against all the innocent plea- 
sures of life, vie with each other in extrava- 
gance of zeal, and plague your heart out with 
their nonsense and absurdity : cribbage must 
be played in caverns, and sixpenny whist take 
refuge in the howling wilderness. In this way 
low men doomed to hopeless poverty, and 
galled by contempt, will endeavour to force 
themselves into station and significance. 

There is an awkward passage in the memo- 
rial of the church of Canterbury, which deserves 
some consideration from him to whom it is 
directed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, at 
his consecration, takes a solemn oath that he 
will maintain the rights and liberties of the 
church of Canterbury ; as chairman, however, 
of the new commission, he seizes the patron- 
age of that church, takes two-thirds of its 
revenues, and abolishes two-thirds of its mem- 
bers. That there is an answer to this I am 
very willing to believe, but I cannot at present 
find out what it is ; and this attack upon the 
revenues and members of Canterbuiy, is not 



obedience to an act of Parliament, but the very- 
act of Parliament, which takes away, is recom- 
mended, drawn up, and signed by the person 
who has sworn he will never take away; and 
this little apparent inconsistency is not con- 
fined to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is 
shared equally by all the bishop commission- 
ers, who have all (unless I am grievously 
mistaken) taken similar oaths for the preser- 
vation of their respective chapters. It would 
be more easy to see our way out of this little 
embarrassment, if some of the embarrassed 
had not, unfortunately, in the parliamentary 
debates on the Catholic question, laid the 
greatest stress upon the king's oath, applauded 
the sanctity of the monarch to the skies, reject" 
ed all comments, called for the oath in its plain 
meaning, and attributed the safety of the Eng- 
lish church to the solemn vow made by the 
king at the altar to the Archbishops of Canter- 
bury and York, and the other bishops. I 
should be very sorry if this were not placed 
on a clear footing, as fools will be imputing to 
our church the pia el religiosa Calliditas, which 
is so commonly brought against the Catholics. 

Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi 
Stultus ego huic nostr«e similem. 

The words of Henry VIII., in endowing the 
cathedral of Canterbury, are thus given in the 
translation. "We, therefore, dedicating the 
aforesaid close, site, circle, and precinct to the 
honour and glory of the Holy and undivided 
Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have 
decreed that a certain Cathedral and Metro- 
politan Church, with one Dean, Presbyter, and 
twelve Prebendaries Presbyters ; these verily 
and for ever to serve Almighty God shall be 
created, set up, settled, and established ; and 
the same aforesaid Cathedral and Metropolitan 
Church, with one Dean, Presbyter, and twelve 
Prebendaries Presbyters, with other Ministers 
necessary for divine worship, by the tenor of 
these presents in reality, and plenitude of 
force, we do create, set up, settle, and establish, 
and do command to be established and to be 
in perpetuity, and inviolably maintained and 
upheld by these presents." And this is the 
church, the rights and liberties of which the 
archbishop at his consecration swears to main- 
tain. Nothing can be more ill-natured among 
politicians, than to look back into Hansard's 
Debates, to see what has been said by par- 
ticular men upon particular occasions, and 
to contrast such speeches with present opi- 
nions—and therefore I forbear to introduce 
some inviting passages upon taking oaths in 
their plain and obvious sense, both in debates 
on the Catholic question and upon that fatal 
and Mezentian oath which binds the Irish to 
the English church. 

It is quite absurd to see how all the cathe- 
drals are to be trimmed to an exact Procrustes 
pattern ; — quiela movere is the motto of the com- 
mission : — there is to be everywhere a dean, 
and four residentiaries ; but St. Paul's and 
Lincoln have at present only three residentia- 
ries, and a dean, who ofliciates in his turn as 
a canon : — a fourth must be added to each. 
Why ? nobody wants more prebendaries ; St. 
Paul's and Lincoln go on very well as they 
are. It is not for the lack of prebendaries, it 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



a»i 



is for idleness, that the Church of England is 
unpopular; but in the lust of reforming, the 
commission cut and patch property as they 
would cut figures in pasteboard. This little 
piece of wanton change, however, gives to two 
of the bishops, who are commissioners as well 
as bishops, patronage of a thousand a year 
each ; and though I am willing not to consider 
this as the cause of the recommendation, yet I 
must observe it is not very common that the 
same persons should bring in the verdict and 
receive the profits of the suit. No other arch- 
deacons are paid in such a manner, and no 
other bishops out of the commission have re- 
ceived such a bonus.* 

I must express my surprise that nothing in 
this commission of bishops, either in the bill 
which has passed, or in the report which pre- 
ceded it, is said of the duties of bishops. A 
bishop is not now forced by law to be in his 
diocese or to attend his duty in Parliament — 
he may be entirely absent from both ; nor are 
there wanting instances within these six years 
where such has been the case. It would have 
been very easy to have placed the repairs of 
episcopal palaces (as the concurrent leases of 
bishops are placed) under the superintendence 
of deans and chapters ; but though the bishops' 
bill was accompanied by another bill, contain- 
ing the strictest enactments for the residence 
of the clergy, and some very arbitrary and 
unjust rules for the repair of their houses, it 
did not appear upon the face of the law that 
the bishops had any such duties to perform ; 
and yet I remember the case of a bishop, dead 
not six years ago, who was scarcely ever seen 
in the House of Lords, or in his diocese; and 
I remember well also the indignation with 
which the inhabitants of a great cathedral 
town spoke of the conduct of another bishop 
(now also deceased), who not only never 
entered his palace, but turned his horses into 
the garden. When I mention these instances, 
I am not setting myself up as the satirist of 
bishops. I think, upon the whole, they do 
their duty in a very exemplary manner, but 
they are not, as the late bills would have us 
to suppose, impeccable. The church commis- 
sioners should not have suffered their reports 
and recommendations to paint the other 
branches of the church as such slippery trans- 
gredient mortals, and to leave the world to ima- 
gine that bishops may be safely trusted to their 
own goodness without enactment or control. 

This squabble about patronage is said to be 
disgraceful. Those who mean to be idle, and 
insolent, because they are at peace, may look 
out of the window and say, " This is a dis- 
graceful squabble between bishops and chap- 
ters ;" but those who mean to be just, should 
ask, Who begins? the real disgrace of the squab- 
ble is in the attack, and not in the defence. 
If any man puts his hand into my pocket to 
take my property, am I disgraced if I prevent 
him 1 Churchmen are ready enough to be 
submissive to their superiors ; but were they 
to submit to a spoliation so gross, accom- 



* This extravagant pay of archdeacons is taken, re- 
member, from that fund for the augmentation of small 
livinas, for the establishment of which all the divisions 
and confiscations have been made. 



panied with ignominy and degradation, and to 
bear all this in submissive silence ; — to be ac- 
cused of nepotism by nepotists, who were 
praising themselves indirectly by the accusa- 
tion, and benefiting themselves directly by the 
confiscation founded on it; — the real disgrace 
would have been to have submitted to this: 
and men are to be honoured, not disgraced, 
who come forth, contrary to their usual habits, 
to oppose those masters whom, in common 
seasons, they would willingly obey ; but who, 
in this matter, have tarnished their dignity, 
and forgotten what they owe to themselves 
and to us. 

It is a very singular thing that the law al- 
ways suspects judges, and never suspects 
bishops. If there is any way in which the 
partialities of the judge may injure laymen, 
the subject is fenced round with all sorts of 
jealousies, and enactments, and prohibitions — 
all partialities are guarded against, and all 
propensities watched. Where bishops are 
concerned, acts of Parliament are drawn up 
for beings who can never possibly be polluted 
by pride, prejudice, passion, or interest. Not 
otherwise would be the case with judges, if 
they, like the heads of the church, legislated 
for themselves. 

Then comes the question of patronage ; can 
any thing be more flagrantly' unjust, than that 
the patronage of cathedrals should be taken 
away and conferred upon the bishops 1 I do 
not want to go into a long and tiresome history 
of episcopal nepotism, but it is notorious to 
all, that bishops confer their patronage upon 
their sons, and sons-in-law, and all their rela- 
tions ; and it is really quite monstrous in the 
face of the world, who see this every day, and 
every hour, to turn round upon deans and 
chapters, and to say to them, " We are credibly 
informed that there are instances in your 
chapters where preferment has not been given 
to the most learned men you can find, but to- 
the sons and brothers of some of the prebend- 
aries. These things must not be — we must 
take these benefices into our own keeping ;" 
and this is the language of men swarming 
themselves with sons and daughters, and who, 
in enumerating the advantages of their sta- 
tions, have always spoken of the opportuni- 
ties of providing for their families as the 
greatest and most important. It is, I admit, 
the duty of every man, and of every body, to 
present the best man that can be found to any 
living of which he is the patron ; but if this 
duty has been neglected, it has been neglected 
by bishops quite as much as by chapters ; and 
no man can open the " Clerical Guide" and 
read two pages of it, without seeing that the 
bench of bishops are the last persons from 
whom any remedy of this evil is to be ex- 
pected. 

The legislature has not always taken the 
same view of the comparative trust-worthiness 
of bishops and chapters as is taken by the 
commission. Bishops' leases for years are 
for twenty-one years, renewable every sevep 
When seven years are expired, if the present 
tenant will not renew, the bishop may grant a 
concurrent lease. How does his lordship act 
on such occasions? He generally asks two- 



^^92 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



'years' income for the renewal, when chapters, 
not having the privilege of granting such con- 
curring leases, ask only a year and a half; and 
if the bishop's price is not given, he puts a 
son, or a daughter, or a trustee, into the estate, 
and the price of the lease deferred is money 
saved for his family. But unfair and exorbi- 
tant terms may be asked by his lordship, and 
the tenant may be unfairly dispossessed — 
therefore, the legislature enacts that all those 
concurrent leases must be countersigned by 
the dean and chapter of the diocese — making 
them the safeguards against episcopal rapa- 
city ; and, as I hear from others, not making 
them so in vain. These sorts of laws do not 
-exactly correspond with the relative views 
taken of both parties by the ecclesiastical 
commission. This view of chapters is of 
course overlooked by a commission of bishops, 
just as all mention of bridles would be omitted 
in a meeting of horses ; but in this view, 
chapters might be made eminently useful. In 
■what profession, too, are there no gradations 1 
Why is the Church of England to be nothing 
but a collection of beggars and bishops — the 
Right Reverend Dives in the palace, and Laza- 
rus in orders at the gate, doctored by dogs, 
and comforted with crumbs 1 

But to take away the patronage of existing 
prebendaries is objectionable for another class 
of reasons. If it is right to take away the pa- 
tronage of my cathedral and to give it to the 
bishop, it is at least unjust to do so with my 
share of it during my life. Society have a 
right to improve, or to" do what they think an 
improvement, but then they have no right to 
do so suddenly and hastily, to my prejudice ! 
After securing to me certain possessions by one 
hundred statutes passed in six hundred years — 
after having clothed me in fine garments, and 
conferred upon me pompous names, they have 
no right to turn round upon me all of a sud- 
den to say. You are not a dean nor a canon- 
residentiary, but a vagabond and an outcast, 
and a morbid excrescence upon society. This 
would not be a reform, but the grossest tyran- 
ny and oppression. If a man cannot live 
under the canopy of ancient law, where is he 
safe 1 how can he see his way, or lay out his 
plan of life 1 

"D.ubitant homines serere atque impendere curas." 

You tolerated, for a century, the wicked 
traffic in slaves, legislated for that species of 
property, encouraged it by premiums, defended 
it in your courts of justice — West Indians 
bought, and sold, trusting (as Englishmen al- 
ways ought to trust) in parliaments. Women 
went to the altar, promised that they should 
be supported by that property; and children 
were born to it, and young men were educated 
with it: but God touched the hearts of the 
English people, and they would have no slaves. 
The scales fell from their eyes, and they saw 
the monstrous wickedness of the traffic; but 
then they said, and said magnificently, to the 
West Indians, "We mean to become wiser 
and better, but not at your expense ; the loss 
shall be ours, and we will not involve you in 
ruin, because we are ashamed of our former 
cruelties, and have learnt a better lesson of 



humanity and wisdom." And this is the way 
in which improving nations ought to act, and 
this is the distinction between reform and 
revolution. 

Justice is not changed by the magnitude or 
minuteness of the subject. The old cathedrals 
have enjoyed their patronage for seven hun- 
dred years, and the new ones since the time 
of Henry VIII.; which latter period even 
gives a much longer possession than ninety- 
nine out of a hundred of the legislators, who 
are called upon to plunder us, can boast for 
their own estates. And these rights, thus 
sanctioned, and hallowed by time, are torn 
from their present possessors without the least 
warning, or preparation, in the midst of all 
that fever of change which has seized upon 
the people, and which frightens men to the 
core of their hearts ; and this spoliation is 
made, not by low men rushing into the plunder 
of the church and state, but by men of admi- 
rable and unimpeached character in all the 
relations of life — not by rash men of new 
politics, but by the ancient conservators of 
ancient law — by the archbishops and bishops 
of the land, high official men, invented and cre- 
ated, and put in palaces to curb the lawless 
changes, and the mutations, and the madness 
of mankind ; and to crown the whole; the lu- 
dicrous is added to the unjust, and what they 
take from the other branches of the church 
they confer upon themselves. 

Never dreaming of such sudden revolutions 
as these, a prebendary brings up his son to 
the church, and spends a large sum of money 
in his education, which, perhaps, he can ill 
affiDrd. His hope is (wicked wretch !) that, 
according to the established custom of the 
body to which he (immoral man !) belongs, 
the chapter will (when his turn arrives), if 
his son be of fair attainments and good cha- 
racter, attend to his nefarious recommenda- 
tion, and confer the living upon the young 
man; and in an instant all his hopes are de- 
stroyed, and he finds his preferment seized 
upon, under the plea of public good, by a 
stronger churchman than himself. I can call 
this by no other name than that of tyranny 
and oppression. I know very well that this is 
not the theory of patronage ; but who does bet- 
ter ? — do individual patrons ? — do colleges who 
give in succession 1 — and as for bishops, lives 
there the man so weak and foolish, so little 
observant of the past, as to believe (when 
this tempest of purity and perfection has 
blown over) that the name of Bloomfield will 
not figure in those benefices from which the 
names of Copleston, Blomberg, Taite, and 
Smith, have been so virtuously excluded ? I 
have no desire to make odious comparisons 
between the purity of one set of patrons and 
another, but they are forced upon me by the 
injustice of the commissioners. I must either 
make such comparisons or yield up, without 
remonstrance, those rights to which I am fairly 
entitled. 

It may be said that the bishops will do bet- 
ter in future ; that now the public eye is upon 
them, they will be ashamed into a more lofty 
and anti-nepotic spirit; but, if the argument 
of past superiority is given up, and the hope 



WORKS OF THE REV, SYDNEY SMITH. 



393 



of future amendment resorted to, why may -we 
not improve as well as our masters "? but the 
commission says, " These excellent men 
(meaning themselves) have promised to do 
better, and we have an implicit confidence in 
their word : we must have the patronage of the 
cathedrals." In the mean time we are ready 
to promise as well as the bishops. 

With regard to that common newspaper 
phrase, the pvhlic eye — there's nothing (as the 
bench well know) more wandering and slip- 
pery than the public eye. In five years hence, 
the public eye will no more see what descrip- 
tion of men are promoted by bishops, than it 
will see what doctors of law are promoted by 
the Turkish Ulheraa; and at the end of this 
period (such is the example set by the com- 
mission), the public eye, turned in every direc- 
tion, may not be able to see any bishops at all. 

In many instances, chapters are better pa- 
trons than bishops, because their preferment 
is not given exclusively to one species of in- 
cumbents. I have a diocese now in my pri- 
vate eye which has undergone the following 
changes. The first of three bishops whom I 
remember was a man of careless, easy temper, 
and how patronage went in those early days 
may be conjectured by the following letters ; 
which are not his, but serve to illustrate a 
system : 

THE BISHOP TO I.ORD A . 

My dear Lord, 

I have noticed with great pleasure the be- 
haviour of your lordship's second son, and am 
most happy to have it in my power to offer to 
him the living of * * *. He will find it of 
considerable value ; and there is, I understand, 
a very good house upon it, &c. &c. 

This is to confer a living upon a man of 
real merit out of the family; into which family, 
apparently sacrificed to the public good, the 
living is brought back by the second Igtter: — 

THE SAME TO THE SAME, A TEAR AFTER. 

My dear Lord, 

Will you excuse the liberty I take in soli- 
citing promotion for my grandson 1 He is an 
ofiicer of great skill and gallantry, and can 
bring the most ample testimonials from some 
of the best men in the profession : the Arethusa 
frigate is, I understand, about to be commis- 
sioned ; and if, &c. &c. 

Now I am not saying that hundreds of pre- 
bendaries have not committed such enormities 
and stupendous crimes as this (a declaration 
which will fill the whig cabinet with horror) ; 
all that I mean to contend for is, that such is 
the practice of bishops quite as much as it is 
of inferior patrons. 

The second bishop was a decided enemy of 
Calvinistical doctrines, and no clergyman so 
tainted had the slightest chance of preferment 
in his diocese. 

The third bishop could endure no man 
whose principles were not strictly Calvinislic, 
and who did not give to the articles that kmd 
of interpretation. Now here were a great 
mass of clergy naturally alive to the emolu- 
ments of their profession, and not knowing 
50 



which way to look or stir, because they de- 
pended so entirely upon the will of one person. 
Not otherwise is it with a very whig bishop, 
or a very tory bishop ; but the worst case is 
that of a superannuated bishop; here the pre- 
ferment is given away, and must be given 
away by wives and daughters, or by sons, or 
by butlers, perhaps, and valets, and the poor 
dying patron's paralytic hand is guided to the' 
signature of papers, the contents of which he 
is utterly unable to comprehend. In all such 
cases as these, the superiority of bishops as 
patrons will not assist that violence which the 
commissioners have committed upon the pa- 
tronage of cathedrals. 

I never heard that cathedrals had sold the 
patronage of their preferment ; such a prac- 
tice, however, is not quite unknown among 
the higher orders of the church. When the 
Archbishop of Canterbury consecrates an in- 
ferior bishop, he marks some piece of prefer- 
ment in the gift of the bishop as his own. 
This is denominated an option; and when the 
preferment falls, it is not only in the gift of the 
archbishop, if he is alive, but in the gift of his 
representatives if he is not. It is an absolute 
chattel, which, like any other chattel, is part 
of the archbishop's assets ; and if he died in 
debt, might be taken and so'ld for the benefit 
of his creditors — and within the memory of 
man such options have been publicly sold by 
auction — and if the present Archbishop of 
Canterbury were to die in debt to-morrow, such 
might be the fate of his options. What Arch- 
bishop Moore did with his options I do not 
know, but the late Archbishop Sutton very 
handsomely and properly left them to the pre- 
sent — a bequest, however, which would not 
have prevented such options from coming to 
the hammer, if Archbishop Sutton had not 
cleared ofi", before his death, those incum- 
brances which, at one period of his life, sat so 
heavily upon him. 

What the present archbishop means to do 
with them, I am not informed. They are not 
alluded to in the church returns, though they 
must be worth some thousand pounds. The 
commissioners do not seem to know of their 
existence — at least they are profoundly silent 
on the subject; and the bill which passed 
through Parliament in the summer for the 
regulation of the emoluments of bishops, does 
not make the most distant allusion to them. 
When a parallel was drawn between two spe- 
cies of patrons — which ended in the confisca- 
tion of the patronage of cathedrals — when two 
archbishops helped to draw the parallel, and 
profited by the parallel, I have a perfect right 
to state this corrupt and unabolished practice 
of their own sees — a practice which I never 
heard charged against deans and chapters.* 

I do not mean to imply, in the most remote 
degree, that either of the present archbishops 
have sold their options, or ever thought of it. 
Purer and more high-minded gentlemen do not 
exist, nor men more utterly incapable of doing 
any thing unworthy of their high station ; and 

* Cftn any thing be more shabby in a government leeis- 
lating upon church abuses, than to pass over such scan- 
dals as these existing in high places'! Two years have 
passed, and they are unnoticed 



3d4 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



I am convinced the Archbishop of Canterbury* 
will imitate or exceed the munificence of his 
predecessor: but when twenty-four public 
bodies are to be despoiled of their patronage, 
we must look not only to present men, but 
historically, to see how it has been adminis- 
tered in times of old, and in times also recently 
past; and to remember, that at this moment, 
when bishops are set up as the most admirable 
dispensers of patronage — as the only persons 
fit to be intrusted with it — as marvels, for 
whom law and justice and ancient possessions 
ought to be set aside, that this patronage (very 
valuable because selected from the whole 
diocese) of the two heads of the church is 
liable to all the accidents of succession — that 
it may fall into the hands of a superannuated 
wife, of a profligate son, of a weak daughter, 
or a rapacious creditor — that it may be brought 
to the hammer, and publicly bid for at an 
auction, like all the other chattels of the palace; 
and that such have been the indignities to 
which this optional patronage has been ex- 
posed, from the earliest days of the church to 
this moment. Truly, men who live in houses 
of glass (especially where the panes are so 
large) ought not to fling stones ; or if they do, 
they should be specially careful at whose head 
they are flung. 

And then the patronage which is not seized 
— the patronage which the chapter is allowed 
to present to its own body — may be divided 
without their consent. Can any thing be more 
thoroughly lawless, or unjust than this — that 
my patronage during my life shall be divided 
without my consent? How do my rights 
during my life differ from those of a lay patron, 
who is tenant for life 1 and upon what principle 
of justice or common sense is his patronage 
protected from the commissioners' dividing 
power to which mine is subjected 1 That one 
can sell, and the other cannot sell, the next 
presentation, would be bad reasoning if it were 
good law ; but it is not law, for an ecclesiasti- 
cal corporation, aggregate or sole, can sell a 
next presentation as legally as a lay life-tenant 
can do. They have the same power of selling 
as laymen, but they never do so ; that is, they 
dispense their patronage with greater propriety 
and delicacy, which, in the estimate of the 
commissioners, seems to make their right 
weaker, and the reasons for taking it away 
more powerful. 

Not only are laymen guarded by the same 
act which gives the power of dividing livings 
to the commissioners, but bishops are also 
guarded. The commissioners may divide the 
livings- of chapters without their consent ; but 
before they can touch the living of a bishop, 
his consent must be obtained. It seems, after 
a few of those examples, to become a little 
clearer, and more intelligible, why the appoint- 
ment of any other ecclesiastics than bishops 
was so disagreeable to the bench. 

* The options of the Archbishop of York are rompara- 
tively triflins'. I never heard, at any period, that they 
have been sold ; but they remain, like those of Canter- 
bury, in the absolute possession of the archbishop's re- 
[iresentatives after his death. I will an?TS-er for it that 
tlie present archbishop will do every Ihirg with them 
which becomes his high station and liigh character. 
They ought to be abolished by act of Parliament. 



The reasoning, then, is this : If a good living 
is vacant in the patronage of a chapter, they 

will only think of conferring it on one of their 
body or their friends. If such a living falls to 
the gift of a bishop, he will totally overlook 
the interests of his sons and daughters, and 
divide the living into small portions for the 
good of the public; and with these sort of 
anilities, whig leaders, whose interest it is to 
lull the bishops into a reform, pretend to be 
satisfied; and upon this intolerable nonsense 
they are not ashamed to justify spoliation.* 

A division is set up between public and pri- 
vate patronage, and it is pretended that one is 
holden in trust for the public, the other is pri- 
vate property. This is mere theory — a slight 
film thrown over convenient injustice. Henry 
VIII. gave to the Duke of Bedford much of his 
patronage. Roger de Hoveden gave to the 
church of St. Paul's much of his patronage 
before the Russells were in existence. The 
duke has the legal power to give his prefer- 
ment to whom he pleases — so have we. We 
are both under the same moral and religious 
restraint to administer that patronage properly 
— the trust is precisely the same to both ; and 
if the public good requires it, the power of 
dividing livings without the consent of patrons 
should be given in all instances, and not con- 
fined as a mark of infamy to cathedrals alone. 
This is not the real reason of the difference : 
bishops are the active members of the com- 
mission — they do not choose that their own 
patro::.age should be meddled with, and they 
know that the laity would not allow for a mo- 
ment that their livings should be pulled to 
pieces by bishops ; and that if such a proposal 
were made, there would be more danger of the 
bishop being pulled to piecas than the living. 
The real distinction is, between the weak and 
the strong — between those who have power to 
resist encroachment, and those who have not. 
This is the reason why we are selected for 
experiment, and so it is with all the bill from 
beginning to end. There is purple and fine 
linen in every line of it. 

Another strong objection to the dividing 
power of the commission is this : according 
to the printed bill brought forward last ses- 
sion, if the living is not taken by some mem- 
bers of the body, it lapses to -the bishop. Sup- 
pose, then, the same person to be bishop and 
commissioner, he breaks the living into little 
pieces as a commissioner, and after it is re- 
jected in its impoverished state by the chapter, 
he gives it away as bishop of the diocese. 
The only answer that is given to such objec- 
tions is, the impeccability of bishops : and upon 
this principle the whole bill has been con- 
structed, and here is the great mistake about 
bishops. They are, upon the whole, very good 
and worthy men ; but they are not (as many 
ancient ladies suppose) wholly exempt from 
human infirmities; they have their malice, 
hatred, uncharitableness, persecution and 
interest like other men ; and an administra- 
tion who did not think it more magnificent to' 
laugh at the lower clergy, than to protect the'rrtv- 

♦ These reasonings have had their efTect, and many 
early acts of injustice of the commission have been 
subsequently corrected. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



395 



should suffer no ecclesiastical bill to pass I 
through Parliament without seriously consi- 
dering how its provisions may affect the hap- , 
piness of poor clergymen pushed into living 
tombs, and pining in solitude — 

Vates procul atque in sola relegant 
Pascua, post montem oppositum, et trans flumina lata. 

There is a practice among some bishops, 
which may as well be mentioned here as any- 
where else, but which, I think, cannot be too 
severely reprobated. They send for a clergy- 
man, and insist upon his giving evidence re- 
specting the character and conduct of his 
neighbour. Does he hunt 1 Does he shoot 1 
Is he in debt! Is he temperate'? Does he 
attend to his parish 1 &c. &c. Now what is 
this, but to destroy for all clergymen the very 
elements of social life — to put an end to all 
confidence between man and man — and to dis- 
seminate among gentlemen, who are bound to 
live in concord, every feeling of resentment, 
hatred and suspicion 1 But the very essence 
of tyranny is to act as if the finer feelings, 
like the finer dishes, were delicacies only for 
the rich and great, and that little people have 
no taste for them and no right to them. A 
good and honest bishop (I thank God there 
are many who deserve that character !) ought 
to suspect himself, and carefully to watch his 
own heart. He is all of a sudden elevated 
from being a tutor, dining at an early hour 
with his pupil (and occasionally, it is believed, 
on cold meat), to be a spiritual lord; he is 
dressed in a magnificent dress, decorated with 
a title, flattered by chaplains, and surrounded 
by little people looking up for the things which 
he has to give away; and this often happens 
to a man who has had no opportunities of 
seeing the world, whose parents were in very 
humble life, and who has given up all his 
thoughts to the Frogs of Aristophanes and the 
Targum of Onkelos. How is it possible that 
such a man should not lose his head 1 that he 
should not swell 1 that he should not be 
guilty of a thousand follies, and worry and 
tease to death (before he recovers his common 
sense) an hundred men as good and as wise 
and as able as himself?* 

The history of the division of Edmonton 
has, I understand, been repeatedly stated in 
the commission — and told, as it has been, by 
a decided advocate, and with no sort of evi- 
dence called for on the other side of the ques- 
tion, has produced an unfair impression against 
chapters. The history is shortly this : — Be- 
sides the mother church of Edmonton, there 
are two chapels — Southgate and Winchmore 
Hill chapel. Winchmore Hill chapel was 
built by the society for building churches 
upon the same plan as the portions of Mary- 
lebone are arranged; the clergyman was to 
be remunerated by the lease of the pews, and 
if curates with talents for preaching had been 
placed there, they might have gained 200/. per 
annum. Though men of perfectly respectable 

* Since writing this, and after declining the living for 
myself, I have had the pleasure of seeing it presented in 
an undivided state to my amiable and excellent friend, 
Mr. Taite, who, after a long life of moods and tenses, 
has acquired (as he has deserved) ease and opulence in 
his old age. 



and honourable character, they were not 
endowed with this sort of talent, and they 
gained no more than 90/. to 100/. per annum. 
The Bishop of London applied to the cathedral 
of St. Paul's, to consent to 250/. per annum in 
addition to the proceeds from the letting of the 
pews, or that proportion of the whole of the 
value of the living, should be allotted to the 
chapel of Winchmore ; and at the same time 
we received an application from the chapel at 
Southgate, that another considerable portion, I 
forget what, but believe it to have been rather 
less (perhaps 200/.), should be allotted to them, 
and the whole living severed into three parishes. 
Now the living of Edmonton is about 1,350/. 
per annum, besides surplice fees ; but this 
1,350/. depends upon a corn rent of 10s. 3d. 
per bushel, present valuation, which, at the 
next valuation would, in the opinion of emi- 
nent land surveyors whom we consulted, be 
reduced to about 6s. per bushel, so that the 
living, considering the reduction also of all 
voluntary offerings to the church, would be 
reduced one half, and this half was to be 
divided into three, and one or two curates 
(two curates by the present bill) to be kept by 
the vicar of the old church ; and thus three 
clerical beggars were, by the activity of the 
Bishop of London, to be established in a dis- 
trict where the extreme dearness of all provi- 
sions is the plea for making the see of London 
double in value to that of any bishopric in the 
country. To this we declined to agree; and 
this, heard only on one side, with the total 
omission of the changing value of the benefice 
from the price of corn, has most probably 
been the parent of the clause in question. 
The right cure for this and all similar cases 
would be to give the bishop a power of allot- 
ting to such chapels as high a salary as to any 
other curate in the diocese, taking, as part of 
that salary, whatever was received from the 
lease of the pews, and to this no reasonable 
man could or would object: but this is not 
enough — all must bow to one man — " Chapters 
must be taught submission. No pamphlets, 
no meeting of independent prebendaries, to 
remonstrate against the proceedings of their 
superiors — no opulence and ease but mine." 

Some effect was produced also upon the 
commission, by the evidence of a prelate, who 
is both dean and bishop,* and who gave it as 
his opinion that the patronage of bishops was 
given u|)on better principles than that of chap- 
ters, which, translated into fair English, is no 
more than this — that the said witness, not 
meaning to mislead, but himself deceived, has 
his own way entirely in his diocese, and can 
only have it partially in his chapter. 

There is a rumour that these reasonings, 
with which they were assailed from so many 
quarters in the last session of Parliament, 
have not been without their effect, and that it 
is the intention of the commissioners only to 
take away the patronage from the cathedrals 
exactly in proportion as the numbers of their 
members are reduced. Such may be the inten- 
tion of the commissioners ; but as that inten- 



* This prelate stated it as his opinion to the commis- 
sion, that in future all prelates ousht to declare that they 
held their patronage in trust for the public. 



396 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tion has not been publicly notified, it depends 1 
only upon report; and the cotnmissioners have 
changed their minds so often, that they may 
altertheir intentions twenty times again before 
the meeting of Parliament. The whole of my 
observations in this letter are grounded upon 
their biLs of last year — which I-ord John Rus- 
sell stated his intention of re-introducing at 
the beginning of this session. If they have 
any new plans, they ought to have published 
them three months ago — and to have given to 
the clergy an ample opportunity of consider- 
ing them : but this they take the greatest care 
never to do. The policy of the government 
and of the commissioners is to hurry their 
bills through with such rapidity, that very little 
time is given to those who suffer by them for 
consideration and remonstrance, and we must 
be prepared for the worst beforehand. You 
are cashiered and confiscated before you can 
look about you — if you leave home for six 
weeks, in these times, you find a commissioner 
in possession of your house and ofiice. 

A report has reached my ears, that though 
all other cathedrals are to retain patronage 
exactly equal to their reduced numbers, a 
separate measure of justice is to be used for 
St. Paul's ; that our numbers are to be aug- 
mented by a fifth ; and our patronage reduced 
by a third; and this immediately on the passing 
of the bill. That the Bishop of Exeter, for 
instance, is to receive his augmentation of 
patronage only in proportion as the prebend- 
aries die off, and the prebendaries themselves 
will, as long as they live, remain in the same 
proportional state as to patronage ; and that 
when they are reduced to four (their stationary 
number), they will retain one-third of all the 
patronage the twelve now possess. Whether 
this is wise or not, is a separate question, but 
at least it is just; the four who remain cannot 
with any colour of justice complain that they 
do not retain all the patronage which was 
divided among twelve; but at St. Paul's not 
only are our numbers to be augmented by a 
fifth, but the patronage of fifteen of our best 
livings is to be instantly conferred upon the 
Bishop of London. This little episode of plunder 
involves three separate acts of gross injustice: 
in the first place, if only our numbers had been 
augmented by a fifth (in itself a mere bonus 
to commissioners), our patronage would have 
been reduced one-fifth in value. Secondly, 
one-third of the preferment is to be taken 
away immediately, and these two added to- 
gether make eight-fifteenths, or more than 
one-half of our whole patronage. So that, 
when all the cathedrals are reduced to their 
reformed numbers, each cathedral will enjoy 
precisely the same proportion of patronage as 
it now does, and each member of every other 
cathedral will have precisely the same means 
of promoting men of merit or men of his own 
family, as is now possessed ; while less than 
half of these advantages will remain to St. 
Paul's. Thirdly, if the Bishop of London 
were to wait (as all the othdr bishops by this 
arrangement must wait) till the present patrons 
die off, the injustice would be to the future 
body; but by this scheme, every present in- 
•cumbent of St. Paul's is instantly deprived of 



eight-fifteenths of his patronage ; while every 
other member of every other cathedral (as far 
as patronage is concerned) remains precisely 
in the same state in which he was before. 
Why this blow is levelled against St. Paul's I 
cannot conceive ; still less can I imagine why 
the Bishop of London is not to wait, as all 
other bishops are forced to wait, for the death 
of the present patrons. There is a reason, 
indeed, for not waiting, by which (had I to do 
with a person of less elevated character than 
the Bishop of London) I would endeavour to 
explain this precipitate seizure of patronage — 
and that is, that the livings assigned to him ia 
this remarkable scheme are all very valuable, 
and the incumbents all very old. But I shall 
pass over this scheme as a mere supposition, 
invented to bring the commission into disre- 
pute, a scheme to which it is utterly impos- 
sible the commissioners should ever affix their 
names. 

I should have thought, if the love of what 
is just had not excited the commissioner bish- 
ops, that the ridicule of men voting such com- 
fortable things to themselves as the prebendal 
patronage would have alarmed them ; but they 
want to sacrifice with other men's hecatombs, 
and to enjoy, at the same time, the character 
of great disinterestedness, and the luxury of un- 
just spoliation. It was thought necessary to 
make a fund; and the prebends in the gift of 
the bishops* were appropriated to that purpose. 
The bishops who consented to this have then 
made a great sacrifice — true, but they have 
taken more out of our pockets than they have 
disbursed from their own ; where then is the 
sacrifice? They must either give back the 
patronage or the martyrdom, if they choose to 
be martyrs — which I hope they will do — let 
them give us back our patronage : if they pre- 
fer the patronage, they must not talk of being 
martyrs — they cannot effect this double sensu- 
ality, and combine the sweet flavour of rapine 
with the aromatic odour of sanctity. 

We are told, if you agitate these questions 
among yourselves, you will have the democratic 
Philistines come down upon you, and sweep 
you all away together. Be it so; I am quite 
ready to be swept away when the time comes. 
Every body has his favourite death ; some de- 
light in apoplexy, and others prefer marasmus. 
I would infinitely rather be crushed by demo- 
crats, than, under the plea of the public good, 
be mildly and blandly absorbed by bishops. 

I met the other day, in an old Dutch chroni- 
cle, with a passage so apposite to this subject, 
that though it is somewhat too light for the oc- 
casion, I cannot abstain from quoting it. There 
was a great meeting of all the clergy at Dor- 
drecht, and the chronicler thus describes it, 
which I give in the language of the transla- 
tion : — " And there was great store of bishops 
in the town, in their robes goodly to behold, 

* The bishops have, however, secured for themselvea 
all the livings which were in the separate gifts of pre- 
bendaries and deans, and they have received from the 
crown a very large contribution of valuable patronage ; 
why or wherefore, is known only to the unfathomable 
wisdom of ministers. The glory of martyrdom can be 
confined only at best to the bishops of the old cathedrals, 
for there are scarcely any separate prebends in the new 
cathedrals. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



397 



and all the great men of the state were there, 
and folks poured in in boats on the Meuse, the 
Merve, the Rhine, and the Linge, coming from 
the Isle of Beverlandt, and Isselmond, and from 
all quarters in the Bailiwick of Dort ; Armi- 
nians and Gomarists, with the friends of John 
Barneveldt and of Hugh Grote. And before 
my lords the bishops, Simon of Gloucester, who 
was a bishop in those parts, disputed with 
Vorstius, and Leoline the Monk, and many 
texts of Scripture were bandied to and fro ; 
and when this was done, and many proposi- 
tions made, and it waxed towards twelve of 
the clock, my lords the bishops prepared to 
set them down to a fair repast, in which was 
great store of good things — and among the rest 
a roasted peacock, having, in lieu of a tail, the 
arms and banners of the archbishop, which 
was a goodly sight to all who favoured the 
church — and then the archbishop would say a 
grace, as was seemly to do, he being a very holy 
man ; but ere he had finished, a great mob of 
townspeople and folks from the country, who 
were gathered under the window, cried out. 
Bread.' bread! for there was a great famine, 
and wheat had risen to three times the ordinary 
price of the sleichi* and when they had done 
crying Bread.' bread! they called out No bish- 
ops! — and began to cast up stones at the win- 
dows. Whereat my lords the bishops were in 
a great fright, and cast their dinner out of the 
window to appease the mob, and so the men of 
that town were well pleased, and did devour 
the meats with great appetite^; and then you 
might have seen my lords standing with emp- 
ty plates, and looking wistfully at each other, 
till Simon of Gloucester, he who disputed with 
Leoline the Monk, stood up among them and 
said, ' Good my lords, it is your pleasure to stand 
here fasting, and that those who count lower in the 
church than you do should feast and fluster ? Let us 
order to us the dinner of the deans and canons, which 
is making ready for them in the chamber belcw.' 
And this speech of Simon of Gloucester pleased 
the bishops much ; and so they sent for the 
host, one William of Ypres, and told him it 
was for the public good, and he, much fearing 
the bishops, brought them the dinner of the 
deans and canons ; and so the deans and ca- 
nons went away without dinner, and were 
pelted by the men of the town, because they 
had not put any meat out of the window like 
the bishops ; and when the count came to hear 
of it, he said it was a pleasant conceit, and 
that the bishops were right cunning men, and had 
dinged the canons well." 

When I talk of sacrifices, I mean the sacri- 
fices of the bishop commissioners, for we are 
given to understand that the great mass of 
bishops were never consulted at all about these 
proceedings ; that they are contrary to every 
thing which consultations at Lambeth, previ- 
ous to the commission, had led them to expect ; 
and that they are totally disapproved of by 
them. The voluntary sacrifice, then (for it is 
no sacrifice, if it is not voluntar)^), is in the 
bishop commissioners only ; and besides the 
indemnification which they have voted to 



♦ A. measure in the Bailiwick of Dort, containing two 
gallons one pint English dry measure 



themselves out of the patronage of the cathe- 
drals, they will have all that never-ending pa- 
tronage, which is to proceed from the working 
of the commission, and the endowments be- 
stowed upon difierent livings. So much for 
episcopal sacrifices ! 

And who does not see the end and meaning 
of all this 1 The lay commissioners, who are 
members of the government, cannot and will 
not attend — the Archbishops of York and Can- 
terbury are quiet and amiable men, going fast 
down in the vale of life — some of the members 
of the commission are expletives — some must 
be absent in their dioceses — the Bishop of 
London is passionately fond of labour, has 
certainly no aversion to power, is of quick 
temper, great ability, thoroughly versant in 
ecclesiastical law, and always in London. He 
will become the commission, and when the 
church of England is mentioned, it will only 
mean Charles James, of London, who will enjoy 
a greater power than has ever been possessed 
by any churchman since the days of Laud, and 
will become the Church of England here upon 
earth. As for the commission itself, there is 
scarcely any power which is not given to it. 
They may call for every paper in the world, 
and every human creature who possesses it; 
and do what they like to one or the other. It 
is hopeless to contend with such a body; and 
most painful to think that it has been esta- 
blished under a whig government.* A com- 
mission of tory churchmen, established for 
such purposes, should have been framed with 
the utmost jealousy, and with the most cautious 
circumscription of its powers, and with the 
most earnest wish for its extinction when the 
purposes of its creation were answered. The 
government have done every thing in their 
power to make it vexatious, omnipotent, and 
everlasting. This immense power, flung into 
the hands of an individual, is one of the many 
foolish consequences which proceed from the 
centralization of the bill, and the unwillingness 
to employ the local knowledge of the bishops 
in the process of annexing dignified to paro- 
chial preferment. 

There is a third bill concocted by the com- 
mission-bishops, in which the great principle 
of increasing the power of the bench has cer- 
tainly not been lost sight of. , a 

brother clergyman, falls ill suddenly in the 
country, and he begs his clerical neighbour to 
do duty for him in the afternoon, thinking it 
better that there should be single service in 
two churches, than two services in one, and 
none in the other. The clergyman who ac- 
cedes to this request, is liable to a penalty of 5?. 
There is an harshness and ill nature in this — 
a gross ignorance of the state of the poorer 
clergy — an hard-heartedness produced by the 
long enjoyment of wealth and power, which 
makes it quite intolerable. I speak of it as it 
stands in the bill of last year.f 

If a clergyman has a living of 400Z. per an- 
num, and a population of two thousand per- 



* I am speaking here of the permanent commission es- 
tablished by act of Parliament in 1835. The commissioa 
for reporting had come to an end six months before this 
letter was written. 

\ This is also given up. 

2 L 



398 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



sons, the bishop can compel him to keep a 
curate, to whom he can allot any salary which 
he may allot to any other curate ; in other 
words, he may take away half the income of 
the clergyman, and instantly ruin him — and 
this without any complaint from the vestry ; 
with every testimonial of the most perfect satis- 
faction of the parish in the labours of a minis- 
ter, who may, perhaps, be dedicating his whole 
life to their improvement. I think I remember 
that the Bishop of London once attempted this 
before he was a commissioner, and was de- 
feated. I had no manner of doubt that it would 
speedily become the law, after the commission 
had begun to operate. The Bishop of London 
is said to have declared, after this trial, that if 
it was not law it should soon be law ;* and law, 
you will see, it will become. In fact he can 
slip into any ecclesiastical act of Parliament 
any thing he pleases. There is nobody to 
heed or contradict him ; provided the power of 
bishops is extended by it ; no bishop is so un- 
genteel as to oppose the act of his right re- 
verend brother; and there are not many men 
who have knowledge, eloquence, or force of cha- 
racter to stand up against the Bishop of Lon- 
don, and, above all, of industry to watch him. 
The ministry, and the lay lords, and the House 
of Commons, care nothing about the matter; 
and the clergy themselves, in a state of the 
greatest ignorance as to what is passing in 
the world, find their chains heavier and heavier, 
without knowing who or what has produced 
the additional incumbrance. A good honest 
whig minister should have two or three stout- 
hearted parish priests in his train to watch the 
bishop's bills, and to see that- they were con- 
structed on other principles than that bishops 
can do no lorong, and cannot have too much power. 
The whigs do nothing of this, and yet they 
complain that they are hated by the clergy, 
and that in all elections the clergy are their 
bitterest enemies. Suppose they were to try 
a little justice, a little notice, and a little pro- 
tection. It would take more time than quiz- 
zing, and contempt, but it might do some good. 

The bishop puts a great number of questions 
to his clergy, which they are to be compelled, 
by this new law of the commission, to answer, 
under a penalty; and if they do answer them, 
they incur, perhaps, a still heavier penalty. 
"Have you had two services in your church 
all the year"!" — " I decline to answer." — "Then 
I fine you 20Z." — " I have only had one ser- 
vice."—" Then I fine you 250/." In what other 
profession are men placed between this double 
fire of penalties, and compelled to criminate 
themselves 1 It has been disused in England, 
I believe, ever since the time of Laud and the 
Star Chamber.f 

By the same bill, as it first emanated from 
the commission, a bishop could compel a 
clergyman to expend three years' income upon 
a house in which he had resided, perhaps, fifty 
years, and in which he had brought up a large 

* The Bishop of Loniion denies that he ever said thi^ ; 
but the Bishop of London aflects short sharp sayings, 
seasoned, I am afraid, sometimes with a little indiscre- 
tion ; and these sayings are not necessarily forgotten be- 
cause he forgets them. 

t This attempt upnn the happiness and independence 
of the clergy has been abandoned. 



family. With great difficulty, some slight mo- 
dification of this enormous power was obtained, 
and it was a little improved in the amended 
bill.* In the same way an attempt was made 
to try delinquent clergymen, by a jury of cler- 
gymen, nominated by the bishop, but this was 
too bad, and was not endured for an instant; 
still it showed the same love of power and the 
same principle of impeccability, for the bill is 
expressly confined to all suits and complaints 
against persons below the dignity and degree of 
bishops. The truth is, that there are very few 
men in either House of Parliament (ministers, 
or any one else), who ever think of the happi- 
ness and comfort of the working clergy, or be- 
stow one thought upon guarding them from 
the increased and increasing power of their 
encroaching masters. What is called taking 
care of the church is taking care of the bish- 
ops; and all bills for the management of the 
clergy are left to the concoction of men who 
very naturally believe they are improving the 
church when they are increasing their own 
power. There are many bishops too generous, 
too humane, and too Christian, to oppress a 
poor clergyman ; but I have seen (I am sorry 
to say) many grievous instances of partiality, 
rudeness, and oppression-f I have seen clergy- 
men treated by them with a violence and con- 
tempt which the lowest servant in the bishop's 
establishment would not have endured for a 
single moment; and if there is a helpless, 
friendless, wretched being in the community, 
it is a poor clergyman in the country with a 
large family. If there is an object of compas- 
sion, he is one. If there is any occasion in 
life where a great man should lay aside his 
office, and put on those kind looks, and use 
those kind words which raise the humble from 
the dust, these are the occasions when those 
best parts of the Christian character ought to 
be displayed. 

I would instance the unlimited power which 
a bishop possesses over a curate, as a very 
unfair degree of power for any man to possess. 
Take the following dialogue which represents 
a real event. 

Bishop. — Sir, I understand you frequent the 
meetings of the Bible Society. 

Curate. — Yes, my lord, I do. 

Bishop. — Sir, I tell you plainly, if you con- 
tinue to do so, I shall silence you from preach- 
ing in my diocese. 

Curate. — My lord, I am very sorry to incur 
your indignation, but I frequent that society 



* I perceive that the Archbishop of Canterbury borrows 
money for the improvement of his palace, and pays the 
principal off in forty years. This is quite as soon as a 
debt incurred for such public purposes ought to be paid 
off, and the archbishop has done rightly to take that pe- 
riod. In process of time 1 think it very likely that this 
indulgence will be extended to country clergymen, who 
are compelled to pay otf the debts for buildings (which 
they are compelled to undertake) in twenty years ; and 
by the new bill, not yet passed, this indulgence is extend- 
ed to thirty years. Why poor clergymen have been 
compelled for the last five years to pay oft' the incum- 
brances at the rate of one-twentieth per annum, and are 
now compelled to pay them off, or will, when the bill 
passes, be so compelled, at the rate of one-thirtieth per 
annum, when the archbishop takes forty years to do the 
, same thing, and has made that bargain m the year 1831, 
I really cannot tell. A clergyman who does not reside, 
is forced to pay off his building debt in ten years. 

t What bishops like best in their clergy is a dropping-^ 
down deadness of manoer. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



390 



upon principle, because I think it eminently 
serviceable to the cause of the Gospel. 

Bishop. — Sir, I do not enter into your reasons, 
but tell you plainly, if you continue to go there 
you shall be silenced. 

The young man did go, and was silenced — 
and as bishops have always a great deal of 
clever machinerj'^ at work of testimonials and 
bcnc-decessits, and always a lawyer at their 
elbow, under the name of a secretary, a curate 
excluded from one diocese is excluded from 
all. His remedy is an appeal to the archbishop 
from the bishop ; his worldly goods, however, 
amount to ten pounds ; he never was in Lon- 
don ; he dreads such a tribunal as an arch- 
bishop — he thinks, perhaps, in time, the bishop 
may be softened — if he is compelled to restore 
him, the enmity will be immortal. It would 
be just as rational to give to a frog or a rabbit, 
upon which the physician is about to experi- 
ment, an appeal to the Zoological Society, as 
to give to a country curate an appeal to the 
archbishop against his purple oppressor. 

The errors of the bill are a public concern — 
the injustice of the bill is a private concern. 
Give us our patronage for life.* Treat the 
cathedrals all alike, with the same measure of 
justice. Don't divide livings in the patronage 
of present incumbents without their consent — 
or do the same with all livings. If these points 
are attended to in the forthcoming bill, all com- 
plaint of vnfairness and injustice )inll be at an etui. 
I shall still think, that the commissioners have 
been very rash and indiscreet, that they have 
evinced* a contempt for existing institutions, 
and a spirit of destruction which will be 
copied to the life hereafter, by commissioners 
of a very different description. Bishops live 
in high places with high people, or with little 
people who depend upon them. They walk 
delicately, like Agag. They hear only one 
sort of conversation, and avoid bold, reckless 
men, as a lady veils herself from rough breezes. 
I am half inclined to think, sometimes, that 
the bishop-commissioners really think that 
they are finally settling the churcli ; that the 
House of Lords will be open to the bench for 
ages ; and that many archbishops in succes- 
sion will enjoy their fifteen thousand pounds a 
year in Lambeth. I wish I could do for the 
bishop-commissioners what his mother did for 
^neas, in the last days of Troy : — 

" Omnem quce nunc obducta tuenti 
Mortales hebetat visus tibi, et humida circum 
Caligat, nubem eripiam. 
Apparent dirce facies/' &c. &c. 

It is ominous for liberty, when Sydney and 
Russell cannot agree; but when Lord John 
Russell, in the House of Commons, said, that 
we showed no disposition to make any sacri- 
fices for the good of the church, I took the 
liberty to remind that excellent person that he 
must first of all prove it to be for the good of 
the church that our patronage should be taken 
away by the bishops, and then he might find 
fault with us for not consenting to the sacrifice. 

I have little or no personal nor pecuniary 
interest in these things, and have made all 
possible exertion (as two or three persons in 



* This has now been given to us. 



the power well know) that they should not 
come before the public. I have no son nor 
son-in-law in the church, for whom I want any 
patronage. If I were young enough to survive 
any incumbent of St. Paul's, my own prefer- 
ment is too agreeably circumstanced to make 
it at all probable I should avail myself of the 
opportunity. I am a sincere advocate for 
church reform; but I think it very possible, 
and even very easy, tohave removed all odium 
from the establishment in a much less violent 
and revolutionary manner, without committing 
or attempting such flagrant acts of injustice, 
and without leaving behind an odious court of 
inquisition, which will inevitably fall into the 
hands of a single individual, and will be an 
eternal source of vexation, jealousy, and 
change. I give sincere credit to the commis- 
sioners for good intentions — how can such 
men have intended anything but good? And 
I firmly believe that they are hardly conscious 
of the extraordinary predilection they have 
shown for bishops in all their proceedings ; it 
is like those errors in tradesmen's bills of 
which the retail arithmetician is really uncon- 
scious, but which, somehow or another, always 
happen to be in his own favour. Such men 
as the commissioners do not say this patronage 
belongs justly to the cathedrals, and we will 
take it away unjustly for ourselves ; but, after 
the manner of human nature, a thousand weak 
reasons prevail, which would have no effect, 
if self-interest were not concerned ; they are 
practising a deception on themselves, and sin- 
cerely believe they are doing right. When I 
talk of spoil and plunder, I do not speak of the 
intention, but of the effect, and -the precedent. 

Still the commissioners are on the eve of 
entailing an immense evil upon the country, 
and unfortunately, they have gone so far, that 
it is necessary they should ruin the cathedrals, 
to preserve their character for consistency. 
They themselves have been frightened a great 
deal too much by the mob; have overlooked 
the chances in their favour produced by delay ; 
have been afraidof being suspected (astories) 
of not doing enough; and have allowed them- 
selves to be hurried on by the constitutional 
impetuosity of one man, who cannot be brought 
to believe that wisdom often consists in leav- 
ing alone, standing still and doing nothing. 
From the joint operation of all these causesv 
all the cathedrals of England will, in a few 
weeks, be knocked about our ears. You, Mr. 
Archdeacon Singleton, will sit like Caius 
Marius on the ruins, and we shall lose for ever 
the wisest scheme for securing a well-educated 
clergy upon the most economical terms, and 
for preventing that low fanaticism which is 
the greatest curse upon human happiness, and 
the greatest enemy of true religion. We shall 
have all the evils of an establishment, and 
none of its good. 

You tell me I shall be laughed at ks a rich 
and overgrown churchman ; be it so. I have 
been laughed at a hundred times in my life, 
and care little or nothing about it. If I am 
well provided for now — I have had my full 
share of the blanks in the lottery as the prizes. 
Till thirty years of age I never received a 
farthing from the church ; then 501. per annum 



400 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



for two years — then nothing for ten years — 
then 500/. per annum, increased for two or 
three years to 800/., till, in my grand climac- 
teric, I was made canon of St. Paul's ; and 
before that period, I had built a parsonage- 
house with farm ofhces for a large farm, which 
cost me 4,000/., and had reclaimed another 
from ruins at the expense of 2,000/. A lawyer, 
or a physician in good practice, would smile 
at this picture of great ecclesiastical wealth, 
and yet I am considered as a perfect monster 
of ecclesiastical prosperity. 

I should be very sorry to give offence to the 
dignified ecclesiastics who are in the commis- 
sion ; I hope they will allow for the provoca- 
tion, if 1 have been a little too warm in the 
defence of St. Paul's, which I have taken a 
solemn oath to defend. I was at school and 
college Avith the Archbishop of Canterbury; 
fifty-three years ago he knocked me down with 
the chess-board for check-mating him — and 
now he is attempting to take away my patron- 
age. I believe these are the only two acts 
of violence he ever committed in his life : the 
interval has been one of gentleness, kindness, 
and the most amiable and high-principled 
courtesy to his clergy. For the Archbishop 
of York, I feel an affectionate respect — the 
result of that invariable kindness I have re- 
ceived from him : and who can see the Bishop 
of London without admiring his superior ta- 
lents — being pleased with his society^ without 
admitting that, upon the lohole* the public is 
benefited by his ungovernable passion for 
business ; and without receiving the constant 
workings of a really good heart, as an atone- 
ment for the occasional excesses of an impe- 
tuous disposition ? I am quite sure if the tables 
had been turned, and if it had been his lot, as 
a canon, to fight against the encroachments of 
bishops, that he would have made as stout a 
defence as I have done — the only difference is 
that he would have done it with much greater 
talent. 

As for my friends the whigs, I neither wish 
to offend them nor any body else. I consider 
myself to be as good a whig as any amongst 
them. I was a whig before many of them 
were born — and while some of them were 
tories and waverers. I have always turned 
out to fight their battles, and when I saw no 
other clergyman turn out but myself—and this 
in times before liberality was well recompensed, 

♦ I have heard that the Bishop of London employs eight 
hours per day in the government of his diocese— in which 
no part of Asia, Africa, or America is included. The 
world is, I believe, taking one day with another, go- 
verned in about a third of that time. 



and therefore in fashion, when the smallest 
appearance of it seemed to condemn a church- 
man to the grossest of obloquy, and the most 
hopeless poverty. It may suit the purpo'sc of 
the ministers to flatter the bench; it df js not 
suit mine. I do not choose in my old age to 
be tossed as a prey to the bishops ; I have not 
deserved this of my whig friends. I know 
very well there can be no justice for deans and 
chapters, and that the momentary lords of the 
earth will receive our statement with derision 
and persijlas^c — the great principle which is 
now called in for the government of mankind. 
Nobody admires the general conduct of . the 
whig administration more than I do. They 
have conferred, in their domestic policy, the 
most striking benefits on the country. To 
say that there is no risk in what they have 
done is mere nonsense — there is great risk; 
and all honest men must balance to counteract 
it — holding back as firmly down hill as they 
pulled vigorously up hill. Still, great as the 
risk is, it was worth while to incur it in the 
poor-law bill, in the tithe bill, in the corpora- 
tion bill, and in the circumscription of the 
Irish Protestant Church. In all these matters, 
the whig ministry, after the heat of party is. 
over, and when Joseph Hume and Wilson 
Croker* are powdered into the dust of death, 
will gain great and deserved fame. In the 
question of the church commission they have 
behaved with the grossest injustice; delighted 
to see this temporary delirium of archbishops 
and b'shops, scarcely believing their eyes,, 
and carefully suppressing their laught*, when, 
they saw these eminent conservatives laying, 
about them with the fury of Mr. Tyler or Mr- 
Straw; they have taken the greatest care not 
to disturb them, and to give them no ofll"ence : 
" Do as you like, m)^ lords, with the chapters 
and the parochial clergy ; you will find some 
pleasing morsels in the ruins of the cathe- 
drals. Keep for yourselves any thing you 
like — whatever is agreeable to you cannot be 
unpleasant to us." In the mean time, the old 
friends of, and the old sufferers for, liberty, do 
not understand this new meanness, and are 
not a little astonished to find their leaders 
prostrate on their knees before the lords of the 
church, and to receive no other answer from 
them than that, if they are disturbed in their 
adulation, they will immediately resign ! 

I remain, my dear Sir, with sincere good 
will and respect, yours, 

Stdnbt Smith. 



* I meant no harm by the comparison, but I have made- 
two bitter enemies by it. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



401. 



SECOND LETTER TO AECHDEACON SINGLETON. 



Mt beak Sir, 

It is a long lime since you heard from me, 
and in the mean time the poor Church of Eng- 
land has been trembling, from the bishop who 
sitteth upon the throne, to the curate who rideth 
upon the hackney horse. I began writing on 
the subject to avoid bursting from indignation; 
and, as it is not my habit to recede, I will go 
on till the Church of England is either up or 
down — semianimous on its back, or vigorous 
on its legs. 

Two or three persons have said to me — 
"Why, after writing an entertaining and suc- 
cessful letter to Archdeacon Singleton, do you 
venture upon another, in which you may pro- 
bably fail, and be weak or stupid V All this 
I utterly despise ; I write upon these matters 
not to be entertaining, but because the subjects 
are very important, and because I have strong 
opinions upon them. If what I write is liked, 
so much the better ; but liked or not liked, sold 
or not sold, Wilson Crockered or not Wilson 
Crockered, I will write. If you ask me who 
excites me, I answer you, it is that judge who 
stirs good thoughts in honest hearts — under 
whose warrant I impeach the wrong, and by 
whose help I hope to chastise it. 

There are, in most cathedrals, two sorts of 
prebendaries — the one resident, the other non- 
resident. It is proposed by the church com- 
mission to abolish all the prebendaries of the 
latter and many of the former class ; and it is 
the prebendaries of the former class, the resi- 
dent prebendaries, whom I wish to save. 

The non-resident prebendaries never come 
near the cathedral ; they are just like so many 
country gentlemen ; the difference is, that their 
appointments are elective, not hereditary. 
They have houses, manors, lands, and every 
appendage of territorial wealth and import- 
ance. Their value is very different. I have 
one, Neasdon, near Willesdon, which consists 
of a quarter of an acre of land, worth a few 
shillings per annum, but animated by the 
burden of repairing a bridge, which some- 
times costs the unfortunate prebendary fifty 
or sixty pounds. There are other non-resi- 
dent prebendaries, however, of great value ; 
and one, I believe, which would be worth, if 
the years or lives were run out, from 40,000/. 
to 60,000?. per annum. 

Not only do these prebendaries do nothing, 
and are never seen, but the existence of the 
preferment is hardly known ; and the abolition 
of the preferment, therefore, would not in any 
degree lessen the temptation to enter into the 
church, while the mass of these preferments 
would make an important fund for the im- 
provement of small livings. The residentiary 
prebendaries, on the contrary, perform all the 
services of the cathedral church ; their exist- 
. 51 



ence is known, their preferment coveted, and^ 
to get a stall, and to be preceded by men with 
silver rods, is the bait which the ambitious 
squire is perpetually holding out to his second, 
son. What prebendary is next to come into 
residence, is as important a topic to the cathe- 
dral town, and ten miles around it, as what 
the evening or morning star may be to the as- 
tronomer. I will venture to saj% there is not 
a man of good humour, sense, and worth, 
within ten miles of Worcester, who does not 
hail the rising of Archdeacon Singleton in the 
horizon as one of the most agreeable events 
of the year. If such sort of preferments are 
extinguished, a very serious evil (as I have 
often said before) is done to the church — the 
service becomes unpopular, further spoliation 
is dreaded, the whole system is considered to 
be altered and degraded, capital is withdrawn 
from the church, and no one enters into the 
profession but the sons of farmers and little 
tradesmen, who would be footmen if they were" 
not vicars — or figure on the coach-box if they 
were not lecturing from the pulpit. 

But what a practical rebuke to the commis- 
sioners, after all their plans and consultations 
and carvings of cathedral preferment, to leave 
it integral, and untouched! It is some com- 
fort, however, to me, to think that the persons 
of all others to whom this preservation of ca- 
thedral property would give the greatest plea-- 
sure, are the ecclesiastical commissioners 
themselves. Can any one believe that the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of 
London, really wishes for the confiscation of 
any cathedral property, or that they were 
driven to it by any thing but fear, mingled,.^ 
perhaps, with a little vanity of playing the part 
of great reformers 1 They cannot, of course,, 
say for themselves what I say for them; but 
of what is really passing in the ecclesiastical 
minds of these great personages, I have no 
more doubt than I have of what passes in the 
mind of the prisoner when the prosecutor re- 
commends and relents, and the judge says he 
shall attend to the recommendation. 

What harm does a prebend do, in a politico-, 
economical point of view T The alienation of 
the property for three lives, or twenty-one 
years, and the almost certainty that the tenant 
has of renewing, give him sufficient interest 
in the soil for all purposes of cultivation,* and.!, 
a long series of elected clergymen is »athcr 



* The church, it has been urged, do not plant— they do-- 
not extend their woods ; but almost all cathedrals pos- 
sess woods, and regularly plant a succession, so as to 
keep them up. A single evening of dice and hazard does'- 
not doom their woods to sudden destruction ; a life- 
tenant does not cut down all the timber to make the, 
most of his estate ; the woods of ecclesiastical bodies aro 
managed upon a fixed and settled plan, and considering- 
the sudden prodigalities of laymen, I should not be afraid 
of a comparison. 

2x2 



^ 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



more likely to produce valuable members of 
the community than a long series of begotten 
squires. Take, for instance, the cathedral of 
Bristol, the whole estates of which are about 
■equal to keeping a pack of fox-hounds. If this 
had been in the hands of a country gentleman; 
instead of precentor, succentor, dean, and 
canons, and sexton, you would have had 
huntsman, whippei'-in, dog-feeders, and stop- 
pers of earths ; the old squire full of foolish 
opinions, and fermented liquids, and a young 
gentleman of gloves, M^aistcoats and panta- 
loons : and how many generations might it be 
before the fortuitous concourse of noodles 
would produce such a man as Professor Lee, 
one of the prebendaries of Bristol, and by far 
the most eminent oriental scholar in Europe ? 
The same argument might be applied to every 
cathedral in England. How many hundred 
coveys of squires would it take to supply as 
much knowledge as is condensed in the heads 
of Dr. Copplestone or Mr. Taite, of St. Paul's"! 
and what a strange thing it is that such a man 
as Lord John Russell, the whig leader, should 
be so squirrel-minded as to wish for a move- 
ment without object or end ! Saving there can 
be none, for it is merely taking from one ec- 
clesiastic to give it to another ; public clamour, 
to which the best men must sometimes yield, 
does not require it : and so far from doing any 
good, it would be a source of infinite mischief 
to the establishment. 

If you were to gather a parliament of curates 
on the hottest Sunday in the year, after all the 
services, sermons, burials, and baptisms of the 
day- were over, and to offer them such increase 
of salary as would be produced by the confis- 
cation of the cathedral property, I am con- 
vinced they would reject the measure, and 
prefer splendid hope, and the expectation of 
good fortune in advanced life, to the trifling 
improvement of poverty which such a fund 
could afford. Charles James, of London, was 
a curate ; the Bishop of Winchester was a 
curate ; almost every rose-and-shovel man has 
been a curate in his time. Al! curates hope 
to draw great prizes. 

I am surprised it does not strike the moun- 
taineers how very much the great emoluments 
of the church are flung open to the lowest 
ranks of the community. Butchers, bakers, 
publicans, schoolmasters, are perpetually 
seeing their children elevated to the mitre. 
Let a respectable baker drive through the city 
from the west end of the town, and let him 
cast an eye on the battlements of Northumber- 
land House, has his little muffin-faced son the 
smallest chance of getting in among the Per- 
cies, enjoying a share of their luxury and 
splendour, and of chasing the deer with hound 
and horn upon the Cheviot Hills 1 But let 
"him drive his alum-steeped loaves a little 
farther, till he reaches St. Paul's churchyard, 
and all his thoughts are changed when he sees 
that beautiful fabric ; it is not impossible that 
his little penny roll may be introduced into 
that splendid oven. Young Crumpet is sent 
to school — takes to his books — spends the 
best years of his life, as all eminent English- 
men do, in making Latin verses — knows that 
Ihe crwm in crum-pet is long, and the yet short 



— goes to the University — gets a piize for an 
Essay on the Dispersion of the Jews — takes 
orders — becomes a bishop's chaplain — has a 
young nobleman for his pupil — publishes an 
useless classic, and a serious call to the un- 
converted — and then goes through the Elysian 
translations of prebendary, dean, prelate, and 
the long train of purple, profit, and power. 

It will not do to leave only four persons in 
each cathedral, upon the supposition that such 
a number will be sufficient for all the men of 
real merit who ought to enjoy such prefer- 
ment; we ought to have a steady confidence 
that the men of real merit will always bear a 
small proportion to the whole number; and 
that in proportion as the whole number is les- 
sened, the number of men of merit provided 
for will be lessened also If it were quite cer- 
tain that ninety persons would be selected, the 
most remarkable for conduct, piety, and learn- 
ing, ninety otfices might be sutficieut ; but out 
of these ninety are to be taken tutors to dukes 
and marquises, paid in this way by the public; 
bishop's chaplains, running tame about the 
palace ; elegant clergymen, of small under- 
standing, who have made themselves accept- 
able in the drawing-rooms of the mitre? 
Billingsgate controversialists, who have tossed 
and gored an Unitarian. So that there remain 
but a few rewards for men of real merit — ye^ 
these rewards do infinite good; and in this 
mixed, checkered way, human affairs are con- 
ducted. 

No man at the beginning of the reform could 
tell to what excesses the new power conferred 
upon the multitude would carry them ; it was 
not safe for a clergyman to appear in the 
streets. I bought a blue coat, and did not 
despair in time of looking like a layman. All 
this is passed over. Men are returned to their 
senses upon the subject of the church, and I 
utterly deny that there is any public feeling 
whatever which calls for the destruction of the 
resident prebends. Lord John Russell has 
pruned the two luxuriant bishoprics, and has 
abolished pluralities : he has made a very 
material alteration in the state of the church: 
not enough to please Joseph Hume, and the 
tribunes of the people, but enough to satisfy 
every reasonable and moderate man, and, 
therefore, enough to satisfy himself. What 
another generation may choose to do, is 
another question : I am thoroughly convinced 
that enough has been done for the present. 

Viscount Melbourne declared himself quite 
satisfied with the church as it is ; but if the 
public had any desire to alter it, they might do 
as they pleased. He might have said the 
same thing of the monarchy, or of any other 
of our institutions ; and there is in the declara- 
tion a permissiveness and gcMjd humour which, 
in public men, have seldom been exceeded. 
Carelessness, however, is but a poor imitation 
of genius, and the formation of a wise and 
well-reflected plan of reform conduces more to 
the lasting fame of a minister than that aflected 
contempt of duty which every man sees to be 
mere vanity, and a vanity of no very high 
description. 

But, if the truth must be told, our viscount 
is somewhat of an impostor. Every thing 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



403 



about him seems to betoken careless desola- 
tion: anyone would suppose from his man- 
ner that he was playing at chuck-farthing 
with human happiness; that he was always 
on the heel of pastime ; that he would giggle 
away the great charter, and decide by the 
method of tee-totum whether my lords the 
bishops should or should not retain their seats 
in the House of Lords. All this is the mere 
vanity of surprising, and making us believe 
that he can play with kingdoms as other men 
can with nine-pins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, 
this miracle of moral and intellectual felicities, 
he is nothing more than a sensible, honest 
man, who means to do his duty to the sove- 
reign and to the country : instead of being the 
ignorant man he pretends to be, before he 
meets the deputation of tallow-chandlers in the 
morning, he sits up half the night talking with 
Thomas Young about melting and skimming, 
and then, though he has acquired knowledge 
enough to work otf a whole vat of prime Leices- 
ter tallow, he pretends next morning not to 
know the difference between a dip and a 
mould. In the same way, when he has been 
employed in reading acts of Parliament, he 
would persuade you that he has been reading 
Cleghorn on the Beatitudes, or Pickler on the Nine 
Difficult Points. Neither can I allow to this 
minister (however he may be irritated by the 
denial) the extreme merit of indifference to the 
consequences of his measures. I believe him 
to be conscientiously alive to the good or evil 
that he is doing, and that his caution has more 
than once arrested the gigantic projects of the 
Lycurgus of the Lower House. I am sorry to 
hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away 
the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he 
has reared ; but I accuse our minister of 
honesty and diligence ; I deny that he is care- 
less or rash : he is nothing more than a man 
of good understanding, and good principle, 
disguised in the eternal and somewhat weari- 
. some affectation of a political roue. 

One of the most foolish circumstances at- 
tending this destruction of cathedral property, 
is the great sacrifice of the patronage of the 
crown ; the crown gives up eight prebends of 
Westminster, two at Worcester, 1,500Z. per 
annum at St. Paul's, two prebends at Bristol, 
and a great deal of other preferment all over 
the kingdom; and this at a moment when such 
extraordinary power has been suddenly con- 
ferred upon the people, and when every atom 
of power and patronage ought to be husbanded 
for the crown. A prebend of Westminster for 
my second son would soften the Catos of 
Cornhill, and lull the Gracchi of the metropo- 
litan boroughs. Lives there a man so absurd 
as to suppose that government can be carried 
on without those gentle allurements'? You 
may as well attempt to poiiltice off the humps 
of a camel's back, as to cure mankind of these 
little corruptions. 

I am terribly alarmed by a committee of 
■cathedrals now sitting in London, and plan- 
ning a petition to the legislature to be heard 
by counsel. They will take such high ground, 
and talk a language so utterly at variance with 
the feelings of the age about church pro- 
perty, that I am much afraid they will do more 



harm than good. In the time of Lord George 
Gordon's riots, the Guards said they did not 
care for the mob, if the gentlemen volunteers 
behind would be so good as not to hold their 
muskets in such a dangerous manner. I don't 
care for popular clamour, and think it might 
now be defied; but I confess the gentlemen 
volunteers alarm me. They have, unfortunately, 
too, collected their addresses, and published 
them in a single volume ! ! ! 

I should like to know how many of our in- 
stitutions at this moment, besides the cathe- 
drals, are under notice of destruction. I will, 
before I finish my letter, endeavour to procure 
a list ; in the mean time I will give you the 
bill of fare with which the last session opened, 
and I think that of 1838 will not be less copious. 
But at the opening of the session of 1837, when I 
addressed my first letter to you, this was the 
state of our intended changes : — The law of 
copyright was to be recreated by Serjeant 
Talfourd; church rates abolished by Lord John 
Russell, and imprisonment for debt by the at- 
torney-general ; the Archbishop of Canterbury 
kindly undertook to destroy all the cathedrals, 
and Mr. Grote was to arrange our voting by 
ballot; the septennial act was to be repealed 
by Mr. Williams, corn laws abolished by Mr. 
Clay, and the House of Lords reformed by Mr. 
Ward; Mr. Hume remodelled county rates, 
Mr. Ewart put an end to primogeniture, and 
Mr. Tooke took away the exclusive privileges 
of Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge ; Thomas 
Duncombe was to put an end to the proxies of 
the lords, and Serjeant Prime to turn the uni- 
versities topsy-turvy. Well may it be said 
that 

"Man never continueth in one stay." 

See how men accustom themselves to large 
and perilous changes. Ten years ago, if a 
cassock or a hassock had been taken from the 
establishment, the current of human affairs 
would have been stopped till restitution had 
been made. In a fortnight's time, Lord John 
Russell is to take possession of, and to re-parti- 
tion all the cathedrals in England ; and what 
a prelude for the young queen's coronation ! 
what a medal for the august ceremony ! — the 
fallen Gothic buildings on one side of the gold, 
the young Protestant queen on the other : — 
" Victoria Ecelesise Victrix." 

And then, when she is full of noble devices, and 
of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and amid the 
solemn swell of music, when her heart beats 
happily, and her eyes look majesty, she turns 
them on the degraded ministers of the Gospel, 
and shudders to see she is stalking to the throne 
of her Protestant ancestors over the broken 
altars of God. 

Now, remember, I hate to overstate my case. 
I do not say that the destruction of cathedrals 
will put an end to railroads : I believe that good 
mustard and cress, sown after Lord John's bill 
is passed, will, if duly watered, continue to 
grow. I do not say that the country has no 
right, after the death of individual incumbents, 
to do what they propose to do ; — I merely say 
that it is inexpedient, uncalled for, and mis- 
chievous — that the lower clergy, for whose 
sake it is proposed to be done, do not desire 



404 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



it — that the bishop commissioners, who pro- 
posed it, would be heartily glad if it was put 
an end to — that it will lower the character of 
those who enter into the chuixh, and accustom 
the English people to large and dangerous con- 
fiscations : and I would not have gentlemen of 
the money-bags, and of wheat and bean land, 
forget that the church means many other things 
than Thirty-nine Articles, and a discourse of 
five-and-twenty minutes' duration on the Sab- 
bath. It means a check to the conceited rash- 
ness of experimental reasoners — an adhesion 
to old moral landmarks — an attachment to the 
happiness we have gained fi'om tried institu- 
tions, greater than th'j expectation of that 
which i-, promised by novelty and change. 
The lou I cry of ten thousand teachers of jus- 
tice and worship, that cry which masters the 
Borgias and Calilines of the world, and guards 
from devastation the best works of God — 
Magna testantiir voce per orbem 
Discite justitiani moniti et non temnere divos. 

In spite of his uplifted chess-board, I cannot 
let my old school-fellow, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, off, without harping a little upon 
his oath, which he has taken to preserve the 
rights and property of the church of Canter- 
bury: I am quite sure so truly good a man, as 
from the bottom of my heart I believe him to 
be, has some line of argument by which he de- 
fends himself; but till I know it, I cannot of 
course say I am convinced by it. The com- 
mon defence for breaking oaths is, that they 
are contracts made with another party, which 
the Creator is called to witness, and from 
which the swearer is absolved, if those for 
whom the oath is taken choose to release him 
from his obligation. With whom, then, is the 
contract made by the archbishop 1 Is it with 
the community at large 1 If so, nothing but 
an act of Parliament (as the community at 
large have no other organ) could absolve him 
from his oath ; but three years before any act 
is passed, he puts his name to a plan for 
taking away two-thirds of the property of the 
church of Canterbury. If the contract is not 
made with the community at large, but with 
the church of Canterbury, every member of it 
is in decided hostility to his scheme. O'Con- 
nell takes an oath that he will not injure nor 
destroy the Protestant church ; but in promot- 
ing the destruction of some of the Irish bish- 
oprics, he may plead that he is sacrificing 
a part to preserve the whole, and benefiting, 
not injuring, the Protestant establishment. But 
the archbishop does not swear to a general 
truth, where the principle may be preserved, 
though there is an apparent deviation from the 
words ; but he swears to a very narrow and 
limited oath, that he will not alienate the pos- 
sessions of the church of Canterbury. A friend 
of mine has suggested to me that his grace has, 
perhaps, forgotten the oath ; but this cannot be, 
for the first Protestant in Europe of course 
makes a memorandum in his pocket-book of 
all the oaths he takes to do, or to abstain. The 
oath, however, may be less present to the arch- 
bishop's memory, from the fact of his not 
having taken the oath in person, but by the 
medium of a gentleman sent down by the coach 
to take it for him — a practice which, though I 



believe it to have been long established in the 
church, surprised me, I confess, not a little. 
A proxy to vote, if you please — a proxy to con- 
sent to arrangements of estates, if wanted; but. 
a proxy sent down in the Canterbury fly, to 
take the Cre&,tor to witness that the archbishop, 
detained in town by business or pleasure, will 
never violate that foundation of piety over 
which he presides — all this seems to me an act 
of the most extraordinary indolence ever re- 
corded in history. If an ecclesiastic, not a, 
bishop, may express any opinion on the reforms 
of the church, I recommend that archbishops 
and bishops should take no more oaths by 
proxy; but as they do not wait upon the sove- 
reign or the prime minister, or even any of 
the cabinet, by proxy, that they should also 
perform all religious acts in their own person. 
This practice would have been abolished la 
Lord John's first bill, if other grades of church- 
men as well as bishops had been made com- 
missioners. But the motto was — 

" Peace to the palaces — war to the manses." 

I have been informed, thovigh I will not an- 
swer for the accuracy of the information, that 
this vicarious oath is likely to produce a scene 
which would have puzzled the Ductor Dubi- 
tantium. The attorney who took the oath for 
the archbishop, is, they say, seized with reli- 
gious horrors at the approaching confiscation 
of Canterbury property, and has in vain ten- 
dered back his 6s. 8d. for taking the oath. The 
archoishop refuses to accept it; and feeling 
himself light and disencumbered, wisely keeps 
the saddle upon the back of the writhing and 
agonized scrivener. I have talked it over with 
several clergymen, and the general opinion is,. 
that the scrivener will suffer. 

I cannot help thinking that a great opportu- 
nity opens itself for improving the discipline 
of the church, by means of those chapters 
which Lord John Russell* is so anxious to de- 
stroy; divide the diocese among the members 
of the chapter, and make them responsible for 
the superintendence and inspection of the 
clergy in their various divisions under the su- 
preme control of the bishop; by a few addi- 
tions they might be made the bishops' council 
for the trial of delinquent clergymen. They 
might be made a kind of college for the gene- 
ral care of education in the diocese, and ap- 



* I only mention Lord John Russell's name so often, 
because the management of the church measures de- 
volves upon him. He is, beyond all comparison, the 
ablest man in the whole administration, and to such a 
degree is he superior, that the government could not 
e.\ist a moment without him. If the foreign secretary 
were to retire, we should no longer be nibbling ourselves 
into disgrace on the coast of Spain. If the amiable Lord 
Glenelg were to leave us, we should feel secure in our 
colonial possessions. If Mr. Spring Rice were to go into- 
holy orders, great would be the joy of the three per cents. 
A decent, good-looking head of the government might 
easily enough be found in lieu of Viscount Melbourne ;. 
but in five minutes after the departure of Lord John, the 
whole whig government would be dissolved into sparks, 
of liberality and splinters of reform. There are six re- 
markable men, who, in different methods and in different 
degrees, are now affecting the interests of this couh- ( 
try^— the Duke of Wellington, Lord John Russell, Lord 
Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, Sir Robert Peel, and O'Con- 
nell. Greater powers than all these are the phlegm of 
the English people— the great mass of good sense and 
intelligence diffused among them — and the number of 
those who have something to lose, and have not the 
slightest intention of losing it. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



405 



•plied to a thousand useful purposes, which 
'Would have occurred to the commissioners, if 
they had not been so dreadfully frightened, 
and to the government, if their object had been, 
not to please the dissenters, but to improve the 
church. 

The Bishop of Lincoln has lately published 
a pamphlet on the church question. His lord- 
ship is certainly not a man full of felicities 
and facilities, imitating none, and inimitable 
of any; nor does he work with infinite agita- 
tion of wit. His creation has blood without 
head, bones without marrow, eyes without 
speculation. He has the art of saying nothing 
in many words beyond any man that ever 
existed ; and when he seems to have made a 
proposition, he is so dreadfully frightened at 
it, that he proceeds as quickly as possible, in 
the ensuing sentence, to disconnect the subject 
and the predicate, and to avert the dangers he 
lias incurred: — but as he is a bishop, and will 
"be therefore more read than I am, I cannot 
pass him over. His lordship tells us, that it 
-was at one time under consideration of the 
commissioners whether they should not tax 
all benefices above a certain value, in order to 
raise a fund for the improvement of smaller 
livings; and his lordship adds, with the great- 
est innocence, that the considerations which 
principally weighed with the commissioners 
in inducing them not to adopt the plan of taxa- 
tion, was that they understood the clergy in 
general to be decidedly averse to it ; so that 
the plan of the commission was, that the 
greater benefices should pay to the little, while 
the bishops themselves — the Archbishop of 
Canterbury with his 1.5,000?. a year, and the 
Bishop of London with his 10,000?. a year — 
were not to subscribe a single farthing for that 
purpose. Why does John, Bishop of Lincoln, 
mention these distressing schemes of the com- 
mission, which we are certain would have 
been met with a general yell of indignation 
from one end of the kingdom to another? 
Surely it must have occurred to this excellent 
prelate that the bishops would have been com- 
pelled, by mere shame, to have contributed to 
the fund which they were about to put upon 
the backs of the more opulent parochial clergy; 
surely a moment's reflection must have taught 
them that the safer method by far was to con- 
fiscate cathedral property. 

The idea of abandoning this taxation, be- 
cause it was displeasing to the clergy at large, 
is not unentertaining as applied to a commis- 
sion who treated the clergy with the greatest 
contempt, and did not even notice the com- 
munications from cathedral bodies upon the 
subject of the most serious and extensive 
confiscations.* 



* Upon this subject I think it right to introduce the 
following letters, the first of which was published Jan. 
23, 1838 :— 

TO THE tDITOR OF THE TIMES. 

"Sir, — I feel it to be consistent with my duty, as secre- 
tary to the church commissioners, to notice a statement 
emanating from a quarter which would seem to give it 
authenticity— that, of seven chapter memorials addressed 
to the board, the receipt of one was only acknowledged. 

"It is strictly within my province to acknowledge 
communications made to the commissioners as a body, 
■either directly or through me; and it ia part of their | 



" The plan of taxation, therefore," says the 
bishop, "being abandoned, it was evident that 
the funds for the augmentation of poor livings, 
and for the supply of the spiritual wants of 
populous districts, must be drawn from the 
episcopal and cathedral revenues ; that is, 
from the revenues from which the legislature 
seems to have a peculiar right to draw the 
funds for the general supply of the religious 
wants of the people; because they arise from 
benefices, of which the patronage is either 
actually in the crown, or is derivative from the 
crown. In the case of the episcopal revenues, 
the commissioners had already carried the 
principle of redistribution as far as they 
thought that it could, with due allowance for 
the various demands upon the incomes of the 
bishops, be carried. The only remaining 
source, therefore, was to be found in the 
cathedral revenues; and the commissioners 
proceeded, in the execution of the duties pre- 
scribed to them, to consider in what manner 



general instructions to me that I should do so in all 
cases. 

" To whatever extent, therefore, the statement may be 
true, or whatever may be its value, it is clear that it 
cannot attach to the commissioners, but that I alone am 
responsible. 

"In the execution of my office, I have endeavoured, 
in the midst of my other duties, to conduct an extensive 
correspondence in accordance to what I knew to be the 
feelings and wishes of the commissioners, and to treat 
every party in communication with them with attention 
and respect. 

"If, at some period of more than usual pressure, any 
accidental omission"may have occurred, or may hereafter 
occur, involving an appearance of discourtesy, it is for 
me to offer, as I now do, explanation and apology. 
"I am, sir, your obedient humble servant, 

"C. K. Murray. 

" Whitehall Place, Jan. 21." 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 

" Sir, — A more indiscreet and extraordinary commuiii- 
cation than that which appears in your own paper of the 
23d instant, signed by Mr. C. K. Murray, I never read. 
^jlpparet damns intus.' It is now clear how the commis- 
sion has been worked. Where communications from the 
oldest ecclesiastical bodies, upon the most important of 
all subjects to them and to the kingdom, were received 
by the greatest prelates and noblemen of the land, acting 
under the king's commission, I should have thought that 
answers suitable to the occasion would, in each case, 
have been dictated by the commission; that such an- 
swers would have been entered on the minutes, and 
read on the board-day next ensuing. 

"Is Mr. C. K. Murray quite sure that this, which is 
done at all boards on the most trifling subjects, was not 
done at his board, in the most awful confiscation ever 
known in England? Is he certain that spoliation was in 
no instance sweetened by civility, and injustice never 
vanished by forms 7 Were all the decencies and proprie- 
ties, which ought to regulate the intercourse of such 
great bodies, left without a single inquiry from the com- 
missioner, to a gentleman who seems to have been seized 
with six distinct fits of oblivion on six separate occasions, 
any one of which required all that attention to decorum 
and that accuracy of memory for which secretaries are 
selected and paid? 

"According to Mr. C. K. Murray's account, the only 
order he received from the board was, 'If any preben- 
dary calls, or any cathedral writes, desiring not to be 
destroyed, just say the communication has been re- 
ceived;' and even this, Mr Murray tells us, he has not 
done, and that no one of the king's commissioners — 
archbishops, bishops, marquises, earls — ever asked him 
whether he had done it or not — though any one of these 
great people would have swooned away at the idea of 
not answering the most trifling communication from any 
other of these great people. 

" Whatever else these commissioners do, they had 
better not bring their secretary forward again. They 
may feel wind-bound by public opinion, but they must 
choose, as a sacrifice, a better Iphigenia than Mr. C. K. 
Murray. 

"Sydney Smith." 



406 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



those revenues might be rendered conducive 
to the efficiency of the established church." 

This is very good episcopal reasoning; but 
is it true ? The bishops and commissioners 
wanted a fund to endow small livings; they 
did not touch a farthing of their own incomes, 
only distributed them a little more equally; 
and proceeded lustily at once to confiscate 
cathedral property. But why was it neces- 
sary, if the fund for small livings was such a 
paramount consideration, that the future arch- 
bishops of Canterbury should be left with two 
palaces, and 15,000/. per annum? Why is 
every future bishop of London to have a 
palace in Fulham, a house in St. James's 
Square, and 10,000?. a-year? Could not all 
the episcopal functions be carried on well and 
effectually with the half of these incomes ] 
Is it necessary that the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury should give feasts to aristocratic London; 
and that the- domestics of the prelacy should 
stand with swords and bag-wigs round pig, 
and turkey, and venison, to defend, as it were, 
the orthodox gastronome from the fierce Uni- 
tarian, the fell Baptist, and all the famished 
children of dissent 1 I don't object to all this; 
because I am sure that the method of prizes 
and blanks is the best method of supporting 
a church, which must be considered as very 
slenderly endowed, if the whole were equally 
divided among the parishes ; but if my opinion 
were different — if I thought the important im- 
provement was to equalize preferment in the 
English church — that such a measure was not 
the one thing foolish, but the one thing need- 
ful — I should take care, as a mitred commis- 
sioner, to reduce my own species of preferment 
to the narrowest limits, before I proceeded to 
confiscate the property of any other grade of 
the church. I could not, as a conscientious 
man, leave the Archbishop of Canterbury with 
15,000?. a-year, and make a fund by annihilat- 
ing residentiaries at Bristol of 500/. This 
comes of calling a meeting of one species of 
cattle only. The horned cattle say, — "If you 
want any meat, kill the sheep ; don't meddle 
with us, there is no beef to spare." They said 
this, however, to the lion ; and the cunning 
animal, after he had gained all the information 
, necessary for the destruction of the multons, 
and learned how well and widely they pastured, 
and how they could be most conveniently 
eaten up, turns round and informs the cattle, 
who took him for their best and tenderest 
friend, that he means to eat them up also. 
Frequently did Lord John meet the destroying 
bishops ; much did he commend their daily 
heaps of ruins; sweetly did they smile on 
each other, and much charming talk was there 
of meteorology and catarrh, and the particular 
cathedral they were pulling down at each 
period ;* till one fine day, the home secretary, 
with a voice more bland, and a look more 
ardently affectionate, than that which the 
masculine mouse bestows on his nibbling 
female, informed them that the government 
meant to take all the church property into 
their own hands, to pay the rates out of it, and 



* "What cathedral are we pulling down to-day V 
was the standing question at the commission. 



deliver the residue to the rightful possessors. 
Such an effect, they say, was never before 
produced by a cotip de theatre. The commission 
was separated in an instant: London clinched 
his fist; Canterbury was hurried out by his 
chaplains, and put into a warm bed; a solemn 
vacancy spread itself over the face of Glouces- 
ter; Lincoln was taken out in strong hys- 
terics. — What a noble scene Serjeant Talfourd 
would have made of this ! Why are such 
talents wasted on Ion and the Jthcnian Captive? 

But, after all, what a proposition ! " You 
don't make the most of your money : I will 
take your property into my hands, and see if 
I cannot squeeze a penny out of it: you shall 
be regularly paid all you now receive, only if 
any thing more can be made of it, that we will 
put into our own pockets." — "Just pull off 
your neck-cloth, and lay your head under the 
guillotine, and I will promise not to do you any 
harm : just get ready for confiscation ; give up 
the management of all your property; make 
us the ostensible managers of every thing; 
let us be informed of the most minute value 
of all, and depend upon it, we will never injure 
you to the extent of a single farthing." — " Let 
me get my arms about you," says the bear ; "I 
have not the smallest intention of squeezing 
you." — "Trust your finger in my mouth," says 
the mastiff; "I will not fetch blood." 

Where is this to end? If government are 
to take into their own hands all property which 
is not managed with the greatest sharpness 
and accuracy, they may squeeze l-8th per 
cent, out of the Turkey Company ; Spring Rice 
would become director of the Hydro-imper- 
vious Association, and clear a few hundreds 
for the treasury. The British Roasted Apple 
Society is notoriously mismanaged, and Lord 
John and Brother Lister, by a careful selection 
of fruit, and a judicious management of fuel, 
would soon get it up to par. 

I think, however, I have heard at the Politi- 
cal Economy Club, where I have sometimes 
had the honour of being a guest, that no trades 
should be carried on by governments. That 
they have enough to do of their own, without 
undertaking other persons' business. If any 
savings in the mode of managing ecclesiasti- 
cal leases could be made, great deduction from 
these savings must be allowed for the jobbing 
and Gaspillage of general boards, and all the 
old servants of the church, displaced by this 
measure, must receive compensation. 

The whig government, they will be vexed to 
hear, would find a great deal of patronage 
forced upon them by this measure. Their fa- 
vourite human animal, the barrister of six 
years' standing, would be called into action. — 
The whole earth is, in fact, in commission, and 
the human race, saved from the flood, are de- 
livered over to barristers of six years' stand- 
ing. The onus probandi now lies upon any man 
who says he is not a commissioner; the only 
doubt on seeing a new man among the whigs 
is, not whether he is a commissioner or not, 
but whether it is tithes, poor-laws, boundaries- 
of boroughs, church leases, charities, or any 
of the thousand human concerns which are 
now worked by commissioners, to the infinite 
comfort and satisfaction of mankind, who seem- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



407 



in these days to have found out the real secret 
of life — the one thing wanting to sublunary 
happiness — the great principle of commission, 
and six years' banistration. 

Then, if there is a better method of working 
ecclesiastical estates — if any thing can be 
gained for the church — why is not the church 
to have it? why is it not applied to church 
purposes 1 what right has the state to seize it ? 
If I give you an estate, I give it you not only 
in its present state, but I give to you all the 
improvements which can be made upon it — 
all that mechanical, botanical, and chemical 
knowledge may do hereafter for its improve- 
ment — all the ameliorations which care and 
experience can suggest, in setting, improving, 
and collecting your rents. Can there be such 
miserable equivocation as to say — I leave you 
your property, but I do not leave to you all the 
improvements which your own wisdom, or the 
wisdom of your fellow-creatures, will enable 
you to make of your property 1 How utterly 
unworthy of a whig government is such a dis- 
tinction as this ! 

Suppose the same sort of plan had been 
adopted in the reign of Henry VIII., and the 
legislature had said, — You shall enjoy all you 
now have, but every farthing of improved 
revenue, after this period, shall go into the 
pocket of the state — it would have been im- 
possible by this time that the church could 
have existed at all : and why may not such a 
measure be as fatal hereafter to the existence 
of a church, as it would have been to the pre- 
sent generation, if it had been brought forward 
at the time of the Reformation 1 

There is some safety in dignity. A church 
is in danger when it is degraded. It costs 
mankind much less to destroy it when an in- 
stitution is associated with mean, and not with 
elevated ideas. I should like to see the subject 
in the hands of H. B. I would entitle the 
print — 

"The Bishops' Saturday Night; or, Lord John 
Russell at the Pay-Table." 

The bishops should be standing before the 
pay-table, and receiving their weekly allow- 
ance; Lord John and Spring Rice counting, 
ringing, and biting the sovereigns, and the 
Bishop of Exeter insisting that the chancellor 
of the exchequer has given him one which 
was not weight. Viscount Melbourne, in high 
chuckle, should be standing, with his hat on, 
and his back to the fire, delighted with the con- 
test; and the deans and canons should be in 
the back-ground, waiting till their turn came, 
and the bishpps were paid; and among them 
a canon, of large composition, urging them on 
not to give way too much to the bench. Per- 
haps I should add the president of the board 
of trade, recommending the truck principle to 
the bishops, and offering to pay them in has- 
socks, cassocks, aprons, shovel-hats, sermon- 
cases, and such like ecclesiastical gear. 

But the madness and folly of such a measure 
are in the revolutionary feeling which it ex- 
cites. A government taking into its hands 
such an immense value of property ! What a 
lesson of violence and change to the mass of 
mankind ! Do you want to accustom English- 



men to lose all confidence in the permanence 
of their institutions — to inure them to great 
acts of plunder — and to draw forth all the 
latent villanies of human nature 1 The whig 
leaders are honest men, and cannot mean this, 
but these foolish and inconsistent measures are 
the horn-book and infantile lessons of revolu- 
tion ; and remember, it requires no great time 
to teach mankind to rob and murder on a great 
scale. 

I am astonished that these ministers neglect 
the common precaution of a foolometer,* with 
which no public man should be unprovided ; I 
mean, the acquaintance and society of three or 
four regular British fools as a test of public 
opinion. Every cabinet minister should judge 
of all his measures by his foolometer, as a na- 
vigator crowds or shortens sail by the baro- 
meter in his cabin. I have a very valuable in- 
strument of that kind myself, which I have 
used for many years; and I would be bound to 
predict, with the utmost nicety, by the help of 
this machine, the precise effect which any 
measure would produce upon public opinion. 
Certainly, I never saw any thing so decided as 
the effects produced upon my machine by the 
rate bill. No man who had been accustomed 
in the smallest degree to handle philosophical 
instruments could have doubted of the storm 
which was coming on, or of the thoroughly 
un-English scheme in which the ministry had 
so rashly engaged themselves. 

I think, also, that it is a very sound argu- 
ment against this measure of church rates, 
that estates have been bought liable to these 
payments, and that they have been deducted 
from the purchase-money. And what, also, 
if a dissenter were a republican as well as a 
dissenter — a case which has sometimes hap- 
pened; and what if our anti-monarchical dis- 
senter were to object to the expenses of kingly 
government? Are his scruples to be respected, 
and his taxes diminished, and the queen's 
privy purse to be subjected and exposed to the 
intervening and economical squeeze of govern- 
ment commissioners 1 

But these lucubrations upon church rates 
are an episode ; I must go back to John, Bishop 
of Lincoln. All other cathedrals are fixed at 
four prebendaries ; St. Paul's and Lincoln, 
having only three, are increased to the regula- 
tion pattern of four. I call this useless and 
childish. The Bishop of Lincoln says, there 
were more residentiaries before the Reforma- 
tion ; but if for three hundred years three resi- 
dentiaries have been found to be sufficient, 
what a strangely feeble excuse it is for adding 
another, and diverting 3000/. per annum from 
the small living fund, to say, that there were 
more residentiaries three hundred years ago. 

Must every thing be good and right that is 

* Mr. Fox very often used to say, " I wonder what 
Lord B. will think of this." Lord B. happened to be a 
very stupid pprson, and the curiosity of Mr. Fox's friends 
was naturally excited to know why he attached such 
importance to the opinion of such an ordinary common- 
place person. "His opinion," said Mr. Fox, "is of much 
more importance than you are aware of He is an exact 
representative of all common-place English prejudices, 
and what Lord B. thinks of any measure, the great ma- 
jority of English people will think of it." It would be a 
good thing if every cabinet of philosophers had a Lord B 
among them. 



408 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



•done by bishops? Is there one rule of right 
for them, and another for the rest of the world] 
Now here are two commissioners, whose ex- 
press object is to constitute, out of the large 
'emoluments of the dignitaries, a fund for the 
poorer parochial clergy ; and in the very heat 
and fervour of confiscation, they build up two 
new places, utterly useless and uncalled for, 
take 3000/. from the charity fund to pay them, 
and they give patronage of these places to them- 
selves. Is there a single epithet in the lan- 
guage of invective which would not have been 
levelled at lay commissioners who had at- 
tempted the same thing 1 If it is necessary to 
do so much for archdeacons, why might not 
one of the three residentaries be archdeacon 
in virtue of his prebend 1 If government make 
"bishops, they may surely be trusted to make 
archdeacons. I am very willing to ascribe 
good motives to these commissioners, who are 
really worthy and very sensible men, but I am 
perfectly astonished that they were not deterred 
from such a measure by appearances, and 
by the motives which, whether rightly or 
wrongly, would be imputed to them. In not 
acting so as to be suspected, the Bishop of 
London should resemble Caesar's wife. In 
other respects, this excellent prelate would not 
have exactly suited for the partner of that great 
and self-willed man ; and an idea strikes me, 
that it is not impossible he might have been in 
the senate-house instead of Caesar. 

Lord John Russell gives himself great credit 
'for not having confiscated church property, 
but merely remodelled and redivided it. I ac- 
cuse him not of plunder, but I accuse him of 
•taking the Church of England, rolling it about 
as a cook does a piece of dough, with a rolling 
pin, cutting a hundred diflTerent shapes with all 
the plastic fertility of a confectioner, and 
without the most distant suspicion that he can 
ever be wrong, or ever be mistaken : with 
a certainty that he can anticipate the conse- 
t}uences of every possible change in human 
affairs. There is not a better man in Eng- 



land than Lord John Russell; but his fail- 
ure is, that he is utterly ignorant of all moral 
fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. 
I believe he would perform the operation for 
the stone — build St. Peter's — or assume (with 
or without ten minutes' notice) the command 
of the Channel fleet; and no one would disco- 
ver by his manner that the patient had died — 
the church tumbled down — and the Channel 
fleet been knocked to atoms. I believe his 
motives are always pure, and his measures 
often able; but they are endless, and never 
done with that pedetentous pace and pedeten- 
tous mind in which it behoves the wise and 
virtuous improver to walk. He alarms the 
wise liberals ; and it is impossible to sleep 
soundly while he has the command of the 
watch.* 

Do not say, my dear Lord John, that I am too 
severe upon you. A thousand years have scarce 
sufliced to make our blessed England what it 
is; an hour may lay it in the dust; andean 
you, with all your talents, renovate its shattered 
splendour — can you recall back its virtues — 
can yon vanquish time and fate 1 But, alas! 
you want to shake the world, and to be the 
thunderer of the scene ! 

Now what is the end of what I have written! 
Why every body was in a great fright; and a 
number of bishops, huddled together, and talk- 
ing of their great sacrifices, began to destroy 
other people's property, and to take other peo- 
ple's patronage : and all the fright is over now ; 
and all the bishops are very sorry for what 
they have done, and regret extremely the de- 
struction of the cathedral dignitaries, but don't 
know how to get out of the foolish scrape. The 
whig ministry persevere to please Joseph and 
his brethren, and the destroyers ; and the good 
sense of the matter is to fling out the dean and 
chapter bill, as it now stands, and to bring in 
another next year — making a fund out of all 
the non-resident prebends, annexing some of 
the others, and adopting many of the enact- 
ments contained in the present bill. 



THIUD LETTER TO AECHDEACON SINGLETON. 



Mr DEAR Sir, 

I HOPE this is the last letter you will receive 
from me on church matters. I am tired of the 
subject ; so are you ; so is every body. In 
spite of many bishops' charges, I am unbroken ; 
and remain entirely of the same opinion as I 
was two or three years since — that the miiti- 
lation of deans and chapters is a rash, foolish, 
and imprudent measure. 

I do not think the charge of the Bishop of 
London successful, in combating those argu- 
ments which have been used against the im- 
pending dean and chapter bill ; but it is quiet, 
K^ntleman-like, temperate, and written in a 



manner which entirely becomes the high office 
and character which he bears. 

I agree with him in saying that the plurality 
and residence bill is, upon the whole, a very 
good bill ; — nobody, however, knows better 
than the Bishop of London the various changes 
it has undergone, and the improvements it has 
received. I could point out fourteen or fifteen 
very material alterations for the better, since 
it came out of the hands of the commission, 
and all bearing materially upon the happiness and 

* Another peculiarity of the Russells is, that they ne- 
ver alter their opinions : they are an excellent race, bat 
they must be trepanned t>efore they can be convittced. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



409 



•■comfott of the parochial clergy. I -will mention 
•only a few : — the bill, as originally introduced, 
^ave the bishop a power, when he considered 
the duties of the parish to be improperly per- 
formed, to suspend the clergyman and appoint 
a curate with a salary. Some impious per- 
sons thought it not impossible that occasionally 
such a power might be maliciously and vin- 
dictively exercised, and that some check to . it 
should be admitted into the bill ; accordingly, 
under the existing act, an ecclesiastical jury 
is to be summoned, and into that jury the de- 
fendant clergyman may introduce a friend of 
his own. 

If a clergyman, from illness or any other 
overwhelming necessity, was prevented from 
having two services, he was exposed to an 
information and penalty. In answering the 
bishop, he was subjected to two opposite sets 
of penalties — the one for saying yes ; the other 
for saying wo ; he was amenable to the need- 
less and impertinent scrutiny of a rural dean 
before he was exposed to the scrutiny of the 
bishop. Curates might be forced upon him 
by subscribing parishioners, and the certainty 
of a schism established in the parish ; a curate 
might have been forced upon present incum- 
bents by the bishop without any complaint 
made ; upon men who took, or, perhaps, bought 
their livings under very different laws; all 
these acts of injustice are done away with, but 
it is not to the credit of the framers of the bill 
that they were ever admitted, and they com- 
pletely justify the opposition with which the 
bill was received by me and by others. I add, 
however, with great pleasure, that when these 
and other objections were made, they were 
heard with candour, and promised to be reme- 
died by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 
Bishop of London and Lord John Russell. 

I have spoken of the power to issue a com- 
mission to inquire into the well-being of any 
parish : a vindictive and malicious bishop 
might, it is true, convert this, which was in- 
tended for the protection, to the oppression of 
the clergy — afraid to dispossess a clergyman 
of his own authority, he might attempt to do 
the same thing under the cover of a jury of 
his ecclesiastical creatures. But I can hardly 
conceive such baseness in the prelate, or such 
infamous subserviency in the agents. An 
honest and respectable bishop will remember 
that the very issue of such a commission is a 
serious slur upon the character of a clergyman ; 
he will do all he can to prevent it by private 
monition and remonstrance ; and if driven to 
such an act of power, he will, of course, state 
to the accused clergyman the subjects of ac- 
cusation, the names of his accusers, and give 
him ample time for his defence. If, upon 
anonymous accusation, he subjects a clergy- 
man to such an investigation, or refuses to 
him any advantage which the law gives to 
every accused person, he is an infamous, de- 
graded, and scandalous tyrant : but I cannot 
believe there is such a man to be found upon 
the bench. 

There is in this new bill a very humane 
clause, (though not introduced by the commis- 
sion), enabling the widow of the deceased 
vclergyman to retain possession of the parson- 
52 



age-house for two months after the death of 
the incumbent. It ought, in fairness, to be 
extended to the heirs, executors, and adminis- 
trators of the incumbent. It is a great hard- 
ship that a family settled in a parish for fifty 
years, perhaps, should be torn up by the roots 
in eight or ten days ; and the interval of two 
months, allowing time for repairs, might put 
to rest many questions of dilapidation. 

Tq the bishop's power of intruding a curate, 
without any complaint on the part of the parish 
that the duty has been inadequately performed, 
I retain the same objections as before. It is 
a power which, without this condition, will be 
unfairly and partially exercised. The first 
object I admit is not the provision of the 
clergyman, but the care of the parish ; but one 
way of taking care of parishes is to take care 
that clergymen are not treated with tyranny, 
partiality, and injustice ; and the best way of 
effecting this is to remember that their supe- 
riors have the same human passions as other 
people, and not to trust them with a power 
which may be so grossly abused, and which 
(incredible as the Bishop of London may 
deem it) has been, in some instances, grossly 
abused. 

I cannot imagine what the bishop means by 
saying, that the members of cathedrals do not, 
in virtue of their oflice, bear any part in the 
parochial instruction of the people. This is a 
fine deceitful word, the word parochial, and 
eminently calculated to coax the public. If 
he means simply that cathedrals do not belong 
to parishes, that St. Paul's is not the parish 
church of Upper Puddicomb, and that the 
vicar of St. Fiddlefrid does not officiate in 
Westminster Abbey : all this is true enough, 
but do they not in the most material points 
instruct the people precisely in the same man- 
ner as the parochial clergy 1 Are not prayers 
and sermons the most important means of 
spiritual instruction? And are there not 
eighteen or twenty services in every cathedral 
for one which is heard in parish churches'? 
I have very often counted in the afternoon of 
week days in St. Paul's 150 people, and on 
Sundays it is full to suflTocation. Is all this to 
go for nothing ? and what right has the Bishop 
of London to suppose that there is not as much 
real piety in cathedrals, as in the most road- 
less, postless, melancholy, sequestered hamlet 
preached to by the most provincial, seques- 
tered, bucolic clergyman in the queen's domi- 
nions ? 

A number of little children, it is true, do not 
repeat a catechism of which they do not com- 
prehend a word; but it is rather rapid and 
M'holesale to say, that the parochial clergy are 
spiritual instructors of the people, and that the 
cathedral clergy are only so in a very restrict- 
ed sense. I say that in the most material 
points and acts of instruction, they are much 
more laborious and incessant than any paro- 
chial clergy. It might really be supposed, 
from the Bishop of London's reasoning, that 
some other methods of instruction took place 
in cathedrals than prayers and sermons can 
afford; that lectures were read on chemistry, 
or lessons given on dancing; or that it was a 
Mechanics' Institute, or a vast receptacle for 
2M 



410 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



hexameter and pentameter boys. His own 
most respectable chaplain, who is often there 
as a member of the body, will tell him that the 
prayers are strictly adhered to, according to 
the rubric, with the difference only that the 
service is beautifully chanted instead of being 
badly read ; that instead of the atrocious bawl- 
ing of parish churches, the anthems are sung 
with great taste and feeling : and if the preach- 
ing is not good, it is the fault of the Bishop of 
London, who has the whole range of London 
preachers from whom to make his selection. 
The real fact is, that, instead of being some- 
thing materially different from the parochial 
clergy, as the commissioners wish to make 
them, the cathedral clergy are fellow-labourers 
with the parochial clergy, outworking them 
ten to one ; but the commission having pro- 
vided snugly for the bishops, have, by the merest 
accident in the world, entangled themselves in 
this quarrel with cathedrals. 

"Had the question," says the bishop, "been 
proposed to the religious part of the commu- 
nity, whether, if no other means were to be 
found, the effective cure of souls should be 
provided for by the total suppression of those 
ecclesiastical corporations which have no 
cure of souls, nor bear any part in the paro- 
chial labours of the clergy ; that question, I 
verily believe, would have been carried in the 
affirmative by an immense majority of suf- 
frages." But suppose no other means could be 
found for the effective cure of souls than the 
suppression of bishops, does the Bishop of 
London imagine that the majority of suffrages 
■would have been less immense 1 How idle 
to put such cases. 

A pious man leaves a large sum of money 
in Catholic times for some purposes which 
are superstitious, and for others, such as 
preaching and reading prayers, which are ap- 
plicable to all times ; the superstitious usages 
are abolished, the pious usages remain : now 
the bishop must admit, if you take half or any 
part of this money from clergymen to whom it 
was given, and divide it for similar purposes 
among clergy to whom it was not given, you 
deviate materially from the intentions of the 
founder. These foundations are made in loco; 
in many of them the locus was, perhaps, the 
original cause of the gift. A man who founds 
an almshouse at Edmonton does not mean 
that the poor of Tottenham should avail them- 
selves of it; and if he could have anticipated 
such a consequence, he would not have en- 
dowed any almshouse at all. Such is the 
respect for property, that the Court of Chan- 
cery, when it becomes impracticable to carry 
the will of the donor into execution, always 
attend to the cy pres, and apply the charitable 
fund to a purpose as germane as possible to 
the intention of the founder; but here, when 
men of Lincoln have left to Lincoln cathedral, 
and men of Hereford to Hereford, the com- 
missioners seize it all, melt it into a common 
mass, and disperse it over the kingdom. 
Surely the Bishop of London cannot contend 
that this is not a greater deviation from the 
will of the founder than if the same people, 
remaining in the same place, receiving all the 
founder gave them, and doing all things not 



forbidden by the law, which the founder order- 
ed, were to do something more than the founder 
ordered, were to become the guardians of 
education, the counsel to the bishop, and the 
curators of the diocese in his old age and 
decay. 

The public are greater robbers and plunder- 
ers than anyone in the public ; look at the whole 
transaction ; it is a mixture of meanness and 
violence. The country choose to have an 
established religion, and a resident parochial 
clergy, but they do not choose to build houses 
for their parochial clergy, or to pay them in 
many instances more than a butler or a coach- 
man receives. How is this deficiency to be 
supplied ■? The heads of the church propose 
to this public to seize upon estates which 
never belonged to the public, and which were 
left for another purpose ; and by the seizure 
of these estates to save that which ought to 
come out of the public purse. 

Suppose Parliament were to seize upon all 
the almshouses in England, and apply them 
to the diminution of the poor-rate, what a num- 
ber of ingenious arguments might be pressed 
into the service of this robbery: "Can any 
thing be more revolting than that the poor of 
Northumberland should be starving while the 
poor of the suburban hamlets are dividing the 
benefactions of the pious dead ? ' We want 
for these purposes all that ice can obtain from 
whatever sources derived.' " I do not deny the 
right of parliament to do this, or any thing 
else ; but I deny that it would be expedient, 
because I think it better to make any sacrifices, 
and to endure any evil, than to gratify this ra- 
pacious spirit of plunder and confiscation. 
Suppose these commissioner prelates firm 
and unmoved, when we were all alarmed, had 
told the public that the parochial clergy were 
badly provided for, and that it was the duty 
of that public to provide a proper support 
for their ministers ; — suppose the commission- 
ers, instead of leading them on to confisca- 
tions, had warned their fellow subjects against 
the base economy, and the perilous injustice 
of seizing on that which was not their own ; — 
suppose they had called for water and washed 
their hands, and said, " We call you all to wit- 
ness that we are innocent of this great ruin ;" 
— does the Bishop of London imagine that 
the prelates who made such a stand would 
have gone down to posterity less respected 
and less revered than those men upon whose 
tombs it must (after all the 6 ••lerations of 
their virtues) be written, thu.i r their au- 

spices and by their comisels the destruction of the 
English church began ? Pity that the Archbishop 
of Canterbury had not retained those feelings, 
when, at the first meeting of bishops, the 
Bishop of London proposed this holy innovation 
upon cathedrals, and the head of our church 
declared, with vehemence and indignation, 
that nothing in the earth would induce him to 
consent to it. 

Si mens non Ifeva fuiaset, 

Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alfa maneres. 

"But," says the Lord Bishop of London, 
"you admit the principle of confiscation by 
proposing the confiscation and partition of 
prebends in the possession of non-residents." 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



411 



I am thinking of something else, and I see all 
of a sudden a great blaze of light ; I behold a 
great number of gentlemen in short aprons, 
neat purple coats, and gold buckles, rushing 
about with torches in their hands, calling each 
other "my lord," and setting fire to all the 
rooms in the house, and the people below de- 
lighted with the combustion ; finding it impos- 
sible to turn them from their purpose, and 
finding that they are all what they are, by di- 
vine permission ; I endeavour to direct their 
holy innovations into another channel; and I 
say to them, " my lords, had not you better set 
fire to the out of door offices, to the barns and 
stables, and spare this fine library and this 
noble drawing-room 1 Yonder are several 
cow-houses of which no use is made ; pray 
direct your fury against them, and leave this 
beautiful and venerable mansion as you found 
it." If I address the divinely permitted in 
this manner, has the Bishop of London any 
right to call me a brother incendiary 1 

Our holy innovator, the Bishop of London, 
has drawn a very affecting picture of sheep 
having no shepherd, and of millions who have 
no spiritual food ; our wants, he says, are most 
imperious ; even if we were to tax large 
livings, we must still have the money of the 
cathedrals : no plea will exempt you, nothing 
can slop us, for the formation of benefices, 
and the endowment of new ones. We want 
(and he prints it in italics) for these purposes 
" all that we can obtain from whatever sources de- 
rived." r never remember to have been more 
alarmed in my life than by this passage. I 
said to myself, the necessities of the church 
have got such complete hold of the imagina- 
tion of this energetic prelate, who is so capti- 
vated by the holiness of his innovations, that 
all grades and orders of the church and all 
present and future interests will be sacrificed 
to it. I immediately rushed to the acts of Par- 
liament, which I always have under my pil- 
low, to see at once the worst of what had hap- 
pened. I found present revenues of the 
bishops all safe ; that is some comfort, I said 
to myself; Canterbury, 24,000Z. or 25,000/. per 
annum; London, 18,000L or 20,000/. I began 
to feel some comfort : " things are not so bad ; 
the bishops do not mean to sacrifice to sheep 
and shepherds' money their present revenues ; 
the Bishop of London is less violent and head- 
strong than I thought he would be." I looked 
a little further, and found that 15,000/. per an- 
num is ted to the future Archbishop of 
Canter ' 10,000/. to the Bishop of London, 
8000/. to Durham, and 8000/. each to Winches- 
ter and Ely. "Nothing of sheep and shepherd 
in all this," I exclaimed, and felt still more 
comforted. It was not till after the bishops 
■were taken care of, and the revenues of the 
cathedrals came into full view, that I saw the 
perfect development of the sheep and shepherd 
principle, the deep and heartfelt compassion 
for spiritual labourers, and that inward groan- 
ing for the destitute state of the church, and 
that firm purpose, printed in italics, of taking 
for these purposes all that could be obtained from 
what,:%Kr source derived ; and even in this deli- 
cious rummage of cathedral property, where 
all the fine church feelins-s of the bishop's 



heart could be indulged without costing the 
poor sufferer a penny, stalls for archdeacons 
in Lincoln and St. Paul's are, to the amount 
of 2000/. per annum, taken from the sheep and 
shepherd fund, and the patronage of them di- 
vided between two commissioners, the Bishop 
of London, and the Bishop of Lincoln, instead 
of being paid to additional labourers in the vine- 
yard. 

Has there been any difiiculty, I would ask, 
in procuring archdeacons upon the very mode- 
rate pay they now receive ] Can any clergy- 
man be more thoroughly respectable than the 
present archdeacons in the see of London ? 
but men bearing such an office in the church, 
it may be said, should be highly paid, and 
archbishops, who could very well keep up 
their dignity upon 7000/. per annum, are to be 
allowed 15,000/. I make no objection to all 
this ; but then what becomes of all these 
heart-rending phrases of sheep and shepherd, and 
drooping vineyards, and flocks unthout spiritual con- 
solation ? The bishop's argument is, that the 
superfluous must give way to the necessary; 
but in fighting, the bishop should take great 
care that his cannons are not seized, and 
turned against himself. He has awarded to 
the bishops of England a superfluity as great 
as that which he intends to take from the 
cathedrals ; and then, when he legislates for an 
order to which he does not belong, begins to 
remember the distresses of the lower clergy, 
paints them with all the colours of impassioned 
eloquence, and informs the cathedral institu- 
tions that he must have every farthing he can 
lay his hand upon. Is not this as if one, afl^ected 
powerfully by a charity sermon, were to put 
his hands into another man's pocket, and cast, 
from what he had extracted, a liberal contri- 
bution into the plate ? 

I beg not to be mistaken ; I am very far 
from considering the Bishop of London as a 
sordid and interested person ; but this is a 
complete instance of how the best of men de- 
ceive themselves, where their interests are 
concerned. I have no doubt the bishop firmly 
imagined he was doing his duty ; but there 
should have been men of all grades in the 
commission, some one to say a word for cathe- 
drals and against bishops. 

The bishop says " his antagonists have al- 
lowed three canons to be sufficient for St. 
Paul's, and, therefore, four must be sufficient 
for other cathedrals." Sufficient to read the 
prayers and preach the sermons, certainl)^ and- 
so would one be ; but not sufficient to excite, 
by the hope of increased rank and wealth, 
eleven thousand parochial clergy. 

The most important and cogent arguments 
against the dean and chapter confiscations are 
passed over in silence in the bishop's charge. 
This, in reasoning, is always the wisest and 
most convenient plan, and which all young 
bishops should imitate after the manner of this 
wary polemic. I object to the confiscation be- 
cause it will throw a great deal more of capital out 
of the parochial church than it will bring into it. 
I am very sorry to come forward with so 
homely an argument, which shocks so many 
clergymen, and particularly those with the 
largest incomes, and the best bishoprics ; but 



412 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the truth is, the greater number of clergymen 
go into the church in order that they may de- 
rive a comfortable income from the church. 
Such men intend to do their duty, and they do 
it; but the duty ivS, however, not the motive, 
but the adjunct. If I was writing in gala and 
parade, I would not hold this language; but 
we are in earnest, and on business ; and as 
very rash and hasty changes are founded upon 
contrary suppositions of the pure disinterested- 
ness and perfect inattention to temporals in 
the clergy, we must get down at once to the 
solid rock without heeding how we disturb the 
turf and the flowers above. The parochial 
clergy maintain their present decent appear- 
ance quite as much by their own capital as 
by the income they derive from the church. 
I will now state the income and capital of 
seven clergymen, taken promiscuously in this 
neighbourhood : — No. 1. Living 200L, capital 
12,000?.; No. 2. Living 800/., capital 15,000/.; 
No. 3. Living 500/., capital 12,000/. ; No. 4. Liv- 
ing 150/., capital 10,000/.; No. 5. Living 800/., 
capital 12,000/.; No. 6. Living 150/., capital 
1000/.; No. 7. Living 600/., capital 16,000/. I 
have diligently inquired into the circumstances 
of seven Unitarian and Wesleyan ministers, 
and I question much if the whole seven could 
make up 6000/. between them ; and the zeal 
of enthusiasm of this last division is certainly 
not inferior to that of the former. Now here 
is a capital of 72,000/. carried into the church, 
which the confiscations of the commissioners 
would force out of it, by taking away the good 
things which were the temptation to its intro- 
(Juction. So that, by the old plan of paying 
by lottery, instead of giving a proper compe- 
tence to each, not only do you obtain a paro- 
chial clergy upon much cheaper terms ; but, 
from the gambling propensities of human na- 
ture, and the irresistible tendency to hope that 
they shall gain the great prizes, you tempt men 
into your service who keep up their credit and 
yours, not by your allowance, but by their own 
capital; and to destroy this wise and well- 
working arrangement, a great number of 
bishops, marquises, and John Russells, are 
huddled into a chamber, and, after proposing a 
scheme which will turn the English church 
into a collection of consecrated beggars, we 
are informed by the Bishop of London that it 
is an holy innovation. 

I have no manner of doubt, that the imme- 
diate effect of passing the dean and chapter 
bill will be, that a great number of fathers and 
uncles, judging, and properly judging, that the 
church is a very altered and deterioriated pro- 
fession, will turn the industry and capital of 
their eUves into another channel. My friend, 
Robert Eden, says " this is o^the earth earthy:" 
be it so ; I cannot help it, I paint mankind as 
I find them, and am not answerable for their 
defects. When an argument, taken from real 
life, and the actual condition of the world, is 
brought among the shadowy discussions of 
ecclesiastics, it always occasions terror and 
dismay ; it is like J?3neas stepping into Cha- 
ron's boat, which carried only ghosts and 
spirits. 



Sutilis. 



Gemuit sub pondere cytuba 



The whole plan of the Bishop of London 
is a ptochogony — a generation of beggars. He 
purposes, out of the spoils of the cathedral, to 
create a thousand livings, and to give to the 
thousand clergymen 130/. per annum each; a 
Christian bishop proposing, in cold blood, to 
create a thousand livings of 130/. per annum 
each ; — to call into existence a thousand of the 
most unhappy men on the face of the earth, — 
the sons of the poor, without hope, without the 
assistance of private fortune, chained to the 
soil, ashamed to live with their inferiors, unfit 
for the society of the better classes, and drag- 
ging about the English curse of poverty, with- 
out the smallest hope that they can ever shake 
it ofi". At present, such livings are filled by 
young men who have better hopes — who have 
reason to expect good property — who look for- 
ward to a college or a family living — who are 
the sons of men of some substance, and hope 
so to pass on to something better — who exist 
under the delusion of being hereafter deans 
and prebendaries — who are paid once by 
money, and three times by hope. Will the 
Bishop of London promise to the progeny of 
any of these thousand victims of the holy in- 
novation that, if they behave well, one of them 
shall have his butler's place ; another take care 
of the cedars and hyssops of his garden? 
Will he take their daughters for his nursery- 
maids ? and may some of the sons oi these 
" labourers of the vineyard" hope one day to 
ride the leaders from St. James's to Fulham 1 
Here is hope — here is room for ambition — a 
field for genius, and a ray of amelioration ! 
If these beautiful feelings of compassion are 
throbbing under the cassock of the bishop, he 
ought, in common justice to himself, to make 
them known. 

If it were a scheme for giving ease and in- 
dependence to any large bodies of clergymen, 
it might be listened to; but the revenues of 
the English church are such as to render this 
wholly and entirely out of the question. If 
you place a man in a village in the country, 
require that he should be of good manners and 
well educated ; that his habits and appearance 
should be above those of the farmers to whom 
he preaches, if he has nothing else to expect 
(as would be the case in a church of equal 
division) ; and if, upon his village income, he 
is to support a wife and educate a family, 
without any power of making himself known 
in a remote and solitary situation, such a per- 
son ought to receive 500/. per annum, and be 
furnished with a house. There are about 
10,700 parishes in England and Wales, whose 
average income is 285/. per annum. Now, to 
provide these incumbents with decent houses, 
to keep them in repair, and to raise the income 
of the incumbent to 500/. per annum, would 
require (if all the incomes of the bishops, deans 
and chapters of separate dignitaries, of sine- 
cure rectories, were confiscated, and if the 
excess of all the livings in England above 
500/. per annum were added to them,) a sum 
of two millions and a half in addition to the 
present income of the whole church ; and no 
power on earth could persuade the present 
Parliament of Great Britain to grant a single 
shilling for that purpose. Now, is it possible 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



413 



to pay such a church upon any other principle 
than that of unequal division ? The proposed 
pillage of the cathedral and college churches 
(omitting all consideration of the separate estate 
of dignitaries) would amount, divided among all 
the benefices in England, to about 51. 12s. 6^d. per 
man : and this, which would not stop an hiatus 
in a cassock, and would drive out of the paro- 
chial church ten times as much as it brought 
into it, is the panacea for pauperism recom- 
mended by her majesty's commissioners. 

But if this plan were to drive men of capital 
out of the church, and to pauperize the English 
clergy, where would the harm be 1 Could not 
all the duties of religion be performed as well 
by poor clergymen as by men of good sub- 
stance ■? My great and serious apprehension 
is, that such would not be the case. There 
would be the greatest risk that your clergy 
would be fanatical, and ignorant; that their 
habits would be low and mean, and that they 
would be despised. 

Then a picture is drawn of a clergyman 
with 130/. per annum, who combines all moral, 
physical, and intellectual advantaiges, a learned 
man, dedicating himself intensely to the care 
of his parish — of charming manners and dig- 
nified deportment — six feet two inches high, 
beautifully proportioned, with a magnificent 
countenance, expressive of all the cardinal 
virtues and the Ten Commandments, — and it is 
asked, with an air of triumph, if such a man 
as this will fall into contempt on account of 
his poverty 1 But substitute for him an ave- 
rage, ordinary, uninteresting minister; obese, 
dumpy, neither ill-natured nor good-natured; 
neither learned nor ignorant, striding over the 
stiles to church, with a second-rate wife — dusty 
and deliquescent — and four parochial children, 
full of catechism and bread and butter; or let 
him be seen in one of those Shem-Ham-and- 
Japhet buggies — made on Mount Ararat soon 
after the subsidence of the waters, driving in the 
High Street of Edmonton ;* — among all his pe- 
cuniary, saponaceous, oleaginous parishioners. 
Can any man of common sense say that all 
these outward circumstances of the ministers 
of religion have no bearing on religion itself? 

I ask the Bishop of London, a man of honour 
and conscience as he is, if he thinks five years 
will elapse before a second attack is made upon 
deans and chapters'? Does he think, after 
reformers have tasted the flesh of the church, 
that the}/- will put up with any other diet 1 Does 
he forget that deans and chapters are but 
mock turtle — that more delicious delicacies re- 
main behind? Five years hence he will at- 
tempt to make a stand, and he will be laughed 
at and eaten up. In this very charge the 
bishop accuses the lay commissioners of an- 
other intended attack upon the property of the 
church, contrary to the clearest and most ex- 
plicit stipulations (as he says) with the heads 
of the establishment. 

Much is said of the conduct of the commis- 
sioners, but that is of the least possible conse- 
quence. They may have acted for the best, 

* A parish wliich the Bishop of London has the ereatest 
desire to divide into little hits ; hut which appears quite as 
fit to preserve its integrity as St. James's, St. George's, 
or Kensington, all in the patronage of the bishop. 



according to the then existing circumstances; 
they may seriously have intended to do their 
duty to the contrary ; and I am far from saying 
or thinking they did not ; but without the least 
reference to the commissioners, the question 
is. Is it wise to pass this bill, and to justify 
such an open and tremendous sacrifice of 
church property? Does public opinion now 
call for any such measure ? is it a wise distri- 
bution of the funds of an ill-paid church ? and 
will it not force more capital out of the paro- 
chial part of the church than it brings into it? 
If the bill is bad, it is surely not to pass out of 
compliment to the feelings of the Archbishop 
of Canterbury. If the project is hasty, it is 
not to be adopted to gratify the Bishop of Lon- 
don. The mischief to the church is surely a 
greater evil than the stultification of the com- 
missioners, &c. If the physician has pre- 
scribed hastily, is the medicine to be taken to 
the death or disease of the patient? If the 
judge has condemned improperly, is the crimi- 
nal to be hung, that the wisdom of the magis- 
trate may not be impugned?* 

But why are the commissioners to be stulti- 
fied by the rejection of the measure ? The 
measure may have been very good when it 
was recommended, and very objectionable now. 
I thought, and many men thought, that the 
church was going to pieces — that the affections 
of the common people were lost to the estfi- 
blishment; and that large sacrifices must be 
instantly made, to avert the effects of this tem- 
porary madness ; but those days are gone by 
— and with them ought to be put aside mea- 
sures, which might have been wise in those 
days, but. are wise no longer. 

After all, the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
the Bishop of London are good and placable 
men ; and will ere long forget and forgive the 
successful efforts of their enemies in defeating 
this mis-ecclesiastic law. 

Suppose the commission were now begin- 
ning to sit for the first time, will any man 
living say that they would make such reports 
as they have made ? and that they would seri- 
ously propose such a tremendous revolution 
in church property ? And if they would not, 
the inference is irresistible, that, to consult the 
feelings of two or three churchmen, we are 
complimenting away the safety of the church. 
Milton asked where the nymphs were Jwhen. 
Lycidas perished ? I ask where the bishops 
are when the remorseless deep is closing over 
the head of their beloved establishment ?-j- 

You must have read an attack upon me by 
the Bishop of Gloucester, in the course of 
which he says that I have not been appointed 
to my situation as canon of St. Paul's for my 
piety and learning, but because I am a scoffer 
and a jester. Is not this rather strong for a 
bishop, and does it not appear to you, Mr. 
Archdeacon, as rather too close an imitation 
of that language which is used in the apostolic 



* "After the trouble the commissioners have taken 
(says Sir Robert), after the obloquy they have incurred," 
&c. &c. &c. 

t What is the use of publishing separate charges, as 
the Bishops of Winchester, Oxford, and Rochester have 
done'! Why do not the dissentient l)ishops form into a 
firm phalanx to save the church and fling out the bill > 
2 M 2 



414 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



occupation of trafficking in fish 1 Whether I 
have been appointed for my piety or not, must 
depend upon what this poor man means by 
piety. He means by that word, of course, a 
defence of all the tyrannical and oppressive 
abuses of the church which have been swept 
away within the last fifteen or twenty years 
of my life ; the corporation and test acts ; the 
penal laws against the Catholics ; the com- 
pulsory marriages of dissenters, and all those 
disabling and disqualifying laws which were 
the disgrace of our church, and which he has 
always looked up to as the consummation of 
human wisdom. If piety consisted in the de- 
fence of these — if it was impious to struggle 
for their abrogation, I have, indeed, led an 
ungodly life. 

There is nothing pompous gentlemen are so 
much afraid of as a little humour. It is like 
the objection of certain cephalic animalculce 
to the use of small-tooth combs, — " Finger and 
thumb, precipitate powder, or any thing else 
you please ; but for Heaven's sake no small- 
tooth combs !" After all, I believe, Bishop 
Monk has been the cause of much more 
laughter than ever I have been ; I cannot ac- 
count for it, but I never see him enter a room 
without exciting a smile on every countenance 
within it. 

Dr. Monk is furious at my attacking the 
heads of the church; but how can I help it? 
If the heads of the church are at the head of 
the mob ; if I find the best of men doing that 
which has in all times drawn upon the worst 
enemies of the human race the biUerest curses 
of history, am I to stop because the motives 
of these men are pure, and their lives blame- 
less 1 I wish I could find a blot in their lives, 
or a vice in their motives. The whole power 
of the motion is in the character of the movers: 
feeble friends, false friends, and foolish friends, 
all cease to look upon the measure, and say, 
Would such a measure have been recom- 
mended by such men as the prelates of Can- 
terbury and London, if it were not for the 
public advantage 1 And in this way, the great 
good of a religious establishment, now ren- 
dered moderate and compatible with all men's 
liberties and rights, is sacrificed to names; 
and the church destroyed from good breeding 
and etiquette! the real truth is, that Canter- 
bury and London have been frightened — they 
have overlooked the effect of time and delay — 
they have been betrayed into a fearful and 
ruinous mistake. Painful as it is to teach men 
who ought to teach us, the legislature ought, 
while there is yet time, to awake and read 
them this lesson. 

It is dangerous for a prelate to write; and 
whoever does it ought to be a very wise one. 
He has speculated why I was made a canon 
of St. Paul's. Suppose I were to follow his 
example, and, going through the bench of 
bishops, were to ask for what rea,son each man 
had been made a bishop ; suppose I were to 
go into the county of Gloucester, &c. &c. 
&c.!!!! 

I was afraid the bishop would attribute my 
promotion to the Edinburgh Review ; but upon 
the subject of promotion by reviews, he pre- 
serves an impenetrable silence. If my excel- 



lent patron Earl Grey had any reasons of this 
kind, he may at least be sure that the reviews 
commonly attributed to me were really written 
by me. I should have considered myself as 
the lowest of created beings to have disguised 
myself in another man's wit, and to have 
received a reward to which I was not en- 
titled.* 

I presume that what has drawn upon me the 
indignation of this prelate, is the observations 
I have from time to time made on the conduct 
of the commissioners ; of which he positively 
asserts himself to have been a member; but 
whether he was, or was not a member, I 
utterly acquit him of all possible blame, and 
of every species of imputation which may 
attach to the conduct of the commissioner. In 
using that word, I have always meant the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Lon- 
don,and Lord John Russell ; and have, honestly 
speaking, given no more heed to the Bishop 
of Gloucester than if he had been sitting in a 
commission of Bonzes in the court of Pekin. 

To read, however, his lordship a lesson of 
good manners, I had prepared for him a chas- 
tisement which would have been echoed from 
the Seagrave, who banqueteth in the castle, to 
the idiot who spitteth over the bridge at Glou- 
cester; but the following appeal struck my 
eye, and stopped my pen : — " Since that time, 
my inadequate qualifications have sustained 
an appalling diminution, by the affection of 
my eyes, which have impaired my vision, and 
the progress of which threatens to consign me 
to darkness ; I beg the benefit of your prayers 
to the Father of all mercies, that he will restore 
me to better use of the visual organs, to be 
employed on his service ; or that he will in- 
wardly illumine the intellectual vision, with a 
particle of that divine ray, which his Holy 
Spirit can alone impart." 

It might have been better taste, perhaps, if 
a mitred invalid, in describing his bodily in- 
firmities before a church full of clergymen, 
whose prayers he asked, had been a little 
more sparing in the abuse of his enemies ; but 
a good deal must be forgiven to the sick. I 
wish that every Christian was as well aware 
as this poor bishop of what he needed from 
divine assistance ; and in the supplication for 
the restoration of his sight and the improve- 
ment of his understanding, I must fervently 
and cordially join. 

I was much amused with what old Her- 
mannf says of the Bishop of London's ^schy- 
lus. " We find," he says, "a great arbitranness 
of proceeding, and 7nuch boldness of innovation, 
guided by no sure principle;" here it is : qtiaJis ab 
incepto. He begins with iEschylus, and ends 
with the Church of England ; begins with pro- 
fane, and ends with holy innovations — scratch- 



* I understand that the bishop bursts into tears every 
now and then, and says that I have set him the name of 
Simon, and that all the bishops now call him Simon. 
Simon of GWmcester, however, after all, is a real writer, 
and how rould I know that Dr. Monlv's name was Si- 
mon'! When tutor in Lord Corrington's family, he was 
called by tho endearinj;, though somewhat unmajestic 
name of 7J;>;,- ; and if I had thought about his name at 
all, I should have called him Richard of Gloucester. 

+ Ueber die behandlung der Grieehischen Dichter bei 
den Engliindern, Von Gottfried Hermann. Wiemar 
Jahrbacher, vol. liv. 1831. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



415 



ing out old readings which every commentator 
had sanctioned, abolishing ecclesiastical dig- 
nities which every reformer had spared; 
thrusting an anapest into a verse which will 
not bear it ; and intruding a canon, into a 
cathedral which does not want it ; and this is 
the prelate by whom the proposed reform of 
the church has been principally planned, and 
to whose practical wisdom the legislature is 
called upon to defer. The Bishop of London 
is a man of »very great ability, humane, pla- 
cable, generous, munificent, very agreeable, 
but not to be trusted with great interests where 
calmness and judgment are required; unfor- 
tunately, my old and amiable school-fellow, the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, has melted away 
before him, and sacrificed that wisdom on 
which we all founded our security. 
Much writing and much talking are very 



tiresome ; and, above all, they are so to men 
who, living in the world, arrive at those rapid 
and just conclusions which are only to be 
made by living in the world. This bill passed, 
every man of sense acquainted with human 
afiairs must see, that, as far as the church is 
concerned, the thing is at an end. From Lord 
John Russell, the present improver of the 
church, we shall descend to Hume, from Hume 
to Roebuck, and after Roebuck we shall re- 
ceive our last improvements from Dr. Wade : 
plunder will follow after plunder, degradation 
after degradation. The church is gone, and 
what remains is not life, but sickness, spasm, 
and struggle. 

Whatever happens, I am not to blame; J, 
have fought my fight. — Farewell. 

Stdkzt Suite. 



416 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



LETTER 



CHARACTER OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.- 



Mt sear Sib, 

You ask for some of your late father's letters : 
I am sorry to say I have none to send you. 
Upon principle, I keep no letters except those 
on business. I have not a single letter from 
him, nor from any human being in my posses- 
sion. 

The impression which the great talents and 
amiable qualities of your father made upon me, 
will remain as long as I remain. When I turn 
from living spectacles of stupidity, ignorance, 
and malice, and wish to think better of the 
world — I remember my great and benevolent 
friend Mackintosh. 

The first points of character which every 
body noticed in him were the total absence of 
envy, 'hatred, malice, and uncharitableness. 
He could not hate — he did not know how to set 
about it. The gall-bladder was omitted in his 
composition, and if he could have been per- 
suaded into any scheme of revenging himself 
upon an enemy, I am sure (unless he had been 
narrowly watched) it would have ended in pro- 
claiming the good qualities, and promoting the 
interests of his adversary. Truth had so much 
more power over him than anger, that (what- 
ever might be the provocation) he could not 
misrepresent, nor exaggerate. In questions 
of passion and party, he stated facts as they 
were, and reasoned fairly upon them, placing 
his happiness and pride in equitable discrimi- 
nation. Very fond of talking, he heard patient- 
ly, and, not averse to intellectual display, did 
not forget that others might have the same in- 
clination as himself. | 
Till subdued by age and illness, his conver- 
sation was more brilliant and instructive than 
that of any human being I ever had the good 
fortune to be acquainted with. His memory 
(vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed 
as to make it a source of pleasure and instruc- 
tion, rather than that dreadful engine of colloqui- 
al oppression into which it is sometimes erected. 
He remembered things, words, thoughts, dates, 
and . every thing that was wanted. His lan- 
guage was beautiful, and might have gone from 
the fireside to the press ; but though his ideas 
were always clothed in beautiful language, the 
clothes were sometimes too big for the body, 
and common thoughts were dressed in better 
and larger apparel than they deserved. He 
certainly had this fault, but it was not one of 
frequent commission. 

He had a method of putting things so mildly 
and interrogativel}^ that he always procured 
the readiest reception for his opinions. Ad- 
dicted to reasoning in the company of able men, 
he had two valuable habits, which are rarely 



met with in great reasoners — he never broke in 
upon his opponent, and always avoided strong 
and vehement assertions. His reasoning com- 
monly carried conviction, for he was cautious 
in his positions, accurate in his deductions, 
aimed only at truth. The ingenious side was 
commonly taken by some one else ; the inter- 
ests of truth were protected by Mackintosh. 

His good-nature and candour betrayed him 
into a morbid habit of eulogizing every body— • 
a habit which destroyed the value of commen- 
dations, that might have been to the young (if 
more sparingly distributed) a reward of virtue 
and a motive to exertion. Occasionally he took 
fits of an opposite nature ; and I have seen him 
abating and dissolving pompous gentlemen 
with the most successful ridicule. He certainly 
had a good deal of humour; and I remember, 
amongst many other examples of it, that he kept 
us for two or three hours in a roar of laughter, 
at a dinner-party at his own house, playing 
upon the simplicity of a Scotch cousin, who 
had mistaken me for my gallant synonym, the 
hero of Acre. I never saw a more perfect 
comedy, nor heard ridicule so long and so well 
sustained. Sir James had not only humour, 
but he had wit also ; at least, new and sudden 
relations of ideas flashed across his mind in 
reasoning, and produced the same effect as wit, 
and would have been called wit, if a sense of 
their utility and importance had not often over- 
powered the admiration of novelty, and entitled 
them to the higher name of wisdom. Then the 
great thoughts and fine sayings of the great 
men of all ages were intimately present to his 
recollection, and came out dazzling and delight- 
ing in his conversation. Justness of thinking 
was a strong feature in his understanding; he 
had a head in which nonsense and error could 
hardly vegetate: it was a soil utterly unfit for 
them. If his display in conversation had been 
only in maintaining splendid paradoxes, he 
would soon have wearied those he lived with ; 
but no man could live long and intimately with 
your father without finding that he was gaining 
upon doubt, correcting error, enlarging the 
boundaries, and strengthening the foundations 
of truth. It was worth while to listen to a 
master, whom not himself, but nature had ap- 
pointed to the office, and who taught what it 
was not easy to forget, by methods which it 
was not easy to resist. 

Curran, the master of the rolls, said to Mr. 
Grattan, " You would be the greatest man of 
your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards 
of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers." 
This was the fault or misfortune of your excel- 
lent father; he never knew the use of red tape,. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



417 



and was utterly unfit for the common business 
of life. That a guinea represented a quantity 
of shillings, and that it would barter for a quan- 
tity of cloth, he was well aware; but the accu- 
rate number of the baser coin, or the just mea- 
surement of the manufactured article, to which 
he was entitled for his gold, he could never 
learn, and it was impossible to teach him. 
Hence his life was often an example of the an- 
cient and melancholy struggle of genius, with 
the difficulties of existence. 

I have often heard Sir James Mackintosh 
say of himself, that he was bom to be the pro- 
fessor of an university. Happy, and for ages 
celebrated, would have been the university, 
which had so possessed him, but in this view he 
was unjust to himself. Still, however, his style 
of speaking in Parliament was certainly more 
academic than forensic ; it was not sufficiently 
short and quick for a busy and impatient as- 
sembly. He often spoke over the heads of his 
hearers — was too much in advance of feeling 
for their sympathies, and of reasoning for their 
comprehension. He began too much at the 
beginning, and went too much to the right and 
left of the question, making rather a lecture or 
a dissertation than a speech. His voice was 
bad and nasal ; and though nobody was in re- 
ality more sincere, he seemed not only not to 
feel, but hardly to think what he was saying. 

Your father had very little science, and no 
great knowledge of physics. His notions of 
his early pursuit — the study of medicine — were 
imperfect and antiquated, and he was but an 
indifferent classical scholar, for the Greek lan- 
guage has never crossed the Tweed in any great 
force. In history the whole stream of time was 
open before him ; he had looked into every 
moral and metaphysical question from Plato to 
Paley, and had waded through morasses of in- 
ternational law, where the step of no living 
man could follow him. Political economy is 
of modern invention ; I am old enough to recol- 
lect when every judge on the bench (Lord El- 
don and Serjeant Runnington excepted,) in their 
charges to the grand juries, attributed the then 
high prices of corn to the scandalous combina- 
tion of farmers. Sir James knew what is com- 
monly agreed upon by political economists, 
without taking much pleasure in the science, 
and with a disposition to blame the very specu- 
lative and metaphysical disquisitions into which 
it has wandered, but with a full conviction also 
(which many able men of his standing are 
without) of the immense importance of the sci- 
ence to the welfare of society. 

I think (though, perhaps, some of his friends 
may not agree with me in this opinion) that he 
was an acute judge of character, and of the 
good as well as evil in character. He was, in 
truth, with the appearance of distraction and of 
one occupied with other things, a very minute 
observer of human nature ; and I have seen him 
analyze, to the very springs of the heart, men 
who had not the most distant suspicion of the 
sharpness of his vision, nor a belief that he could 
read any thing but books. 

Sufficient justice has not been done to his po- 
litical integrity. He was not rich, was from the 
northern part of the island, possessed great fa- 
cility of temper, and had therefore every excuse 
53 



for political lubricity, which that vice (more 
common in those days than I hope it will ever 
be again) could possibly require. Invited by 
every party, upon his arrival from India, he re- 
mained steadfast to his old friends the whigs, 
whose admission to office, or enjoyment of po- 
litical power, would at that period have been 
considered as the most visionary of all human 
speculations ; yet, during his lifetime, every 
body seemed more ready to have forgiven the ter- 
giversation of which he was not guilty, than to 
admire the actual firmness he had displayed. 
With all this he never made the slightest efforts 
to advance his interests with his political 
friends, never mentioned his sacrifices nor his 
services, expressed no resentment at neglect, 
and was therefore pushed into such situations as 
fall to the lot of the feeble and delicate in a crowd. 
A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was 
his real and unaffected philanthropy. He did 
not make the improvement of the great mass 
of mankind an engine of popularity, and a step- 
ping stone to power, but he had a genuine love 
of human happiness. Whatever might assuage 
the angry passions, and arrange the conflicting 
interests of nations; whatever could promote 
peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce, 
diminish crime, and encourage industry; what- 
ever could exalt human character, and could 
enlarge human understanding ; struck at once 
at the heart of your father, and roused all his 
faculties. I have seen him in a moment when 
this spirit came upon him — like a great ship 
of war — cut his cable, and spread his enormous 
canvass, and launch into a wide sea of reason- 
ing eloquence. 

But though easily warmed by great schemes 
of benevolence and human improvement, his 
manner was cold to individuals. There was 
an apparent want of heartiness and cordiality. 
It seemed as if he had more affection for the 
species than for the ingredients of which it was 
composed. He was in reality very hospitable, 
and so fond of company, that he was hardly 
happy out of it; but he did not receive his friends 
with that honest joy which warms more than 
dinner or wine. 

This is the good and evil of your father 
which comes uppermost. If he had been arro- 
gant and grasping ; if he had been faithless and 
false; if he had always been eager to strangle 
infant genius in its cradle ; always ready to be- 
tray and to blacken those with whom he sat at 
meat; he would have passed many men, who, 
in the course of his long life, have passed him ; 
but, without selling his soul for pottage, if he 
only had had a little more prudence for the pro- 
motion of his interests, and more of angry pas- 
sions for the punishment of those detractors 
who envied his fame and presumed upon his 
sweetness; if he had been more aware of his 
powers, and of that space which nature intended 
him to occupy: he would have acted a great 
part in life, and remained a character in his- 
tory. As it is, he has left, in many of the best 
men in England, and of the continent, the deep- 
est admiration of his talents, his wisdom, his 
knowledge and his benevolence. 

I remain, my dear Sir, 

Very truly yours, 

SYDNEY SMITH. 



<IS 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



A LETTER 



LORD JOHN RUSSELL. 



Mt Lord, 

Though, upon the whole, your residence and 
plurality bill is a good bill, and although I think 
it (thanks to your kind attention to the sugges- 
tions of various clergymen) a much better bill 
than that of last year, there are still some 
important defects in it, which deserve amend- 
ment and correction. 

Page 13, Sec. 31. — It would seem, from this 
section, that the repairs are to depend upon the 
will of the bishop, and not upon the present law 
of the land. A bishop enters into the house 
of a non-resident clergyman, and finds it neither 
papered, nor painted — he orders these decora- 
tive repairs. In the mean time the court of 
Queen's Bench have decided that substantial 
repairs, only, and not decorative repairs, can 
be recovered by an incumbent from his prede- 
cessor ; the following words should be added ; — 
' Provided, always, that no other repairs shall be 
required by the bishop, than such as any incum- 
bent could recover as dilapidations from the 
person preceding him in the said benefice. 

Page 19, Sec. 42. — Incumbents are to answer 
questions transmitted by the bishop, and these 
are to be countersigned by the rural dean. — 
This is another vexation to the numerous cata- 
logue of vexations entailed upon the rural 
clergy. Is every man to go before the rural 
dean, twenty or thirty miles off, perhaps 1 Is 
he to go through a cross examination by the 
rural dean, as to the minute circumstance of 
twenty or thirty questions, to enter into reason- 
ings upon them, and to produce witnesses ? 
This is a most degrading and vexatious enact- 
ment, if all this is intended; but if the rural 
dean is to believe the assertion of every clergy- 
man upon his word only, why may not the 
bishop do so : and what is gained by the enact- 
ment"! But the commissioners seem to have 
been a set of noblemen and gentlemen, who met 
once a-week, to see how they could harass the 
working clergy, and how they could make 
every thing smooth and pleasing to the bishops. 

The clause for holding two livings, at the in- 
terval of ten miles, is perfectly ridiculous. If 
you are to abolish pluralities, do it at once, or 
leave a man only in possession of such bene- 
fices as he can serve himself; and then the dis- 
tance should be two miles, and not a yard more. 
But common justice requires that there 
should be exceptions to your rules. For two 
hundred years pluralities within certain distan- 
ces have been allowed; acting under the faith 
of these laws, livings have been bought and be- 
queathed to clergymen, tenable with other pre- 
ferments in their possession — upon faith in 
these laws, men and women have married — 
educated their children — laid down a certain 



plan of life, and adopted a certain rate of ex- 
pense, and ruin comes upon them in a moment 
from this thoughtless inattention to existing 
interests. I know a man whose father dedicated 
all he had saved in a long life of retail trade, to 
purchase the next presentation to a living of 
800/. per annum, tenable under the old law, with 
another of 500/. given to the son by his college. 
The whole of this clergyman's life and pros- 
pects (and he has an immense family of chil- 
dren) are cut to pieces by your bill. It is a 
wrong thing, you will say, to hold two livings ; 
I think it is, but why did not you, the legisla- 
ture, find this out fifty years ago 1 Why did 
you entice this man into the purchase of plu- 
ralities, by a venerable laxity of two hundred 
years, and then clap him into gaol from the new 
virtue of yesterday 1 Such reforms as these 
make wisdom and carefulness useless, and turn 
human life into a mere scramble. 

Page 32, Sec. 69. — There are the strongest 
possiole objections to this clause. The living 
is 410/. per annum, the population above 2000 
— perhaps, as is often the case, one third of 
them dissenters. A clergyman does his duty 
in the most exemplary manner — dedicates his 
life to his parish, from whence he derives his 
whole support — there is not the shadow of a 
complaint against him. The bishop has, by this 
clause, acquired a right of thrusting a curate 
upon the rector at the expense of a fifth part 
of his whole fortune. This, I think, an abomi- 
nable piece of tyranny ; and it will turn out 
to be an inexhaustible source of favouritism 
and malice. In the bishop's bill I have invaia 
looked for a similar clause, — "That if the 
population is above 800,000, and the income 
amounts to 10,000/., an assistant to the bishop 
may be appointed by the commissioners, and a 
salary of 2000/. per annum allotted to him." 
This would have been honest and manly, to 
have begun with the great people. 

But mere tyranny and episcopal malice are 
not the only evils of this clause, nor the 
greatest evils. Everybody knows the extreme 
activity of that part of the English church which 
is denominated evangelical, and their industry 
in bringing over every body to their habits of 
thinking and acting; now see what will hap- 
pen from the following clause: " And when- 
ever the population of any benefice shall 
amount to 2000, and it shall he made appear to 
the satisfaction of the bishop, that a stipend can 
be provided for the payment of a curate, by 
voluntary contribution or otherwise, without 
charge to the incumbent, it shall be lawful for 
the bishop to require the spiritual person, hold- 
ing the same, to nominate a fit person to be 
I licensed as such curate, whatever may be the 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



419 



annual valne of such benefice ; and if, in either 
of the said cases, a fit person shall not be nomi- 
nated to the bishop within two months after his 
requisition for that purpose shall have been de- 
livered to the incumbent, it shall be lawful for 
the bishop to appoint and license a curate." A 
clause worthy of the Vicar of Wrexhill himself. 
Now what will happen 1 The bishop is a Calvi- 
nistic bishop ; wife, children, chaplains, Calvin- 
ized up to the teeth. The serious people of the 
parish meet together, and agree to give an hun- 
dred pounds per annum, if Mr. Wilkinson is ap- 
pointed. It requires very little knowledge of 
human nature to predict, that at the expiration 
of two months Mr. Wilkinson will be the man ; 
and then the whole parish is torn to pieces with 
jealousies, quarrels, and comparisons between 
the rector and the delightful Wilkinson. The 
same scene is acted (mutatis mutandis), where 
the bishop sets his face against Calvinistic prin- 
ciples. The absurdity consists in suffering the 
appointment of a curate by private subscrip- 
tion ; in other words, one clergyman in a parish 
by nomination, the other by election ; and, in this 
way, religion is brought into contempt by their 
jealousies and quarrels. Little do you know, 
my dear lord, of the state of that country you 
govern, if you suppose this will not happen. I 
have now a diocese in my eye, where, I am posi- 
tively certain, that in less than six months after 
the passing of this bill, there will not be a sin- 
gle parish of 2000 persons, in which you will 
not find a subscription curate, of evangelical 
habits, canting and crowing over the regular 
and established clergyman of the parish. 

In the draft of the fifth report, upon which, I 
presume your dean and chapter bill is to be 
founded, I see the rights of patronage are to be 
conceded to present incumbents. This is very 
high and honourable conduct in the commis- 
sioners, and such as deserves the warmest 
thanks of the clergy ; it is always difficult to re- 
tract, much more difficult to retract to inferiors ; 
but it is very virtuous to do so when there 
can be no motive for it but a love of justice. 

Your whole bill is to be one of retrenchment, 
and amputation; why add fresh canons to St. 
Paul's and Lincoln ! Nobody wants them ; 
the cathedrals go on perfectly well v/ithout them; 
they take away each of them 1500/. or 1600/. 
per annum, from the fund for the improvement 
of small livings ; they give, to be sure, a consi- 
derable piece of patronage to the Bishops of 
London and Lincoln, who are commissioners, 
and they preserve a childish and pattern-like 
uniformity in cathedrals. But the first of these 
motives is corrupt, and the last silly : and, there- 
fore, they cannot be your motives. 

Yon cannot plead the recommendation of the 
commission for the creation of these new 
canons, for you have flung the commission 
overboard ; and the reformers of the church are 
no longer archbishops and bishops, but Lord 
John Russell — not those persons to whom the 
crown has entrusted the task, but Lord Martin 
Luther, bred and born in our own island, and 
nourished by the Woburn spoils and confisca- 
tions of the church. The church is not with- 
out friends, but those friends have said there 
can be no danger of measures which are sanc- 
tioned by the highest prelates of the church ; 



but you have chased away the bearers, and 
taken the ark into your own possession. Do 
not forget, however, if you have deviated from 
the plan of your brother commissioners, that 
you have given to them a perfect right to op- 
pose you. 

This unfair and wasteful creation of new 
canons, produces a great and scandalous injus- 
tice to St. Paul's and Lincoln, in the distribu- 
tion of their patronage. The old members of 
all other cathedrals will enjoy the benefit of 
survivorship, till they subside into the magic 
number of four ; up to that point, then, every 
fresh death will add to the patronage of the re- 
maining old members ; but in the churches of 
Lincoln and St. Paul's, the old members will 
immediately have one-fifth of their patronage 
taken away by the creation of a fifth canon to 
share it. This injustice and partiality are so 
monstrous, that the two prelates in question 
will see that it is necessary to their own cha,' 
racter to apply a remedy. Nothing is more 
easy than to do so. Let the bishop's canon have 
no share in the distribution of the patronage, till 
after the death of all those who were residenlia/. 
ries at the passing of the bill. 

Your dean and chapter bill will, I am afraid, 
cut down the great preferments of the church 
too much. 

Take for your fund only the non-resident 
prebends, and leave the number of resident 
prebends as they "are, annexing some (5f them 
to poor livings with large populations. I am 
sure this is all (besides the abolition of plurali- 
ties), which ought to be done, and all that would 
be done, if the commissioners were to begin de 
novo from this period, when bishops have reco- 
vered from their fright, dissenters shrunk into 
their just dimensions, and the foolish and 
exaggerated expectations from reform have 
vanished away. The great prizes of the church 
induce men to carry, and fathers and uncles to 
send into the church considerable capitals, and 
in this way, enable the clergy to associate with 
gentlemen, and to command that respect which, 
in all countries, and above all in this, depends 
so much on appearances. Your bill, abolishing 
pluralities, and taking away, at the same time, 
so many dignities, leaves the Church of Eng- 
land so destitute of great prizes, that, as far as 
mere emolument has any influence, it will be 
better to dispense cheese and butter in small 
quantities to the public, than to enter into the 
church. 

There are admirable men, whose honest and 
beautiful zeal carries them into the church 
without a moment's thought of its emoluments. 
Such a man, combining the manners of a gen- 
tleman with the acquirements of a scholar, 
and the zeal of an apostle, would overawe mer- 
cantile grossness, and extort respect from inso- 
lent opulence; but I am talking of average 
vicars, mixed natures, and eleven thousand 
parish priests. If you divide the great emolu- 
ments of the church into little portions, such 
as butlers and head game-keepers receive, you 
very soon degrade materially the style and cha- 
racter of the English clergy. If I were dictator 
of the church, as Lord Durham is to be of 
Canada, I would preserve the resident, and abo- 
lish, for the purposes of a fund, the non-resident 



42Q 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



prebends. This is the principal and most im- i 
porlant alteration in your dean and chapter bill, 
which it is not too late to make, and for which 
every temperate and rational man ought to 
strive. 

You will, of course, consider me as a defender 
of abuses. I have all my life been just the con- 
trary, and I remember, with pleasure, thirty 
years ago, old Lord Stowell saying to me, " Mr. 
Smith, you would have been a much richer man 
if you had joined us." I like, my dear lord, the 
road you are travelling, but I don't like the pace 
you are driving ; too similar to that of the son 
of Nimshi. I always feel inclined to cry out, 
Gently, John, gently down hill. Put on the drag. 
We shall be over if you go so quick — you'll do 
us a mischief. 

Remember, as a philosopher, that the Church 
of England now is a very different institution 
, from what it was twenty years ago. It then op- 
pressed every sect ; they are now all free — all 
exempt from the tyranny of an establishment ; 
and the only real cause of complaint for dissen- 
ters is, that they can no longer find a grievance 
and enjoy the distinction of being persecuted. 
I have always tried to reduce them to this state, 
• and I do not pity them. 

You have expressed your intention of going 
beyond the fifth report, and limiting deans to 
2000/. per annum, and canons to 1000/. This 
is, I presume, in conformity with the treatment 
of the bishops, who are limitetl to from 4500/., to 
5000/. per annum ; and it wears a fine appear- 
ance of impartial justice ; but for the dean and 
canon the sum is a maximum — in bishops it is a 
maximum and minimum too ;' a bishop cannot 
have less than 4500/., a canon may have as little 
as the poverty of his church dooms him to, but 
he cannot have more than 1000/. ; but there may 
be canonries of 500/., or 600/., or 700/. per annum, 
and a few only of 1000/.; many deaneries of 
from 1000/. to 1500/. per annum; and only a 
very few above 2000/. If you mean to make 
the world believe that you are legislating for 
men Avithout votes, as benevolently as you did 
for those who have votes in Parliament, you 
should make up the allowance of every canon 
to 1000/., and every dean to 2000?. per annum, 
or leave them to thepresentlottery of blanks and 
prizes. Besides, too, do I not recollect some 
remarkable instances, in j^our bishop's act, of 
deviation from this rigid standard of episcopal 
wealth 1 Are not the archbishops to have the 
enormous sums of 15,000/. and 12,000?. per an- 
num 1 is not the Bishop of London to have 
10,000?. per annum ] Are not all these three 
prelates commissioners 1 And is not the rea- 
son alleged for the enormous income of the 
Bishop of London, that everything is so expen- 
sive in the metropolis? Do not the deans of 
St. Paul's and Westminster, then, live in Lon- 
don also*? And can the Bishop of London sit 
in his place in the House of Lords, and not urge 



for those dignitaries the same reasons which) 
were so successful in securing such ample 
emoluments for his own see "? My old friend, 
the Bishop of Durham, has 8000/. per annum se- 
cured to him. I am heartily glad of it ; what pos- 
sible reason can there be for giving him more 
than other bishops, and not giving the Dean of 
Durham more than other deans 1 that is, of leav- 
ing to him one half of his present income. It is 
impossible this can be a clap-trap for Joseph 
Hume, or a set-oflT against the disasters of Cana- 
da ; you are too honest and elevated for this. I 
cannot comprehend what is meant by such, 
gross partiality and injustice. 

Why are the economists so eagerly in the 
field 1 The public do not contribute one half- 
penny to the support of deans and chapters ; it 
is not proposed by any one to confiscate the 
revenues of the church ; the whole is a question 
of distribution, in what way the revenues of the 
church can be best administered for the public 
good. But whatever may bethe respective 
shares of Peter or Paul, the public will never be 
richer or poorer by one shilling. 

When your dean and chapter bill is printed, 
I shall take the liberty of addressing you again. 
The clergy naturally look with the greatest 
anxiety to these two bills ; they think that you 
will avail yourself of this opportunity to punish 
them for their opposition to your government 
in the last elections. They are afraid that your 
object is not so much to do good as to gratify 
your vanity, by obtaining the character of a 
great reformer, and that (now the bishops are 
provided for) you will varnish over your politi- 
cal mistakes by increased severity against the 
church, or, apparently struggling for their good, 
see with inexpressible delight the clergy deli- 
vered over to the tender mercies of the radicals. 
These are the terrors of the clergy. I judge you 
with a very different judgment. You are a re- 
ligious man, not unfriendly to the church ; and 
but for that most foolish and fatal error of the 
church rates (into which you were led by a man 
who knows no more of England than of Meso- 
potamia), I believe you would have gone on 
well with the church to the last. There is a 
genius in action, as well as diction ; and be- 
cause you see political evils clearly, and attack 
them bravely, and cure them wisely, you are a 
man of real genius, and are most deservedly 
looked up to as the leader of the whig party in 
this kingdom. I wish, I must confess, you 
were rather less afraid of Joseph and Daniel; 
but God has given you a fine understanding, 
and a fine character ; and I have so much con- 
fidence in your spirit and honour, that I am sure 
you would rather abandon your bills altogether, 
than suffer the enemies of the church to convert 
them into an engine of spoil and oppression. 
I am, &c. 

SYDNEY SMITH. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Hi 



SERMON 



DUTIES OF THE QUEEN 



Daniel, iv. 31. 



■ OH KING, THY KINGDOM IS DEFARTED FSOtl THEE.' 



I DO not think I am getting out of the fair 
line of duty of a minister of the gospel, if, at 
the beginning of a new reign, I take a short 
review of the moral and religious state of the 
country ; and to point out what those topics 
are which deserve the most serious considera- 
tion of a wise and a Christian people. 

The death of a king is always an awful les- 
son to mankind ; and it produces a more 
solemn pause, and creates more profound re- 
flection than the best lessons of the best teach- 
ers. 

From the throne to the tomb — wealth, splen- 
dour, flattery, all gone ! The look of favour — 
the voice of power, no more; — the deserted 
palace — the wretched monarch on his funeral 
bier — the mourners ready — the dismal march 
of death prepared. Who are we, and what are 
we ? and for what has God made us 1 and why 
are we doomed to this frail and unquiet exist- 
ence ? Who does not feel all this 1 in whose 
heart does it not provoke appeal to and depend- 
ence on God 1 before whose eyes does it not 
bring the folly and nothingness of all things 
human 1 

But a good king must not go to his grave 
without that reverence from the people which 
his virtues deserved. And I will state to you 
what those virtues were, state it to you honestly 
and fairly ; for I should heartily despise my- 
self, if from this chair of truth I would utter 
one word of panegyric of the great men of the 
earth, which I could not aver before the throne 
of God. 

The late monarch, whose loss we have to 
deplore, was sincere and honest in his political 
relations ; he put his trust really where he put 
his trust ostensibly — and did not attempt to un- 
dermine, by secret means, those to whom he 
trusted publicly the conduct of affairs ; and I 
must beg to remind you that no vice and no 
vii-tue are indifferent in a monarch; human 
beings are very imitative ; there is a fashion in 
the higher qualities of our minds, as there is 
in the lesser considerations of life. It is by no 
means indifferent to the morals of the people 
at large, whether a tricking perfidious king is 
placed on the throne of these realms, or whether 
the sceptre is swayed by one of plain and 
manly character, walking ever in a straight 
line, on the firm ground of truth, under the 
searching eye of God. 



The late king was of a sweet and Christian 

disposition ; he did not treasure up little ani- 
mosities, and indulge in vindictive feelings ; he 
had no enemies but the enemies of the coun- 
try ; he did not make the memory of a king a 
fountain of wrath; the feelings of the indivi- 
dual (where they required any control) were in 
perfect subjection to the just conception he had 
formed of his high duties ; and every one near 
him found it was a government of principle, 
and not of temper ; not of caprice, not of ma- 
lice couching in high places, and watching an 
opportunity of springing on its victim. 

Our late monarch had the good nature of 
Christianity ; he loved the happiness of all the 
individuals about him, and never lost an op- 
portunity of promoting it ; and where the heart 
is good, and the mind active, and the means 
ample, this makes a luminous and beautiful 
life, which gladdens the nations, and leads 
them, and turns men to the exercise of virtue, 
and the great work of salvation. 

We may honestly say of our late sovereign 
that he loved his country, and was sensibly 
alive to its glory and its happiness. When he 
entered into his palaces he did not say, "All 
this is my birthright ; I am entitled to it — it is 
my due — how can I gain more splendour? how 
can I increase all the pleasures of the senses 1" 
but he looked upon it all as a memorial that 
he was to repay by example, by attention, and 
by watchfulness over the public interests, the 
affectionate and lavish expenditure of his sub- 
jects ; and this was not a decision of reason, 
but a feeling, which hurried him away. When- 
ever it was pointed out to him that England 
could be made more rich, or more happy, or 
rise higher in the scale of nations, or be better 
guided in the straight path of the Christian 
faith, on all such occasions he rose above him- 
self; there was a warmth, and a truth, and an 
honesty, which it was impossible to mistake ; 
the gates of his heart were flung open, and that 
heart throbbed and beat for the land which his 
ancestors had rescued from slavery, and go- 
verned with justice : — but he is gone — and let 
fools praise conquerors, and say the great Na- 
poleon pulled down this kingdom and destroyed 
that army, we will thank God for a king who 
has derived his quiet glory from the peace of 
his realm, and who has founded his own hap- 
piness upon the happiness of his people. 
2N 



43S 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



But the world passes on, and a new order of 
things arises. Let us take a short view of those 
duties which devolve upon the young queen, 
whom Providence has placed over us — what 
ideas she ought to forna of her duties — and on 
what points she should endeavour to place the 
glories of her reign. 

First and foremost, I think, the new queen 
should bend her mind to the very serious con- 
sideration of educating the people. Of the 
importance of this, I think no reasonable doubt 
can exist ; it does not, in its effects, keep pace 
with the exaggerated expectations of its inju- 
dicious advocates, but it presents the best 
chance of national improvement 

Reading and writing are mere increase of 
power. They may be turned, I admit, to a 
good, or a bad purpose ; but for several years 
of his life the child is in your hands, and you 
may give to that power what bias you please : 
thou shalt not kill — thou shalt not steal — thou 
shalt not bear false witness ; — by how many 
fables, by how much poetry, by how many, 
beautiful aids of imagination, may not the fine 
morality of the Sacred Scriptures be engraven 
on the minds of the young 1 I believe the arm 
of the assassin may be often stayed by the les- 
sons of his early life. When I see the village 
school, and the tattered scholars, and the aged 
master or mistress teaching the mechanical art 
of reading or writing, and thinking that they 
are teaching that alone, I feel that the aged in- 
structor is protecting life, insuring property, 
fencing the altar, guarding the throne, giving 
space and liberty to all the fine powers of man, 
and lifting him up to his own place in the order 
of creation. 

There are, I am sorry to say, many countries 
in Europe, which have taken the lead of Eng- 
land in the great business of education, and it 
is a thoroughly commendable, and legitimate 
object of ambition in a sovereign to overtake 
them. The names too, of malefactors, and the 
nature of their crimes are subjected to the sove- 
reign ; — how is it possible that a sovereign, with 
the fine feelings of youth, and with all the gentle- 
ness of her sex, should not ask herself, whether 
the human being whom she dooms to death, or 
at least does not rescue from death, has been 
properly warned in early youth of the horrors 
of that crime for which his life is forfeited? 
"Did he ever receive any*education at all? — 
• — did a father and mother watch over him ? — 
was he brought to places of worship ? — was the 
Word of God explained to him ? — was the book 
of knowledge opened to him? — Or am I, the 
fountain of mercy, the nursing-mother of my 
people, to send a forsaken wretch from the 
streets to the scaffold, and to prevent, by un- 
principled cruelty, the evils of unprincipled ne- 
glect?" 

Many of the objections found against the 
general education of the people are utterly un- 
tenable ; where all are educated, education can- 
not be a source of distinction and a subject for 
pride. The great source of labour is want; 
and as long as the necessities of life call for 
labour — labour is sure to be supplied. All 
these fears are foolish and imaginary ; the great 
use and the great importance of education pro- 
perly conducted are, that it creates a great bias 
..i ;<.'. -f.i"/;.- •, '^;^' '■ " . 



in favour of virtue and religion, at a period of 
life when the mind is open to all the impres— i 
sions which superior wisdom may choose tan 
affix upon it; the sum and mass of these ten- 
dencies and inclinations make a good and vir- 
tuous people, and draw down upon us the bless- 
ing and protection of Almighty God. 

A second great object which I hope will be 
impressed upon the mind of this royal lady is, 
a rooted horror of war — an earnest and pas- 
sionate desire to keep her people in a state of 
profound peace. The greatest curse which can 
be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. 
All the atrocious crimes committed in years of 
peace — all that is spent in peace by the secret 
corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance 
of nations, are mere trifles compared with the 
gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a 
state of war. God is forgotten in war — every 
principle of Christian charity trampled upon — 
human labour destroyed — human industry ex- 
tinguished ; — you see the son and the husband 
and the brother dying miserably in distant lands 
— you see the waste of human aflfections— you 
see the breaking of human hearts — you hear 
the shrieks of widows and children after the 
battle — and you walk over the mangled bodies 
of the wounded calling for death. I would say 
to that royal child, worship God, by loving 
peace — it is not your humanity to pity a beggar 
by giving him food or raiment — / can do that ; 
that is the charity of the humble, and the un- 
known — widen you your heart for the more ex- 
panded miseries of mankind — pity the mothers 
of the peasantry who see their sons torn away 
from their families — pity your poor subjects 
crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last 
breath upon their distant country and their 
young queen — pity the stupid, frantic folly of 
human beings who are always ready to tear 
each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth 
with each other's blood ; this is your extended 
humanity — and this the great field of your com- 
passion. Extinguish in your heart the fiendish 
love of military glory, from which your sex 
does not necessarily exempt you, and to which 
the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say 
upon your death-bed, "I have made few orphans 
in my reign — I have made few "widows — my 
object has been peace. I have used all the 
weight of my character, and all the power of my 
situation, to check the irascible passions of 
mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest 
industry: this has been the Christianity of my 
throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre ; in 
this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer 
and my Judge." 

I would add (if any addition were wanted as 
a part of the lesson to youthful royalty), the 
utter folly of all wars of ambition, where the 
object sought for — if attained at all — is com- 
monly attained at manifold its real value, and 
often wrested, after short enjoyment, from its 
possessor, by the combined indignation and just 
vengeance of the other nations of the world. It 
is all misery, and folly, and impiety, and cru- 
elty. The atrocities, and horrors, and disgusts 
of war, have never been half enough insisted 
upon by the teachers of the people ; but the 
worst of evils and the greatest of follies, have 
been varnished over with specious names, and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



423 



. the gigantic robbers and murderers of the world 
have been holden up, for their imitation, to the 
weak eyes of youth. May honest counsellors 
keep this poison from the mind of the young 
queen. May she love what God bids, and do 
what makes men happy ! 

I hope the queen will love the national church, 
and protect it ; but it must be impressed upon 
her mind, that every sect of Christians have as 
perfect a right to the free exercise of their wor- 
ship as the church itself — that there must be no 
invasion of the privileges of other sects, and no 
contemptuous disrespect of their feelings — that 
the altar is the very ark and citadel of freedom. 
Some persons represent old age as miserable, 
because it brings with it the pains and infirmi- 
ties of the body ; but what gratification to the 
mind may not old age bring with it in this 
country of wise and rational improvement? I 
have lived to see the immense improvements 
of the Church of England; all its powers of 
persecution destroyed — its monopoly of civil 
offices expunged from the book of the law, and 
all its unjust and exclusive immunities leveled 
to the ground. The Church of England is now 
a rational object of love and admiration — it is 
perfectly compatible with civil freedom — it is an 
institution for worshipping God, and not a cover 
for gratifying secular insolence, and minister- 
ing to secular ambition. It will be the duty of 
those to whom the sacred trust of instructing 
our youthful queen is entrusted, to lead her at- 
tention to these great improvements in our reli- 
gious establishments ; and to show to her how 
possible, and how wise it is, to render the solid 
advantages of a national church compatible 
with the civil rights of those who cannot assent 
to its doctrines. 

Then again, our youthful ruler must be very 
slow to believe all the exaggerated and violent 
abuse which religious sects indulge in against 
each other. She will find, for ipstance, that the 
Catholics, the great object of our horror and 
aversion, have (mistaken as they are) a great 
deal more to say in defence of their tenets than 
those imagine who indulge more in the luxury 
of invective than in the labour of inquiry — 
she will find in that sect, men as enlightened, 
talents as splendid, and probity as firm, as in 
our own church ; and she will soon learn to ap- 
preciate, at its just value, that exaggerated 
hatred of sects which paints the Catholic faith 
(the religion of two-thirds of Europe) as utterly 
incompatible with the safety, peace and order 
of the world. 

It will be a sad vexation to all loyal hearts 
and to all rationally pious minds, if our sove- 
reign should fall into the common error of mis- 
taken fanaticism for religion : and in this way 
fling an air of discredit upon real devotion. It 
is, I am afraid, unquestionably the fault of the 
age ; her youth and her sex do not make it 
more improbable, and the warmest efforts of 
that description of persons will not be wanting 
to gain over a convert so illustrious, and so 
important. Should this take place, the conse- 
quences will be serious and distressing — the 
land will be inundated with hypocrisy — absurd- 
ity will be heaped upon absurdity — there will 
be a race of folly and extravagance for royal 
favour, and he who is farthest removed from 



reason will make the nearest approach to dis- 
tinction ; and then follow the usual conse- 
quences ; a weariness and disgust of religion 
itself, and the foundation laid for an age of im- 
piety and infidelity. Those, then, to whom 
these matters are delegated, will watch care- 
fully over every sign of this excess, and guard 
from the mischievous intemperance of enthu- 
siasm those feelings and that understanding, 
the healthy state of which bears so strongly 
and intimately upon the happiness of a whole 
people. 

Though I deprecate the bad effects of fanati- 
cism, I earnestly pray that our young sovereign 
may evince herself to be a person of deep re- 
ligious feeling: what other cure has she for all 
the arrogance and vanity which her exalted 
position must engender"? for all the flattery and 
falsehood with which she must be surrounded? 
for all the soul-corrupting homage with which 
she is met at every moment of her existence ? 
what other cure than to cast herself down in 
darkness and solitude before God — to say that 
she is dust and ashes — and to call down the 
pity of the Almighty upon her difficult and 
dangerous life? This is the antidote of kings 
against the slavery and the baseness which 
surround them — they should think often of 
death — and the folly and nothingness of the 
world, and they should humble their souls be- 
fore the Master of masters, and the King of 
kings ; praying to Heaven for wisdom and 
calm reflection, and for that spirit of Christian 
gentleness which exalts command into an em- 
pire of justice, and turns obedience into a ser- 
vice of love. 

A wise man struggling with adversity is said 
by some heathen writer to be a spectacle on 
which the gods might look down with pleasure 
— but where is there a finer moral and religious 
picture, or one more deserving of divine fa- 
vour, than that of which, perhaps, we are now 
beginning to enjoy the blessed reality? 

A young queen, at that period of life which 
is commonly given up to frivolous amusement, 
sees at once the great principles by which she 
should be guided, and steps at once into the 
great duties of her station. The importance 
of educating the lower orders of the people is 
never absent from her mind; she takes up this 
principle at the beginning of her life, and in 
all the change of servants, and in all the strug- 
gle of parties, looks to it as a source of per- 
manent improvement. A great object of her 
affections is the preservation of peace ; she 
regards a state of war as the greatest of all 
human evils, thinks that the lust of conquest 
is not a glory but a bad crime ; despises the 
folly and miscalculations of war, and is will- 
ing to sacrifice every thing to peace, but the 
clear honour of her land. 

The patriot queen, whom I am painting, re- 
verences the national church — frequents its 
worship, and regulates her faith by its precepts ; 
but she withstands the encroachments, and 
keeps down the ambition natural to establish- 
ments, and, by rendering the privileges of the 
church compatible with the civil freedom of all 
sects, confers strength upon, and adds duration 
to, that wise and magnificent institution. And 
then this youthful monarch, profoundly but 



424 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far 
above the childish follies of false piety, casts 
herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel 
of his blessed Son a path for her steps and a 
comfort for her soul. Here is a picture which 
warms every English heart, and would bring 
all this congregation upon their bended knees 
before Almighty God to pray it may be realized. 
What limits to the glory and happiness of our 
native land, if the Creator should in his mercy 
have placed in the heart of this royal woman 
■ the rudiments of wisdom and mercy ; and if, 



giving them time to expand, and to bless oui* 
children's children with her goodness, He 
should grant to her a long sojourning upoa 
earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is 
well stricken in years? What glory! what 
happiness! what joy! what bounty of God! 
I of course can only expect to see the begin- 
ning of such a splendid period; but when I do 
see it, I shall exclaim with the Psalmist, — 
" Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 
peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 



THE LAWYER THAT TEMPTED CHRIST. 



A SERMON PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH AT ST. PETER, YORK, BEFORE THB 
HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT., ONE OF HIS MAJESTY's JUSTICES OF THE COURT OF 
king's bench, and THE HON. SIR JOHN HULLOCK, KNT., ONE OF HIS MAJESTY's 
BARONS OF THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER. AUG. 1, 1824. 

Luke x. 25. 



'"And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit 

eternal life?" 



This lawyer, who is thus represented to have 
tempted our blessed Saviour, does not seem to 
have been very much in earnest in the ques- 
tion which he asked : his object does not ap- 
pear to have been the acquisition of religious 
knowledge, but the display of human talent. 
He did not say to himself, I will now draw near 
to this august being ; I will inform myself from 
the fountain of truth, and from the very lips of 
Christ; I will learn a lesson of salvation; but 
it occurred to him, that in such a gathering to- 
gether of the Jews, in such a moment of public 
agitation, the opportunity of display was not to 
be neglected : full of that internal confidence 
which men of talents so ready, and so exercised, 
are sometimes apt to feel, he approaches our 
Saviour with all the apparent modesty of inter- 
rogation, and, saluting him with the appellation 
of Master, prepares, with all professional acute- 
ness, for his humiliation and defeat. 

Talking humanly, and we must talk humanly, 
for our Saviour was then acting an human part, 
the experiment ended as all must wish an ex- 
periment to end, where levity and bad faith are 
on one side, and piety, simplicity, and goodness 
on the other : the objector was silenced, and one 
of the brightest lessons of the Gospel elicited, 
for the eternal improvement of mankind. 

Still, though we wish the motive for the 
question had been better, we must not forget 
the question, and we must not forget who asked 
the question, and we must not forget who an- 
swered it, and what that answer was. The 
■question was the wisest and best that ever 
came from the mouth of man ; the man who 
asked it was the very person who ought to 
have asked it; a man overwhelmed, probably. 



with the intrigues, the bustle, and business of 
life, and, therefore, most likely to forget the in- 
terests of another world : the answerer was our 
blessed Saviour, through whose mediation, you, 
and I, and all of us, hope to live again ; and the 
answer, remember, was plain and practical: 
not flowery, not metaphysical, not doctrinal; 
but it said to fhe man of the law, if you wish 
to live eternally, do your duty to God and man^ 
live in this world as you ought to live ; make 
yourself fit for eternity ; and then, and then 
only, God will grant to you eternal life. 

There are, probably, in this church, many 
persons of the profession of the law, who have 
often asked before, with better faith than their 
brother, and who do now ask this great question, 
"What shall I do to inherit eternal lifel" I shall, 
therefore, direct to them some observations on 
the particular duties they owe to society, be- 
cause I think it suitable to this particular sea- 
son, because it is of much more importance to 
tell men how they are to be Christians in detail, 
than to exhort them to be Christians general- 
ly ; because it is of the highest utility to avail 
ourselves of these occasions, to show to classes 
of mankind what those virtues are which they 
have more frequent and valuable opportunities 
of practising, and what those faults and vices 
are to which they are more particularly exposed. 

It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in 
the active and arduous profession of the law, 
to pass their lives in great cities, amidst severe 
and incessant occupation, requiring all the fa- 
culties, and calling forth, from time to time, 
many of the strongest passions of our nature. 
In the midst of all this, rivals are to be watched, 
superiors are to be cultivated, connections 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



425 



cherished ; some portion of life must be given 
to society, and some little to relaxation and 
amusement. When, then, is the question to be 
asked, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life"!" 
what leisure for the altar, what time for God 1 
I appeal to the experience of men engaged in 
this profession, whether religious feelings and 
religious practices are not, without any specu- 
lative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to the 
business of the world. Are not the habits of 
devotion gradually displaced by other habits of 
solicitude, hurry, and care, totally incompatible 
with habits of devotion ? Is not the taste for 
devotion lessened 1 Is not the time for devo- 
tion abridged 1 Are you not more and more 
conquered against your warnings and against 
your will, not, perhaps, without pain and com- 
punction, by the mammon of life 1 and what is 
the cure for this great evil to which your pro- 
fession exposes you 1 The cure is, to keep a 
sacred place in your heart, where Almighty 
God is enshrined, and where nothing human 
can enter ; to say to the world, " Thus far shalt 
thou go, and no farther ;" to remember you are a 
lavjfyer, without forgetting you are a Christian ; 
to wish for no more wealth than ought to be 
possessed by an inheritor cf the kingdom of 
heaven ; to covet no more honour than is suit- 
able to a child of God ; boldly and bravely to 
set yourself limits, and to show to others you 
have limits, and that no professional eagerness 
and no professional activity shall ever induce 
you to infringe upon the rules and practices of 
religion : remember the text ; put the great ques- 
tion really, which the tempter of Christ only pre- 
tended to put. In the midst of your highest 
success, in the most perfect gratification of 
your vanity, in the most ample increase of your 
wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, and say, 
" Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life V 
The genuine and unaffected piety of a lawyer 
is, in one respect, of great advantage to the 
general interests of religion ; inasmuch as to 
the highest member of that profession a great 
share of church patronage is entrusted, and to 
him we are accustomed to look up in the sen- 
ate, for the defence of our venerable establish- 
ment; and great and momentous would be the 
loss to this nation, if any one, called to so high 
and honourable an office, were found deficient 
in this ancient, pious, and useful zeal for the 
established church. In talking to men of your 
active lives and habits, it is not possible to an- 
ticipate the splendid and exalted stations for 
which any one of you may be destined. Fifty 
years ago, the person at the head of his pro- 
fession, the greatest lawyer now in England, 
perhaps in the world, stood in this church, on 
such occasions as the present, as obscure, as 
unknown, and as much doubting of his future 
prospects, as the humblest individual of the 
profession here present. If Providence reserve 
such honours for any one who may now chance 
to hear me, let him remember that there is re- 
quired at his hands a zeal for the established 
church, but a zeal tempered by discretion, com- 
patible with Christian charity, and tolerant of 
Christian freedom. All human establishments 
are liable to err, and are capable of improve- 
ment : to act as if you denied this, to perpetuate 
any infringement upon the freedom of other 

64: 



sects, however vexatious that infringement, and 
however safe its removal, is not to defend an 
establishment, but to expose it to unmerited 
obloquy and reproach. Never think it neces- 
sary to be weak and childish in the highest 
concerns of life ; the career of the law opens 
to you many great and glorious opportunities 
of promoting the Gospel of Christ, and of doing 
good to your fellow-creatures ; there is no situ- 
ation of that profession in which you can be 
more great and more glorious than when, in 
the fulness of years, and the fulness of honours, 
you are found defending that church which 
first taught you to distinguish between good 
and evil, and breathed into you the elements of 
religious life ; but when you defend that church, 
defend it with enlarged wisdom, and with the 
spirit of magnanimity; praise its great excel- 
lencies ; do not perpetuate its little defects ; be its 
liberal defender, be its wise patron, be its real 
friend. If you can be great and bold in human 
affairs, do not think it necessary to be narrow 
and timid in spiritual concerns ; bind yourself 
up with the real and important interests of the 
church, and hold yourself accountable to God 
for its safety; but yield up trifles to the altered 
state of the world. Fear no change which les- 
sens the enemies of that establishment, fear no 
change which increases the activity of that es- 
tablishment, fear no change which draws down 
upon it the more abundant prayers and bless- 
ings of the human race. 

Justice is found, experimentally, to be most 
effectually promoted by the opposite eflTorts of 
practised and ingenious men, presenting to the 
selection of an impartial judge the best argu- 
ments for the establishment and explanation of 
truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrange- 
ment, the decided duty of an advocate to use all 
the arguments in his power to defend the cause 
he has adopted, and to leave the eflfects of those 
arguments to the judgment of others. How- 
ever useful this practice may be for the promo- 
tion of public justice, it is not without danger 
to the individual whose practice it becomes. It 
is apt to produce a profligate indifl^erence to 
truth in higher occasions of life, where truth 
cannot, for a moment, be trifled with, much less 
callously trampled on, much less suddenly and 
totally yielded up to the basest of human mo- 
tives. It is astonishing what unworthy and in- 
adequate notions men are apt to form of the 
Christian faith. Christianity does not insist 
upon duties to an individual, and forget the du- 
ties which are owing to the great mass of indi- 
viduals, which we call our country ; it does not 
teach you how to benefit your neighbour, and 
leave you to inflict the most serious injuries 
upon all whose interest is bound up with you 
in the same land : I need not say to this con- 
gregation that there is a wrong and a right in 
public affairs, as there is a wrong and a right 
in private affairs. I need not prove that in any 
vote, in any line of conduct which afl^ects the 
public interest, every Christian is bound, most 
solemnly and most religiously, to follow the 
dictates of his conscience. Let it be for, let it 
be against, let it please, let it displease, no 
matter with whom it sides, or what it thwarts, 
it is a solemn duty, on such occasions, to act 
from the pure dictalesof conscience, and to be 
2n2 



426 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



as faithful to the interests of the great mass of 
your fellow-creatures, as you would be to the 
interests of any individual of that mass. Why, 
then, if there is any truth in these observations, 
can that man be pure and innocent before God, 
can he be quite harmless and respectable before 
men, who, in mature age, at a moment's notice, 
sacrifices to wealth and power all the fixed and 
firm opinions of his life ; who puts his moral 
principles to sale, and barters his dignity and 
his soul for the baubles of the world 1 If these 
temptations come across you, then remember 
the memorable words of the text, "What shall 
I do to inherit eternal lifel" not this — don't do 
this ; it is no title to eternity to suffer deserved 
shame among men ; endure any thing rather 
than the loss of character, cling to character 
as your best possession, do not envy men who 
pass you in life, only because they are under 
less moral and religious restraint than yourself. 
Your object is not fame, but honourable fame ; 
your object is not wealth, but wealth worthily 
obtained ; your object is not power, but power 
gained fairly and exercised virtuously. Long- 
suffering is a great and important lesson in 
human life ; in no part of human life is it more 
necessary than in your arduous profession. 
The greatest men it has produced have been at 
some period of their professional lives ready 
to faint at the long and apparently fruitless 
journey ; and if you look at those lives, you 
will find they have been supported by a con- 
fidence (under God) in the general effects of 
character and industry. They have withstood 
the allurement of pleasure, which is the first 
and most common cause of failure ; they have 
disdained the little arts and meannesses which 
carry base men a certain way, and no further ; 
they have sternly rejected, also, the sudden 
means of growing basely rich and dishonoura- 
bly great, with which every man is at one time 
or another sure to be assailed ; and then they 
have broken out into light and glory at the last, 
exhibiting to mankind the splendid spectacle of 
great talents long exercised by difficulties, and 
high principles never tainted with guilt. 

After all, remember that your profession is 
a lottery, in which you may lose as well as win ; 
and you must take it as a lottery, in which, 
after every effort of your own, it is impossible 
to command success ; for this you are not ac- 
countable, but you are accountable for your 
purity: you are accountable for the preserva- 
tion of your character. It is not in every man's 
power to say, I will be a great and successful 
lawyer, but it is in every man's power to say, 
that he will (with God's assistance) be a good 
Christian, and an honest man. Whatever is 
moral and religious is in your own power. 
If fortune deserts you, do not desert yourself; 
do not undervalue inward consolation ; con- 
nect God with your labour ; remember you are 
Christ's servant; be seeking always for the in- 
heritance of immortal life. 

I must urge you by another motive, and 
bind you by another obligation, against the 
sacrifice of public principle. A proud man, 
when he has obtained the reward, and accepted 
the wages of baseness, enters into a severe ac- 
count with himself, and feels clearly that he has 



suffered degradation ; he may hide it by in- 1 
creased zeal and violence, or varnish it over ' 
by simulated gaiety ; he may silence the world, 
but he cannot always silence himself. If this 
is only a beginning, and you mean, hence- 
forward, to trample all principle under foot, 
that is another thing ; but a man of fine parts 
and nice feelings is trying a very dangerous 
experiment with his happiness, who means to 
preserve his general character, and indulge in 
one act of baseness. Such a man is not made 
to endure scorn and self-reproach ; it is far 
from being certain that he will be satisfied with 
that unscriptural bargain in which he has 
gained the honours of the world, and lost the 
purity of his soul. 

It is impossible in the profession of the law 
but that many opportunities must occur for the 
exertion of charity and benevolence. I do not 
mean the charity of money, but the charity of 
time, labour and attention ; the protection of 
those whose resources are feeble, and the in- 
formation of those whose knowledge is small. 
In the hands of bad men, the law is sometimes 
an artifice to mislead, and sometimes an engine 
to oppress. In your hands it may be, from 
time to time, a buckler to shield, and a sanctua- 
ry to save; you may lift up oppressed humility, 
listen patiently to the injuries of the wretched, 
vindicate their just claims, maintain their fair 
rights, and show, that in the hurry of business 
and the struggles of ambition, you have not 
forgotten the duties of a Christian, and the 
feelings of a man. It is in your power, above 
all other Christians, to combine the wisdom of 
the serpent with the innocence of the dove, 
and to fulfil, with greater acuteness and more 
perfect effect than other men can pretend to, 
the love, the lessons and the law of Christ. 

I should caution the younger part of this 
profession (who are commonly selected for it ^ 
on account of their superior tatents) to culti- 
vate a little more diffidence of their own pow- 
ers, and a little less contempt for received 
opinions, than is commonly exhibited at the 
beginning of their career ; mistrust of this na- 
ture teaches moderation in the formation of 
opinions, and prevents the painful necessity 
of inconsistency and recantation in future life. 
It is not possible that the ablest young men, at 
the beginning of their intellectual existence, 
can anticipate all those reasons, and dive into 
all those motives, which induce mankind to 
act as they do act, and make the world such as 
we find it to be ; and though there is, doubt- 
less, much to alter, and much to improve in 
human affairs, yet you will find mankind not 
quite so wrong as, in the first ardour of youth, 
you supposed them to be ; and you will find, as 
you advance in life, many new lights to open 
upon you, which nothing but advancing in life 
could ever enable you to observe. I say this, not 
to check originality and vigour of mind, which 
are the best chattels and possessions of the 
world, but to check that eagerness which ar- 
rives at conclusions without sulficient pre- 
mises ; to prevent that violence which is not un- 
commonly atoned for in after-life by the sacri- J 
fice of all principle and all opinions ; to lessen 
that contempt which prevents a young man 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



427 



from, improving his own understanding, by- 
making a proper and prudent use of the un- 
derstandings of his fellow-creatures. 

There is another unchristian fault which must 
be guarded against in the profession of the 
law, and that is, misanthropy, an exaggerated 
opinion of the faults and follies of mankind. 
It is naturally the worst part of mankind who 
are seen in courts of justice, and with whom 
the professors of the law are most conversant. 
The perpetual recurrence of crime and guilt 
insensibly connects itself with the recollections 
of the human race : mankind are always 
painted in the attitude of suffering and in- 
flicting. It seems as if men were bound to- 
gether by the relations of fraud and crime ; 
but laws are not made for the quiet, the good, 
and the just ; j'^ou see and know little of them 
in your profession, and, therefore you forget 
them ; you see the oppressor, and you let loose 
your eloquence against him ; but you do not 
see the man of silent charity, who is always 
seeking out objects of compassion : the faith- 
ful guardian does not come into a court of jus- 
tice, nor the good wife, nor the just servant, 
nor the dutiful son; you punish the robbers 
who ill-treated the wayfaring man, but you 
know nothing of the good Samaritaii who bound 
up his wounds. The lawyer who tempted his 
Master, had heard, perhaps, of the sins of the 
woman at the feast, without knowing that she 
had poured her store of precious ointment on 
the feet of Jesus. 

Upon those who are engaged in studying the 
laws of their country, devolves the honourable 
and Christian task of defending the accused ; 
a sacred duty never to be yielded up, never to 
be influenced by any vehemence, nor intensity 
of public opinion. In these times of profound 
peace, and unexampled prosperity, there is 
little danger in executing this duty, and little 
temptation to violate it ; but human aflfairs 
change like the clouds of heaven ; another year 
may fin3 us, or may leave us, in all the perils 
and bitterness of internal dissension, and upon 
one of you may devolve the defence of some 
accused person, the object of men's hopes and 
fears, the single point on which the eyes of a 
whole people are bent. These are the occa- 
sions which try a man's inward heart, and se- 
parate the dross of human nature from the 
gold of human nature. On these occasions, 
never mind being mixed up for a moment with 
the criminal and the crime ; fling yourself 
back upon great principles, fling yourself back 
upon God; yield not one atom to violence, 
sufier not the slightest encroachments of in- 
justice, retire not one step before the frowns 
of power, tremble not, for a single instant, at 
the dread of misrepresentation. The great 
interests of mankind are placed in your hands ; 
it is not so much the individual you are defend- 
ing ; it is not so much a matter of conse- 
quence whether this or that is proved to be a 
crime, but on such occasions, you are often 
called upon to defend the occupation of a de- 
fender, to take care that the sacred rights be- 
longing to that character are not destroyed, that 
that best privilege of your profession, which so 
much secures our regard, and so much re- 
dounds to your credit, is never soothed by flat- 



tery, never corrupted by favour, never chilled 
by fear. You may practise this wickedness 
secretly, as you may any other wickedness ; 
you*may suppress a topic of defence, or soften 
an attack upon opponents, or weaken your 
own argument, and sacrifice the man who has 
put his trust in you, rather than provoke the 
powerful by the triumphant establishment of 
unwelcome innocence ; but if you do this, you 
are a guilty man before God. It is better to 
keep within the pale of honour, it is better to 
be pure in Christ, and to feel that you are pure 
in Christ; and if the praises of mankind are 
sweet, if it is ever allowable to a Christian to 
breathe the incense of popular favour, and to 
say it is grateful, and good, it is when the 
honest, temperate, unyielding advocate, who 
has protected innocence from the grasp of 
power, is followed from the hall of judgment 
by the prayers and blessings of a grateful 
people. 

These are the Christian excellencies which 
the members of the profession of the law have, 
above all, an opportunity of cultivating; this 
is your tribute to the happiness of your fellow- 
creatures, and these your preparations for 
eternal life. Do not lose God in the fervour 
and business of the world ; remember that the 
churches of Christ are more solemn and more 
sacred than your tribunals ; bend not before 
the judges of the king, and forget the Judge of 
judges ; search not other men's hearts without 
heeding that your own hearts will be searched ; 
be innocent in the midst of subtilty ; do not 
carry the lawful arts of your profession beyond 
your profession ; but when the robe of the 
advocate is laid aside, so live that no man* 
shall dare to suppose your opinions venal, or 
that your talents and energy may be bought for 
a price ; do not heap scorn and contempt upon 
your declining years, by precipitate ardour for 
success in your profession; but set out with a 
firm determination to be unknown, rather than 
ill-known ; and to rise honestly if you rise at 
all. Let the world see that you have risen, 
because the natural probity of your heart leads 
you to truth ; because the precision and extent 
of your legal knowledge enable you to find the 
right way of doing the right thing ; because a 
thorough knowledge of legal art and legal form 
is, in your hands, not an instrument of chi- 
canery, but the plainest, easiest and shortest 
way to the end of strife. Impress upon your- 
selves the importance of your profession ; con- 
sider that some of the greatest and most im- 
portant interests of the world are committed to 
your care ; that you are our protectors against 
the encroachments of power ; that you are the 
preservers of freedom, the defenders of weak- 
ness, the unravellers of cunning, the investi- 
gators of artifice, the humblers of pride and 
the scourges of oppression; when you are 
silent, the sword leaps from its scabbard, and 
nations are given up to the madness of eternal 
strife. In all the civil difiiculties of life, men 
depend upon your exercised faculties, and your 
spotless integrity; and they require of you an 
elevation above all that is mean, and a spirit 
which will never yield when it ought not to 
yield. As long as your profession retains its 
character for learning, the rights of mankind 



428 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



•will be well arranged ; as long as it retains its 
character for virtuous boldness, those rights 
will be well defended; as long as it preserves 
itself pure and incorruptible on other occasions 
not connected with your professions, those 
talents will never be used to the public injury 
which were intended and nurtured for the pub- 
lic good. I hope you will weigh these obser- 



vations, and apply them to the business of the 
ensuing week, and beyond that, in the common 
occupations of your professions ; always bear- 
ing in your minds the emphatic words of the 
text, and often in the hurry of your busy, active 
lives, honestly, humbly, heartily exclaiming to 
the Son of God, " Master, what shall I do to 
inherit eternal life 1" 



THE JUDGE THAT SMITES CONTRARY TO THE LAW. 



A SERMON PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OP SAINT PETER, YORK, BEFORB 
THE HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT., AND THE HON. SIR GEORGE SOWLEY HOLROTD* 
KNT., JUSTICES OF THE COURT OF KING's BENCH, MARCH 28, 1824. 



Acts xxiii. 3. 
." Sittest thou here tojitdge me after the law, and commandest thou me to be smitten, contrary to the latof* 



With these bold words St. Paul repressed 
the unjust violence of that ruler who would 
have silenced his arguments and extinguished 
his zeal for the Christian faith. Knowing well 
the misfortunes which awaited him, prepared 
for deep and various calamity, not ignorant of 
the violence of the Jewish multitude, not un- 
used to suffer, not unwilling to die, he had not 
prepared himself for the monstrous spectacle 
of perverted justice ; but loosing that spirit to 
whose fire and firmness we owe the very exist- 
ence of the Christian faith, he burst into that 
bold rebuke which brought back the extrava- 
gance of power under the control of law, and 
branded it with the feelings of shame : " Sittest 
thou here to judge me after the Jaw, and com- 
mandest thou me to be smitten, contrary to the 
law T" 

I would observe that, in the Gospels, and the 
various parts of the New Testament, the words 
of our Saviour and of St. Paul, when they 
contain any opinion, are always to be looked 
upon as lessons of wisdom to us, however in- 
cidentally they may have been delivered, and 
however shortly they may have been expressed. 
As their words were to be recorded by inspired 
writers, and to go down to future ages, nothing 
can have been said without reflection and de- 
sign. Nothing is to be lost, every thing is to 
be studied : a great moral lesson is often con- 
veyed in a few words. Read slowly, think 
deeply, let every word enter into your soul, for 
it was intended for your soul. 

I take these words of St. Paul as a con- 
demnation of that man who smites contrary to 
the law ; as a praise of that man who judges 
according to the law ; as a religious theme 
upon the importance of human justice to the 
happiness of mankind; and, if it be that theme, 
it is appropriate to this place, and to the so- 
lemn public duties of the past and the ensuing 
■week, over which some here present will pre- 



side, at which many here present will assist, 
and which almost all here present will witness. 

I will discuss, then, the importance of judg- 
ing, according to the law, or, in other words, 
of the due administration of justice upon the 
character and happiness of nations. And in 
so doing, I will begin with stating a few of 
those circumstances which may mislead even 
good and conscientious men, and subject them 
to the unchristian sin of smiting contrary to 
the law. I will state how that justice is puri- 
fied and perfected by which the happiness and 
character of nations are affected to a good 
purpose. * 

I do this with less fear of being misunder- 
stood, because I am speaking before two great 
magistrates, who have lived much among us ; 
and whom — because they have lived much 
among us — we have all learned to respect and 
regard, and to whom no man fears to consider 
himself as accountable, because all men see 
that they, in the administration of their high 
office, consider themselves as deeply and daily 
accountable to God. 

And let no man say, "Why teach such 
things 1 do you think they must not have oc- 
curred to those to whom they are a concern 1" 
I answer to this, that no man preaches novel- 
ties and discoveries ; the object of preaching 
is, constantly to remind mankind of what man- 
kind are constantly forgetting; not to supply 
the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify 
the feebleness of human resolutions, to recall 
mankind from the by-paths where they turn, 
into that broad path of salvation which all 
know, but few tread. These plain lessons the 
humblest ministers of the Gospel may teach, 
if they are honest, and the most powerful 
Christians will ponder, if they are wise. No 
man, whether he bear the sword of the law, or" 
whether he bear that sceptre which the sword 
of the law cannot reach, can answer for his 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



429 



own heart to-morrow, and can say to the teach- 
er, — " Thou warnest me, thou teachest me, in 
vain." 

A Christian judge, in a free land, should, 
with the most scrupulous exactness, guard him- 
self from the influence of those p^rty feelings, 
upon which, perhaps, the preservation of poli- 
tical liberty depends, but by which the better 
reason of individuals is often blinded and the 
tranquillity of the public disturbed. I am not 
talking of the ostentatious display of such feel- 
ings ; I am hardly talking of any gratification 
of which the individual himself is conscious, 
but I am raising up a wise and useful jealousy 
of the encroachment of those feelings, which, 
when they do encroach, lessen the value of the 
most valuable, and lower the importance of the 
most important men in the country. I admit it 
to be extremely difficult to live amidst the agi- 
tations, contests, and discussions of a free peo- 
ple, and to remain in that state of cool, pas- 
sionless, Christian candour which society 
expect from their great magistrates ; but it is 
the pledge that magistrate has given, it is the 
life he has taken up, it is the class of qualities 
which he has promised us, and for which he 
has rendered himself responsible; it is the 
same fault in him which want of courage 
would be in some men, and want of moral re- 
gularity in others. It runs counter to those 
very purposes, and sins against those utilities 
for which the very office was created ; without 
these quafities, he who ought to be cool, is 
heated ; he who ought to be neutral, is partial ; 
the ermine of justice is spotted; the balance of 
justice is unpoised; the fillet of justice is torn 
off; and he who sits to judge after the law, 
smites contrary to the law. 

And if the preservation of calmness amidst 
the strong feelings by which a judge is sur- 
rounded be ditficult, is it not also honourable 1 
and would it be honourable if it were not diffi- 
cult 1 Why do men quit their homes, and give 
up their common occupations, and repair to 
the tribunal of justice 1 Why this bustle and 
business, why this decoration and display, and 
why are we all eager to pay our homage to the 
dispensers of justice ] Because we all feel 
that there must be, somewhere or other, a check 
to human passions; because we all know the 
immense value and importance of men in whose 
placid equity and mediating wisdom we can 
trust in the worst oF times ; because we cannot 
cherish too strongly and express too plainly 
that reverence we feel for men who can rise 
up in the ship of the state, and rebuke the 
storms of the mind, and bid its angry passions 
be still. 

A Christian judge, in a free land, should not 
only keep his mind clear from the violence of 
party feelings, but he should be very careful to 
preserve his independence, by seeking no pro- 
motion, and asking no favours from those who 
govern ; or at least, to be (which is an experi- 
ment not without danger to his salvation) so 
thoroughly confident of his motives and his 
conduct, that he is certain the hope of favour 
to come, or gratitude for favour past, will never 
cause him to swerve from the strict line of duty. 
It is often the lot of a judge to be placed, not 
only between the accuser and the accused,not 



only between the complainant and him against 
whom it is complained, but between the govern- g 
ors and the governed, between the people and 
those whose lawful commands the people are 
bound to obey. In these sort of contests it un- 
fortunately happens that the rulers are some- 
times as angry as the ruled ; the whole eyes 
of a nation are fixed upon one man, and upon 
his character and conduct the stability and 
happiness of the times seem to depend. The 
best and firmest magistrates cannot tell how 
they may act under such circumstances, but 
every man may prepare himself for acting 
well under such circumstances, by cherishing 
that quiet feeling of independence, which re- 
moves one temptation to act ill. Every man 
may avoid putting himself in a situation where 
hi? hopes of advantage are on one side, and 
his sense of duty on the other; such a temp- 
tation may be withstood, but it is better it should 
not be encountered. Far better that feeling 
which says, "I have vowed a vow before God; 
I have put on the robe of justice ; farewell ava- 
rice, farewell ambition ; pass me who will, 
slight me who will, I live henceforward only 
for the great duties of life ; my business is on 
earth, my hope and my reward are in God." 

He who takes the office of a judge, as it now 
exists in this country, takes in his hands a 
splendid gem, good and glorious, perfect and 
pure. Shall he give it up mutilated, shall he 
mar it, shall he darken it, shall it emit no light, 
shall it be valued at no price, shall it excite no 
wonder 1 Shall he find it a diamond, shall he 
leave it a stone? What shall we say to the 
man who would wilfully destroy with fire the 
magnificent temple of God, in which I am now 
preaching] Far worse is he who ruins the 
moral edifices of the world, which time and 
toil, and many prayers to God, and many suf- 
ferings of men, have reared; who puts out the 
light of the times in which he lives, and leaves 
us to wander amid the darkness of corruption 
and the desolation of sin. There may be, there 
probably is, in this church, some young man 
who may hereafter fill the office of an English 
judge, when the greater part of those who hear 
me are dead, and mingled with the dust of the 
grave. Let him remember my words, and let 
them form and fashion his spirit; he cannot 
tell in what dangerous and awful times he may 
be placed ; but as a mariner looks to his com- 
pass in the calm, and looks to his compass in 
the storm, and never keeps his eyes off'his com- 
pass, so, in every vicissitude of a judicial life, 
deciding for the people, deciding against the 
people, protecting the just rights of kings, or 
restraining their unlawful ambition, let him ^ 

ever cling to that^pure, exalted and Christian -* 
independence which towers over the little mo- 
tives of life ; which no hope of favour can influ- 
ence, which no effort of power can control. 

A Christian judge in a free country should 
respect, on every occasion, those popular in- 
stitutions of justice which were intended for 
his control, and for our security; to see hum- 
ble men collected accidentally from the neigh- 
bourhood, treated with tenderness and cour- 
tesy by supreme magistrates of deep learning 
and practised understanding, from whose 
views they are, perhaps, at that moment dif- 



420 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



fering and whose directions they do not choose 
to follow ; to see at such times every disposi- 
tion to warmth restrained, and every tendency 
to contemptuous feeling kept back ; to witness 
this submission of the great and wise, not 
when it is extorted by necessity, but when it 
is practised with willingness and grace, is a 
spectacle which is very grateful to English- 
men, which no other country sees, which, 
above all things, shoM'^s that a judge has a 
pure, gentle, and Christian heart, and that he 
never wishes to smite contrary to the law. 

May I add the great importance in a judge 
of courtesy to all men, and that he should, on 
all occasions, abstain from unnecessary bit- 
terness and asperity of speech. A judge al- 
ways speaks with impunity, and always speaks 
with effect. His words should be weighed, 
because they entail no evil upon himself, and 
much evil upon others. The language of pas- 
sion, the language of sarcasm, the language 
of satire, is not, on such occasions, Christian 
language ; it is not the language of a judge. 
There is a propriety of rebuke and condemna- 
tion, the justice of which is felt even by him 
who suffers under it; but -when magistrates, 
under the mask of law, aim at the offender 
more than the offence, and are more studious 
of inflicting pain than repressing error or 
crime, the office suffers as much as the judge ; 
the respect for justice is lessened; and the 
school of pure reason becomes the hated thea- 
tre of mischievous passion. 

A Christian judge who means to be just, 
must not fear to smite according to the law ; 
he must remember that he beareth not the 
sword in vain. Under his protection we live, 
under his protection we acquire, under his 
protection we enjoy. Without him, no man 
would defend his character, no man would 
presei-ve his substance ; proper pride, just 
gains, valuable exertions, all depend upon his 
firm wisdom. If he shrink from the severe 
duties of his office, he saps the foundation of 
social life, betrays the highest interests of the 
world, and sits not to judge according to the law. 
The topics of mercy are the smallness of 
the offence — the infrequency of the offence ; 
the temptations to the culprit, the moral weak- 
ness of the culprit, the severity of the law, the 
error of the law, the different state of society, 
the altered state of feeling, and, above all, 
the distressing doubt whether a human being 
in the lowest abyss of poverty and ignorance 
has not done injustice to himself, and is not 
perishing away from the want of knowledge, 
the want of fortune, and the want of friends. 
All magistrates feel these things in the early 
exercise of their judicial' power, but the 
Christian judge always feels them, is always 
tender when he is going to shed human blood ; 
retires from the business of men, communes 
with his own heart, ponders on the work of 
death, and prays to that Saviour who redeemed 
him, that he may not shed the blood of man in 
vain. 

These, then, are those faults which expose 
a man to the danger of smiting contrary to 
the law ; a judge must be clear from the spirit 
of party, independent of all favour, well in- 
clined to the popular institutions of his coun- 



try; firm in applying the rule, merciful in 
making the exception ; patient, guarded in his 
speech, gentle and courteous to all. Add his 
learning, his labour, his experience, his pro- 
bity, his praclised and acute faculties, and this 
man is the If^ht of the world, who adorns hu- 
man life, and gives security to that life which 
he adorns. 

Now we see the consequence of that state 
of justice which this character implies, and 
the explanation of all that deserved honour we 
confer on the preservation of such a charac- 
ter, and all the wise jealousy we feel at 
the slightest injury or deterioration it may 
experience. 

The most obvious and important use of this 
perfect justice is, that it makes nations safe : 
under common circumstances, the institutions 
of justice seem to have little or no bearing 
upon the safety and security of a country, but 
in periods of real danger, when a nation, sur- 
rounded by foreign enemies, contends not for 
the boundaries of empire, but for the very be- 
ing and existence of empire, then it is that 
the advantages of just institutions are disco- 
vered. Every man feels that he has a country, 
that he has something worth preserving, and 
worth contending for. Instances are remem- 
bered where the weak prevailed over the 
strong ; one man recalls to mind when a just 
and upright judge protected him from unlaw- 
ful violence, gave him back his vineyard, re- 
buked his oppressor, restored him to his rights, 
published, condemned, and rectified the wrong. 
This is what is called country. Equal rights 
to unequal possessions, equal justice to the 
rich and poor ; this is what men come out to 
fight for, and to defend. Such a country has 
no legal injuries to remember, no legal mur- 
ders to revenge, no legal robbery to redress ; 
it is strong in its justice ; it is then that the 
iTse and object of all this assemblage of gen- 
tlemen and arrangement of juries, and the de- 
served veneration in which we hold the cha- 
racter of English judges, are understood in 
all their bearings, and in their fullest effects : 
men die for such things — they cannot be sub- 
dued by foreign force where such just prac- 
tices prevail. The sword of ambition is 
shivered to pieces against such a bulwark. 
Nations fall where judges are unjust, because 
there is nothing which the multitude think 
worth defending ; but nations do not fall which 
are treated as we are treated, but they rise as 
we have risen, and they shine as we have 
shone, and die as we have died, too mijch used 
to justice, and too much used to freedom, to 
care for that life which is not just and free. 
I call you all to witness if there is any exag- 
gerated picture in this ; the sword is just 
sheathed, the flag is just furled, the last sound 
of the trumpet has just died away. You all 
remember what a spectacle this country ex- 
hibited: one heart, one voice — one weapon, 
one purpose. And why 1 Because this coun- 
try is a country of the law ; because the judge 
is a judge for the peasant as well as for the 
palace; because every man's happiness is 
guarded by fixed rules from tyranny and ca- 
price. This town, this week, the business of 
the few next days, would explain to any eu- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



431 



•lightened European why other nations did fall 
in the storms of the world, and why we did 
not fall. The Christian patience you may 
witness, the impartiality of the judgment-seat, 
the disrespect of persons, the disregard of 
consequences. These attributes of justice do 
not end with arranging your conflicting rights, 
and mine ; they give strength to the English 
people, duration to the English name; they 
turn the animal courage of this people into 
moral and religious courage, and present to 
the lowest of mankind plain reasons and strong 
motives why they should resist aggression 
from without, and bend themselves a living 
rampart round the land of their birth. 

There is another reason why every wise 
man is so scrupulously jealous of the charac- 
ter of English justice. It puts an end to civil 
dissension. What other countries obtain by 
bloody wars, is here obtained by the decisions 
of our own tribunals ; unchristian passions 
are laid to rest by these tribunals ; brothers 
are brothers again ; the Gospel resumes its 
empire, and because all confide in the pre- 
siding magistrate, and because a few plain 
men are allowed to decide upon their own 
conscientious impression of facts, civil dis- 
cord, years of convulsion, endless crimes are 
spared ; the storm is laid, and those who came 
in clamouring for revenge, go back together 
in peace from the hall of judgment to the loom 
and the plough, to the senate and the church. 

The whole tone and tenour of public morals 
are affected by the state of supreme justice; 
it extinguishes revenge, it comriiunicates a 
spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior 
magistrates ; it makes the great good, by taking 
away impunity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, 
and solicitation, and teaches men that the law 
is their right. Truth is its handmaid, freedom 
is its child, peace is its companion ; safety 
walks in its steps, victory follows in its train : 
it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel ; it 
is the greatest attribute of God ; it is that cen- 
tre round which human motives and passions 
turn : and justice, sitting on high, sees genius 



and power, and wealth and birth, revolving 
round her throne ; and teaches their paths, and 
marks out their orbits, and warns with a loud 
voice, and rules with a strong arm, and carries 
order and discipline into a world, which, but 
for her, would only be a wild waste of pas- 
sions. Look what we are, and what just laws 
have done for us : — a land of piety and charity; 
— a land of churches and hospitals and altars ; 
— a nation of good Samaritans ; — a people of 
universal compassion. All lands, all seas, 
have heard we are brave. We have just 
sheathed that sword which defended the world ; 
we have just laid down that buckler which 
covered the nations of the earth. God blesses 
the soil with fertility; English looms labour 
for every climate. All the waters of the globe 
are covered with English ships. We are . 
softened by fine arts, civilized by humane 
literature, instructed by deep science ; and 
every people, as they break their feudal chains, 
look to the founders and fathers of freedom 
for examples which may animate, and rules 
which may guide. If ever a nation was happy 
— if ever a nation was visibly blessed by God 
— if ever a nation was honoured abroad, and 
left at home under a government (which we 
can now conscientiously call a liberal govern- 
ment) to the full career of talent, industry, 
and vigour, we are at this moment that people 
— and this is our happy lot. — First, the Gospel 
has done it, and then justice has done it ; and 
he who thinks it his duty to labour that this 
happy condition of existence may remain, 
must guard the piety of these times, and he 
must watch over the spirit of justice which 
exists in these times. First he must take care 
that the altars of God are not polluted, that 
the Christian faith is retained in purity and in 
perfection ; and then turning to human affairs, 
let him strive for spotless, incorruptible jus- 
tice ; — praising, honouring, and loving the just 
judge, and abhorring, as the worst enemy of 
mankind, him who is placed there to " judge 
after the law, and who smites contrary to the 
law." 



43» 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



A LETTER TO THE ELECTORS, 

trpow 

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. 



Wht is not a Catholic to be believed on his 
oath ? 

What says the law of the land to this extra- 
vagant piece of injustice 1 It is no challenge 
against a juryman to say he is a Catholic ; he 
sits in judgment upon your life and your pro- 
perty. Did any man ever hear it said that 
such or such a person was put to death, or that 
he lost his property, because a Catholic was 
among the jurymen? Is the question ever 
put? Does it ever enter into the mind of the 
attorney or the counsellor to inquire of the 
faith of the jury ? If a man sell a horse, or a 
house, or a field, does he ask if the purchaser 
is a Catholic ? Appeal to your own experi- 
ence, and try by that fairest of all tests, the 
justice of this enormous charge. 

We are in treaty with many of the powers 
of Europe, because we believe in the good 
faith of Catholics. Two-thirds of Europe are, 
in fact, Catholics ; are they all perjured 1 For 
the first fourteen centuries all the Christian 
world were Catholics ; did they live in a con- 
stant state of perjury ? I am sure these objec- 
tions against the Catholics are often made by 
very serious and honest men, but I much 
doubt if Voltaire has advanced any thing 
against the Christian religion so horrible, as 
to say that two-thirds of those who profess it 
are unfit for all the purposes of civil life; for 
Avho is fit to Jive in society who does not 
respect oaths 1 But if this imputation be true, 
what folly to agitate such questions as the 
civil emancipation of the Catholics. If they 
are always ready to support falsehood by an 
appeal to God, why are they sufl'ered to breathe 
the air of England, or to drink of the waters 
of England? Why are they not driven into 
the howling wilderness ? But now they pos- 
sess, and bequeath, and witness, and decide 
civil rights ; and save life as physicians, and 
defend property as lawyers, and judge property 
as jurymen ; and you pass laws, enabling them 
to command all your fleets and armies,* and 
then you turn round upon the very man whom 
you have made the master of the European 
seas, and the arbiter of nations, and tell him 
he is not to be believed on his "oath. 

I have lived a little in the world, but I never 
happened to hear a single Catholic even sus- 
pected of getting into ofiice by violating his 
oath; the oath which they are accused of 
violating is an insuperable barrier to them 
all. Is there a more disgraceful spectacle in 

* There is no law to prevent a Catholic from havin<» 
the command of a British fleet or a British army. »° 



the world than that of the Duke of Norfolk 
hovering round the House of Lords in the 
execution of his office, which he cannot enter 
as a peer of the realm? disgraceful to the 
bigotry and injustice of his country, to his own 
sense of duty, honourable in the extreme; he 
is the leader of a band of ancient and high- 
principled gentlemen, who submit patiently to 
obscurity and privation, rather than do vio- 
lence to their conscience. In all the fury of 
party, I never heard the name of a single 
Catholic mentioned, who was suspected of 
having gained, or aimed at, any political ad- 
vantage, by violating his oath. I have never 
heard so bitter a slander supported by the 
slightest proof. Eveiy man in the circle of 
his acquaintance has met with Catholics, and 
lived with them probably as companions. If 
this immoral lubricity were their characteristic, 
it would surely be perceived in common life. 
Every man's experience would corroborate 
the imputation; but I can honestly say that 
some of the best and most excellent men I 
have ever met with have been Catholics ; per- 
fectly alive to the evil and inconvenience of 
their situation, but thinking themselves bound 
by the law of God and the law of honour, not 
to avoid persecution by falsehood and apos- 
tasy. But why (as has been asked ten thou- 
sand times before) do 3'ou lay such a stress 
upon these oaths of exclusion, if the Catholics 
do not respect oaths ? You compel me, a 
Catholic, to make a declaration against tran- 
substantiation, for what purpose but to keep 
me out of Parliament? Why, then, I respect 
oaths and declarations, or else I should perjure 
myself, and get into Parliament ; and if I do 
not respect oaths, of what use is it to enact 
them in order to keep me out ? A farmer has 
some sheep, which he chooses to keep from a 
certain field, and to effect this object, he builds 
a M-all : there are two objections to his pro- 
ceeding ; the first is, that it is for the good of 
the farm that the sheep should come into the 
field ; and so the wall is not only useless, but 
pernicious. The second is, that he himself 
thoroughly believes at the time of building the 
wall, that all the sheep are in the coristant 
habit of leaping over such walls. His first 
intention with respect to the sheep is absurd, 
his means more absurd, and his error is 
perfect in all its parts. He tries to do that 
which, if he succeeds, will be very foolish, and 
tries to do it by means which he himself, at 
the time of using them, admits to be inade- 
quate to the purpose; but I hope this objection 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



433 



to the oaths of Catholics is disappearing; I 
believe neither Lord Liverpool nor Mr. Peel 
(a very candid and honourable man), nor the 
archbishops (who are both gentlemen), nor 
Lord Eldon, nor Lord Stowell (whose Protest- 
antism nobody calls in question), would make 
such a charge. It is confined to provincial 
violence, and to the politicians of the second 
table. I remember hearing the Catholics from 
the hustings of an election accused of disre- 
garding oaths, and within an hour from that 
time, I saw five Catholic voters rejected, be- 
cause they would not take the oath of supre- 
macy ; and these were not men of rank who 
tendered themselves, but ordinary tradesmen. 
The accusation was received with loud huz- 
zas ; the poor Catholics retired unobserved 
and in silence. No one praised the conscien- 
tious feelings of the constituents ; no one 
rebuked the calumny of the candidate. This 
is precisely the way in which the Catholics 
are treated ; the very same man who encou- 
rages among his partisans the doctrine that 
Catholics are not to be believed upon their 
oaths, directs his agents upon the hustings to 
be very watchful that all Catholics should be 
prevented from voting, by tendering to them 
the oath of supremacy, which he is certain not 
one of them will take. If this is not calumny 
and injustice, I know not what human conduct 
can deserve the name. 

If you believe the oath of a Catholic, see 
what he will swear, and what he will not 
swear; read the oaths he already takes, and 
say whether, in common candour or in com- 
mon sense, you can require more security 
than he offers you. Before the year 1793, the 
Catholic was subject to many more vexatious 
laws than he now is; in that j'ear an act 
passed in his favour, but before the Catholic 
could exempt himself from his ancient pains 
and penalties, it was necessary to take an 
oath. This oath was, I believe, drawn up by 
Dr. Duigenan, the bitter and implacable enemy 
of the sect; and it is so important an oath, so 
little known and read in England, that I can- 
not, in spite of my wish to be brief, abstain 
from quoting it. I deny your right to call no 
Popery, till you are master of its contents. 

" I do swear, that I do abjure, condemn, and 
detest, as unchristian and impious, the prin- 
ciple, that it is lawful to murder, destroy, or 
any ways injure, any person whatsoever, for 
or under the pretext of being a heretic ; and I 
do declare solemnly, before God, that I believe 
no act, in itself unjust, immoral, or wicked, 
can ever be justified or excused by or under 
pretence or colour, that it was done either for 
the good of the church, or in obedience to any 
ecclesiastical power whatsoever. I also de- 
clare that it is not an article of the Catholic 
faith, neither am I thereby required to believe 
or profess, that the pope is infallible; or that 
I am bound to obey any order, in its own na- 
ture immoral, though the pope, or any ecclesi- 
astical power, should issue or direct such 
order; but, on the contrary, I hold that it 
would be sinful in me to pay any respect or 
obedience thereto. I further declare, that I do 
not believe that any sin whatsoever committed 
by me, can be forgiven at the mere will of any 
65 



pope or any priest, or of any persons whatso- 
ever ; but that sincere sorrow for past sins, a 
firm and sincere resolution to avoid future 
guilt, and to atone to God, are previous and 
indispensable requisites to establish a well- 
founded expectation of forgiveness ; and that 
any person who receives absolution, without 
these previous requisites, so far from obtaining 
thereby any remission of his sins, incurs the 
additional guilt of violating a sacrament; and 
I do swear, that I will defend, to the utmost of 
my power, the settlement and arrangement of 
property in this country, as established by the 
laws now in being. — I do hereby disclaim, 
disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention to 
subvert the present church establishment, for 
the purpose of substituting a Catholic esta- 
blishment in its stead; and I do solemnly 
swear, that I will not exercise any privilege to 
which I am or may become entitled, to disturb 
and weaken the Protestant religion, and Pro- 
testant government in this kingdom. So help 
me God." 

This oath is taken by every Catholic in 
Ireland, and a similar oath, allowing for the 
difl^erence of circumstances of the two coun- 
tries, is taken in England. 

It appears from the evidence taken before ^ 
the two houses and lately printed, that if 
Catholic emancipation were carried, there 
would be little or no difficultj' in obtaining 
from the pope an agreement, that the nomina- 
tion of the Irish Catholic bishops should be 
made at home constitutionally by the Catho- 
lics, as it is now in fact,* and in practice, and 
that the Irish prelates would go a great way, 
in arranging a system of general education, 
if the spirit of proselytism, which now ren- 
ders such a union impossible, were laid aside. 
This great measure carried, the Irish Catholics 
would give up all their endowments abroad, 
if they receive for them an equivalent at 
home ; for now Irish priests are fast resorting 
to the continent for education, allured by the 
endowments which the French government 
are cunningly restoring and augmenting. The 
intercourse with the see of Rome might and 
would, after Catholic emancipation, be so 
managed, that it should be open, upon grave 
occasions, or, if thought proper, on every 
occasion, to the inspection of commissioners. 
There is no security compatible with the safety 
of their faith, which the Catholics are not will- 
ing to give. But what is Catholic emancipa- 
tion as far as England is concerned 1 not an 
equal right to oiRce with the member of the 
Church of England, but a participation in the 
same pains and penalties as those, to which 
the Protestant dissenter is subjected by the 
corporation and test acts. If the utility of 
these last-mentioned laws is to be measured 
by the horror and perturbation their repeal 
would excite, they are laws of the utmost im- 
portance to the defence of the English Church; 
but if it be of importance to the church that 
pains and penalties should be thus kept sus- 
pended over men's heads, then these bills are 



* The Catholic bishops, since the death of the Pretender, 
are recommended either by the chapters or the parochial 
clerg}-, to the pope ; and there is no instance of his 
deviatins from their choice. 

2 



434 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



an. effectual security against Catholics as well 
as Protestants; ^nd the manacles so much 
confided in are not taken off, but loosened, and 
the prayer of a Catholic is this : — " I cannot 
now become an alderman without perjury. I 
pray of you to improve my condition so far, 
that if I become an alderman I may be only 
exposed to a penalty of 500/." There are two 
common errors upon the subject of Catholic 
emancipation ; the one, that the emancipated 
Catholic is to be put on a better footing than the 
Protestant dissenter, whereas he will be put 
precisely on the same footing; the other, that he 
is to be admitted to civil offices, without any 
guard, exception, or reserve ; whereas, in the 
various bills which have been from time to 
time brought forward, the legal wit of man 
has been exhausted to provide against every 
surmise, suspicion, and whisper of the most 
remote danger to the Protestant church. 

The Catholic question is not an English 
question, but an Irish one ; or rather it is no 
otherwise an English question than as it is an 
Irish one. As for the handful of Catholics 
that are in England, no one, I presume, can 
be so extravagant as to contend, if they were 
the only Catholics we had to do with, that it 
would be of the slightest possible consequence 
to what offices of the slate they were admitted. 
It would be quite as necessary to exclude the 
Sandemanians, who are sixteen in number, 
or to make a test act against the followers of 
Joanna Southcote, who amount to one hundred 
and twenty persons. A little chalk on the wall, 
and a profound ignorance of the subject, soon 
raise a cry of no Popery ; but I question if the 
danger of admitting five popish peers and two 
commoners to the benefits of the constitution 
could raise a mob in any market-town in Eng- 
land. Whatever good may accrue to England 
from the emancipation, or evil may befall this 
country for withholding emancipation, will 
reach us only through the medium of Ireland. 

1 beg to remind you, that in talking of the 
Catholic religion, you must talk of the Catholic 
religion as it is carried on in Ireland ; you have 
nothing to do with Spain, or France, or Italy : 
the religion you are to examine is the Irish 
Catholic religion. You are not to consider 
what it was, but what it is ; not what individu- 
als profess, but what is generally professed ; 
not what individuals do, but what is generally 
practised. I constantly see, in advertisements 
from county meetings, all these species of 
monstrous injustice played off against the 
Catholics. The Inquisition exists in Spain 
and Portugal, therefore I confound place, and 
vote against the Catholics of Ireland, where it 
never did exist, nor was purposed to be insti- 
tuted.* There have been many cruel persecu- 
tions of Protestants by Catholic governments ; 
and, therefore, I will confound time and place, 
and vote against the Irish, who live centuries 
after these persecutions, and in a totally differ- 
ent country. Doctor this, or Doctor that, of 
the Catholic Church, has written a very violent 



* While Mary was burning Protestants in England, 
not a sinele Protestant was executed in Ireland : and 
yet the terrors of that reign are, at this moment, one 
of the most operative causes of the exclusion of Irish 
Catholics. 



and absurd pamphlet; therefore I will 'confound" 
persons, and vote against the whole Irish 
Catholic church, which has neither sanctioned 
nor expressed any such opinions. I will con- 
tinue the incapacities of men of this age, be- 
cause some men, in distant ages, deserved ill 
of other men in distant ages. They shall ex- 
piate the crimes committed, before they were 
born, in a land they never saw, by individuals 
they never heard of. I will charge them with 
every act of folly which they have never sanc- 
tioned and cannot control. I will sacrifice 
space, time, and identity, to my zeal for the 
Protestant Church. Now, in the midst of all 
this violence, consider, for a moment, how you 
are imposed upon by words, and what a serious 
violation of the rights of your fellow-creatures 
you are committing. Mr. Murphy lives iu 
Limerick, and Mr. Murphy and his son are 
subjected to a thousand inconveniences and ,; 
disadvantages because they are Catholics. " 
Murphy is a wealthy, honourable, excellent 
man ; he ought to be in the corporation ; he 
cannot get in because he is a Catholic. His 
son ought to be king's counsel for his talents, 
and his standing at the bar ; he is prevented 
from reaching this dignity because he is a 
Catholic. Why, what reasons do you hear for 
all this ■? Because Queen Mary, thi'ee hundred 
years before the natal day of Mr. Murphy, 
murdered Protestants in Smithfield; because 
Louis XIV. dragooned his Protestant subjects, 
when the predecessor of Murphy's predecessor 
was not in being ; because men are confined 
in prison in Madrid, twelve degrees more south' 
than Murphy has ever been in his life ; all 
ages, all climates, are ransacked to perpetuate 
the slavery of Murphy, the ill-fated victim of 
political anachronisms. 

Suppose a barrister, in defending a prisoner, 
were to say to tlie judge, "My lord, I humbly 
submit to your lordship that this indictment 
against the prisoner cannot stand good in law; 
and as the safety of a fellow-creature is con- 
cerned, I request your lordship's patient atten- 
tion to my objections. In the first place, the 
indictment does not pretend that the prisoner 
at the bar is himself guilty of the offence, but 
that some' persons of the same religious sect 
as himself are so ; in whose crime he cannot 
(I submit), by any possibility, be implicated, 
as these criminal persons lived three hundred 
years before the prisoner was born. In the 
next place, my lord, the venue of several crimes 
imputed to the prisoner is laid in countries to 
which the jurisdiction of this court does not 
extend; in France, Spain, and Italy, where 
also the prisoner has never been ; and as to 
the argument used by my learned brother, that 
it is only want of power, and not want of will, 
and that the prisoner ivould commit the crime 
if he ccmld; I humbly submit, that the custom 
of England has been to wait for the overt act 
before pain and penalty are inflicted, and that 
your lordship would pass a most doleful assize, 
if punishment depended upon evil volition ; 
if men were subjected to legal incapacities 
from the mere suspicion that they would do 
harm if they could ; and if it were admitted to 
be sufficient proof of this suspicion, that men 
of this faith in distant ages, different countries^ 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



435 



and under different circumstances, had planned 
evil, and when occasion offered, done it." 

When are mercy and justice, in fact, ever to 
return upon the earth, if the sins of the elders 
are to be for ever visited on these who are not 
even their children 1 Should the first act of 
liberated Greece be to recommence the Trojan 
warl Are the French never to forget the Si- 
cilian vespers ; or the Americans the long war 
waged against their liberties'? Is any rule 
wise, which may set the Irish to recollect what 
they have suffered 1 

The real danger is this — that you have four 
Irish Catholics for one Irish Protestant. That 
is the matter of fact, which none of us can 
help. Is it better policy to make friends, ra- 
ther than enemies, of this immense population! 
I allow there is danger to the Protestant Church, 
but much more danger, I am suj:e there is, in re- 
sisting than admitting the claims of the Catho- 
lics. If I might indulge in visions of glory, 
and imagine myself an Irish dean or bishop, 
with an immense ecclesiastical income ; if the 
justice or injustice of the case were entirely 
indifferent to me, and my only object were to 
live at ease in my possessions, there is no mea- 
swe for which I should be so anxious as that of 
Catholic emancipation. The Catholics are now 
extremely angry and discontented at being shut 
out from so many offices and honours ; the in- 
capacities to which they are subjected thwart 
them in all their pursuits ; they feel they are a 
degraded caste. The Protestant feels he is a 
privileged caste, and not only the Protestant 
gentleman feels this, but every Protestant ser- 
vant feels it, and takes care that his Catholic 
fellow-servant shall perceive it. The difference 
between the two religions is an eternal source 
of enmity, ill-will, and hatred, and the Catho- 
lic remains in a state of permanent disaffec- 
tion to the government under which he lives. 
I repeat that if I were a member of the Irish 
church, I should be afraid of this position of 
affairs. I should fear it in peace, on account 
of riot and insurrection, and in war on account 
of rebellion. I should think that my greatest 
security consisted in removing all just cause 
of complaint from the Catholic society, in en- 
dearing them to the English constitution, by 
making them feel, as soon as possible, that 
they shared in its blessings. I should really 
think ray tithes and my glebe, upon such a 
plan, worth twenty years' purchase more than 
under the present systerti. Suppose the Catho- 
lic layman were to think it an evil, that his 
own church should be less splendidly endowed 
than that of the Protestant Church, whose 
population is so inferior ; yet if he were free 
himself, and had nothing to complain of, he 
would not rush into rebellion and insurrection, 
merely to augment the income of his priest. 
At present you bind the laity and clergy in one 
common feeling of injustice ; each feels for 
himself, and talks of the injuries of the other. 
The obvious consequence of Catholic emanci- 
pation would be to separate their interests. 
'But another important consequence of Catho- 
lic emancipation would be to improve the con- 
dition of the clergy. Their chapels would be 
put in order, their incomes increased, and we 
stiould hear nothing more of the Catholic 



Church. If this measure were carried in 
March, I believe by the January following, the 
whole question would be as completely forgot- 
ten as the sweating sickness, and that nine 
Doctor Doyles, at the rate of thirty years to a 
Doyle, would pass away one after the other, 
before any human being heard another sylla- 
ble on the subject. All men gradually yield to 
the comforts of a good income. Give the Irish 
archbishop 1200/. per annum ; the bishop 800L,' 
the priest 200/., the coadjutor 100/., per annum^ ' 
and the cathedral of Dublin is almost as safe 
as the Cathedral of York.* This is the real 
secret of putting an end to the Catholic ques- 
tion ; there is no other; but, remember, I am 
speaking of provision for the Catholic clergy 
after emancipation, not before. There is not 
an Irish clergymen of the Church of Rome who 
would touch one penny of the public money 
before the laity were restored to civil rights, 
and why not pay the Catholic clergy as well 
as the Presbyterian clergy 1 Ever since the 
year 1803, the Presbyterian clergy in the North 
of Ireland have been paid by the government, 
and the grant is annually brought forward in 
Parliament ; and not only are the Presbyterians 
paid, but one or two other species of Protest- 
ant dissenters. The consequence has been 
loyalty and peace. This way of appeasing 
dissenters you may call expensive, but is there 
no expense in injustice? You have at this 
moment an army of 20,000 men in Ireland, 
horse, foot, and artillery, at an annual expense 
of a million and a half of money; about one- 
third of this sum would be the expense of the 
allowance to the Catholic clergy ; and this 
army is so necessary, that the government dare 
not at this moment remove a single regiment 
from Ireland. Abolish these absurd and dis- 
graceful distinctions, and a few troops of horse 
to help the constables on fair days will be more 
than sufficient for the catholic limb of the empire. 
Now for a very few of the shameful misre- 
presentations circulated respecting the Irish 
Catholics, for I repeat again that we have no- 
thing to do with Spanish or Italian, but with 
Irish Catholics; it is not true that the Irish 
Catholics refuse to circulate the Bible in Eng- 
lish ; on the contrary, they have in Ireland 
circulated several editions of the Scriptures 
in English. In the last year, the Catholic pre- 
lates prepared and put forth a stereotype edi- 
tion of the Bible, of a small print and low 
price, to insure its general circulation. They 
circulate the Bible with their own notes, and 
how, as Catholics, can they act otherwise 1 
Are not our prelates and Bartlett's buildings 
acting in the same manner 1 And must not 
all churches, if they are consistent, act in 



* I say almost, because I hate to overstate an argument, 
and it is impossible to deny that there is danger to a 
church, to which seven millions contribute largely, and 
in which six millions distielieve : my argument merely is, 
that such a church would be more safe in proportion as 
it interfered less with the comforts and ease of its natu- 
ral enemies, and rendered their position more desirable 
and agreeable. I firmly believe the Toleration Act to be 
quite as conducive to the security of the Church of Eng- 
land as it is to the dissenters. Perfect toleration and the 
abolition of every incapacity as a consequence of religious 
opinions, are not, what is commonly called, a receipt for 
innovation, but a receipt for the quiet and permanence of 
every establishment which has the real good eense to 
adopt it. 



436 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



the same manner ? The Bibles Catholics quar- 
rel with, are Protestant Bibles without notes, 
or Protestant Bibles with Protestant notes, and 
how can they do otherwise without giving up 
their religion ? They deny, upon oath, that the 
infallibility of the pope is any necessary part 
of the Catholic faith. They, upon oath, de- 
clare that Catholic people are forbidden to wor- 
ship images, and saints, and relics. They, 
upon oath, abjure the temporal power of the 
pope, or his right to absolve any Catholic from 
his oath. They renounce, upon oath, all right 
to forfeit lands, and covenant, upon oath, not 
to destroy or plot against the Irish Protestant 
Church. What more can any man want whom 
any thing will content 1 

Some people talk as if they were quite teased 
and worried by the eternal clamours of the Ca- 
tholics ; but if you are eternally unjust, can you 
expect any thing more than to be eternally 
vexed by the victims of your injustice ? You 
want all the luxury of oppression without any 
of its inconvenience. I should think the Catho- 
lics very much to blame, if they ever ceased 
to importune the legislature for justice, so long 
as they could find one single member of Par- 
liament who would advocate their cause. 

The putting the matter to rest by an effort 
of the county of York, or by any decision of 
Parliament against them, is utterly hopeless. 
Every year increases the Catholic population, 
and the Catholic wealth, and the Catholic 
claims, till you are caught in one of those po- 
litical attitudes to which all countries are occa- 
sionally exposed, in which you are utterly 
helpless, and must give way to their claims ; 
and if you do it then, you will do it badly ; you 
may call it an arrangement, but arrangements 
made at such times are much like the bargains 
between an highwayman and a traveller, a 
pistol on one side, and a purse on the other ; 
the rapid scramble of armed violence, and the 
unqualified surrender of helpless timidity. If 
you think the thing vmsl be done at same time or 
another, do it ivheti you are calm and powerful, and 
ivhcn ynu need not do it. 

There are a set of high-spirited men who 
are very much afraid of being afraid; who 
cannot brook th\e idea of doing any thing from 
fear, and whose conversation is full of fire 
and sword, when any apprehension of resist- 
ance is alluded to. I have a perfect confi- 
dence in the high and unyielding spirit, and in 
the military courage of the English; and I 
have no doubt but that many of the country 
gentlemen, who now call out no Poperjs would 
fearlessly put themselves at the head of their 
embattled yeomanry, to control the Irish Catho- 
lics. My objection to such courage is, that 
it would certainly be exercised unjustly, and 
probably exercised in vain. I should depre- 
cate any rising of the Catholics as the most 
grievous misfortune which could happen to 
the empire and to themselves. They had far 
better endure all they do endure, and a great 
deal worse, than try the experiment. But if 
they do try it, you may depend upon it, they will do 
it at their own time, and not at yours. They will 
not select a fortnight in the summer, during a 
profound peace, when corn and money abound, 
and when the Catholics of Europe are uncon 



cerned spectators. If you make a resolution' 
to be unjust, you must make another resolu- 
tion to be always strong, always vigilant, and 
always rich ; you must commit no blunders, 
exhibit no deficiencies, and meet with no mis- 
fortunes ; you must preseVit a square phalanx 
of impenetrable strength, for keen-eyed revenge 
is riding round your ranks ; and if one heart 
falters, or one hand trembles, you are lost. 

You may call all this threatening ; I am sure 
I have no such absurd intention; but wish 
only, in sober sadness, to point out what ap- 
pears to me to be the inevitable consequences 
of the conduct we pursue. If danger be not 
pointed out and insisted upon, how is it to be 
avoided 1 My firm belief is, that England 
will be compelled to grant ignominiously what 
she now refuses haughtily. Remember what 
happened respecting Ireland in the American 
war. In 1779, the Irish, whose trade was com- 
pletely restricted by English laws, asked for 
some little relaxation, some liberty to export 
her own products, and to import the products 
of other countries ; their petition was flung out 
of the house with the utmost disdain, and by 
an immense majority. In April, 1782, 70,000 
Irish volunteers were under arms, the repre- 
sentatives of 170 armed corps met at Ulster, 
and the English Parliament (the Lords and 
Commons, both on the same day and with only 
one dissentient voice, the ministers moving the 
question) were compelled, in the most dis- 
graceful and precipitate manner, to acknow- 
ledge the complete independence of the Irish 
nation, and nothing but the good sense and mode- 
ration of Grattan prevented the separation of the 
two crowns. 

It is no part of my province to defend every 
error of the Catholic Church : I believe it has 
many errors, though I am sure these errors 
are grievously exaggerated and misrepre- 
sented. I should think it a vast accession to 
the happiness of mankind, if every Catholic 
in Europe were converted to the Protestant 
faith. The question is not, whether there 
shall be Catholics, but the question (as they 
do exist and you cannot get rid of them) is, 
what are you to do with them ? Are you to 
make men rebels because you cannot make 
them Protestants'? and are you to endanger 
your state, because you cannot enlarge your 
church 1 England is the ark o liberty : the 
English Church I believe to be one of the 
best establishments in the world; but what is 
to become of England, of its church, of its 
free institutions, and the beautiful political 
model it holds out to mankind, if Ireland 
should succeed in connecting itself with any 
other European power hostile to England ? I 
join in the cry of no Popery as lustily as any 
man in the streets who does not know whether 
the pope lives in Cumberland or Westmore- 
land; but I know that it is impossible to keep 
down European Popery, and European ty- 
ranny, without the assistance, or with the op- 
position of Ireland. If you give the Irish their 
privileges, the spirit of the nation will over- 
come the spirit of the church; they will cheer- 
fully serve you against all enemies, and chant 
a Te Deum for your victories over all the Ca- 
tholic armies of Europe. If it be true, as her 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



437 



'enemies say, that the Roman Catholic Church 
is waging war all over Europe, against com- 
mon sense, against public liberty ; selling the 
people to the kings and nobles, and labouring 
for the few against the many ; all this is an 
additional reason why I would fortify England 
and Protestantism by every concession to Ire- 
land : why I should take care that our attention 
was not distracted, nor our strength wasted by 
internal dissension ; why I would not paralyze 
those arms which wield the sword of justice 
among the nations of the world, and lift up the 
buckler of safety. If the Catholic religion in 
Ireland is an abuse, you must tolerate that 
abuse, to prevent its extension and tyranny 
over the rest of Europe. If you will take a 
long view instead of a confined view, and look 
generally to the increase of human happiness, 
the best check upon the increase of Popery, the best 
security for the establishment of the Protestant 
Church is, that the British empire shall be preserved 
in a state of the greatest strength, union and opu- 
lence. My cry, then, is, no Popery ; therefore 
emancipate the Catholics, that they may not 
join with foreign Papists" in time of war. 
Church for ever ; therefore emancipate the Ca- 
tholics, that they may not help to pull it down. 
King for ever ; therefore emancipate the Catho- 
'lics, that they may become his loyal subjects. 
Great Britain for ever ; therefore emancipate 
the Catholics, that they may not put an end to its 
perpetuity. Our government is essentially Pro- 
testant ; therefore, by emancipating the Catho- 
lics, give up a few circumstances which have 
nothing to do with the essence. The Catholics 
arc disguised enemies; therefore, by emancipa- 
tion, turn them into open friends. They have 
a double allegiance ; therefore, by emancipation, 
make their allegiance to their king so grateful, 
that they will never confound it with the spirit- 
ual allegiance to their pope. It is very diffi- 
cult for electors, who are much occupied by 
other matters, to choose the right path amid 
the rage and fury of faction ; but I give you 
one mark, vote for a free altar ; give what the 
law compels you to give to the establishment ; 
(that done,) no chains, no prisons, no bonfires 
for a man's faith ; and, above all, no modern 
chains and prisons under the names of dis- 
qualifications and incapacities, which are only 
the cruelty and tyranny of a more civilized age; 
civil offices open to all, a Catholic or a Protest- 
ant alderman, a Moravian, or a Church of 
England, or a Wesleyan justice ; no oppression, 
no tyranny in belief : a free altar, an open road to 
heaven ; no human insolence, no hum,an narrowness, 
halloived by the name of God. 

Every man in trade must have experienced 
the difficulty of getting in a bill from an un- 
willing paymaster. If you call in the morn- 
ing, the gentleman is not up ; if in the middle 
of the day, he is out ; if in the evening, there 
is company. If you ask mildly, you are indif- 
ferent to the time of payment; if you press, 
you are impertinent. No time and no manner 
can render such a message agreeable. So it 
is with the poor Catholics ; their message is 
so disagreeable, that their time and manner 
can never be right. "Not this session. Not 
noio ; on no account at the present time; any 
other time than this. The great mass of the 



Catholics are so torpid on the subject, that the 
question is clearly confined to the ambition of 
the few, or the whole Catholic population are 
so leagued together, that the object is clearly 
to intimidate the mother-country." In short, 
the Catholics want justice, and we do not 
mean to be just, and the most specious method 
of refusal is, to have it believed that they are 
refused from their own folly, and not from our 
fault. 

What if O'Connell (a man certainly of ex- 
traordinary talents and eloquence) is some- 
times violent and injudicious 1 What if 
O'Gorman and O'Sullivan have spoken ill of 
the Reformation 1 Is a great stroke of national 
policy to depend on such childish considera- 
tions as these 1 If these chains ought to re- 
main, could I be induced to remove them by 
the chaste language and humble deportment 
of him who wears them 1 If they ought to be 
struck away, would I continue them, because 
my taste was offended by the coarse insolence 
of a goaded and injured captive 1 Would I 
make that great measure to depend oij the irri- 
tability of my own feelings, which ought to 
depend upon policy and justice 1 The more 
violent and the more absurd the conduct of 
the Catholics, the greater the wisdom of eman- 
cipation. If they were always governed 
by men of consummate prudence and mode- 
ration, your justice in refusing would be the 
same, but your danger would be less. The 
levity and irritability of the Irish character are 
pressing reasons why all just causes of pro- 
vocation should be taken away, and those high 
passions enlisted in the service of the empire. 

In talking of the spirit of the papal empire, 
it is often argued that the will remains the 
same ; that the pontiff tvould, if he could, exer- 
cise the same influence in Europe ; that the 
Catholic Church would, if it could, tyrannize 
over the rights and opinions of mankind ; but 
if the power is taken away, what signifies the 
will? If the pope thunders in vain against 
the kingdoms of the earth, of what consequence 
is his disposition to thunder 1 If mankind are 
too enlightened and too humane to submit to 
the cruelties and hatreds of a Catholic priest- 
hood ; if the Protestants of the empire are suf- 
ficiently strong to resist it, why are we to alarm 
ourselves with the barren volition, unseconded 
by the requisite power? I hardly know in 
what order or description of men I should 
choose to confide, if they could do as they would; 
the best security is, that the rest of the world 
will not let them do as they wish to do ; and 
having satisfied myself of this, I am not very 
careful about the rest. 

Our government is called essentially Protest- 
ant; but if it be essentially Protestant in the 
imposition of taxes, it should be essentially 
Protestant in the distribution of offices. The 
treasury is open to all religions, Parliament 
only to one. The tax-gatherer is the most in- 
dulgent and liberal of human beings : he ex- 
cludes no creed, imposes no articles; but 
counts Catholic cash, pockets Protestant pa- 
per; and is candidly and impartially oppres- 
sive to every description of the Christian 
world. Can any thing be more base than 
when you want the blood or the money of the 
2o2 



438 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Catholics, to forget that they are Catholics, and 
to remember only that they are British sub- 
jects; and when they ask for the benefits of 
the British constitution, to remember only that 
they are Catholics, and to forget that they are 
British subjects'? 

No Popery was the cry of the great English 
Revolution, because the increase and prevalence 
of Popery in England would, at that period, 
have rendered this island tributary to France. 
The Irish Catholics were, at that period, 
broken to pieces by the severity and military 
execution of Cromwell, and by the penal laws. 
They are since become a great and formidable 
people. The same dread of foreign influence 
makes it now necessary that they should be 
restored to political rights. Must the friends 
of rational liberty join in a clamour against the 
Catholics now, because, in a very different state 
of the world, they excited that clamour a hun- 
dred years ago 1 I remember a house near 
Battersea Bridge which caught fire, and there 
was a general cry of " Water, water !" Ten 
years after, the Thames rose, and the people 
of the house were nearly drowned. Would it 
not have been rather singular to have said to 
the inhabitants, " I heard you calling for water 
ten years ago, why don't you call for it now V 
There are some men who think the present 
times so incapable of forming any opinions, 
that they are always looking back to the wis- 
dom of our ancestors. Now, as the Catholics 
sat in the English Parliament to the reign of 
Charles II. and in the Irish Parliament, I believe, 
till the reign of King William, the precedents 
are more in their favour than otherwise ; and 
to replace them in the Parliament seems rather 
to return to, than to deviate from the practice 
of our ancestors. 

If the Catholics are priest-ridden, pamper 
the rider, and he will not stick so close ; don't 
torment the animal ridden, and his violence 
will be less dangerous. 

The strongest evidence against the Catho- 
lics is that of Colonel John Irvine; he puts 
every thing against them in the strongest light, 
and Colonel John (with great actual, though, I 
am sure, with no intentional exaggeration) does 
not pretend to say there would be more than 
forty-six members returned for Ireland who 
.were Catholics ; but how many members are 
there in the House now returned by Catholics, 
:and compelled, from the fear of losing their 
seats, to vote in favour of every measure which 
concerns the Catholic Church ? The Catholic 
party, as the colonel justly observes, was form- 
ed when you admitted them to the elective 
franchise. The Catholic party are increasing 
so much in boldness, that they will soon require 
of the members they return, to oppose generally 
any government hostile to Catholic emancipa- 
tion, and they will turn out those who do not 
comply with this rule. If this is done, the 
phalanx so much dreaded from emancipation 
is found at once without emancipation. This 
consequence of resistance to the Catholic claims 
is well worth the attention of those who make 
use of the cry of no Popery, as a mere politi- 
cal engine. 

We are taunted with our prophetical spirit, 
because it is said by the advocates of the Ca- 



tholic question that the thing must come to 
pass; that it is inevitable : our prophecy, how- 
ever, is founded upon experience and common 
sense, and is nothing more than the application 
of the past to the future. In a few years' time, 
when the madness and wretchedness of w.ar 
are forgotten, when the greater part of those 
who have lost in war, legs and arms, health 
and sons, have gone to their graves, the 
same scenes will be acted over again in the 
world. France, Spain, Russia, and America, 
will be upon us. The Catholics will watch 
their opportunity, and soon settle the question 
of Catholic emancipation. To suppose that 
any nation can go on in the midst of foreign 
wars, denying common justice to seven mil- 
lions of men, in the heart of the empire, awa- 
kened to their situation, and watching for the 
critical moment of redress, does, I confess, ap- 
pear to me to be the height of extravagance. 
To foretell the consequence of such causes, la 
my humble apprehension, demands no more of 
shrewdness than to point out the probable re- 
sults of leaving a lighted candle stuck up in an 
open barrel of gunpowder. 

It is very difficult to make the mass of man- 
kind believe that the state of things is ever to 
be otherwise than they have been accustomed 
to see it. I have very often heard old perlons 
describe the impossibility of making any one 
believe that the American colonies could ever 
be separated from this country. It was always 
considered as an idle dream of discontented 
politicians, good enough to fill up the periods of a 
speech, but which no practical man, devoid of 
the spirit of party, considered to be within the 
limits of possibility. There was a period when 
the slightest concession would have satisfied 
the Americans ; but all the world was in heroics ; 
one set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, and ano- 
ther at the Lion : blood and treasure men, breath- 
ing war, vengeance, and contempt ; and in eight 
years afterwards, an awkward-looking gentle- 
man in plain clothes walked up to the drawing- 
room of St. James's, in the midst of the gentlemen 
of the Lion and Lamb, and was introduced as 
the ambassador from the United States of America. 

You must forgive me if I draw illustrations 
from common things — but in seeing swine 
driven, I have often thought of the Catholic 
question and of the different methods of govern- 
ing mankind. The object, one day, was to 
drive some of these animals along a path, to a 
field where they had not been before. The 
man could by no means succeed ; instead of 
turning their faces to the north, and proceeding 
quietly along, they made for the east and west, 
rushed back to the south, and positively refused 
to advance; a reinforcement of rustics was 
called for; maids, children, neighbours, all 
helped; a general rushing, screaming, and 
roaring ensued ; but the main object was not 
in the slightest degree advanced ; after a long 
delay, we resolved (though an hour before we 
should have disdained such a compromise) to 
have recourse to Catholic emancipation ; a 
little boy was sent before them with a handful 
of barley : a i&w grains were scattered in the 
path, and the bristly herd were speedily and 
safely conducted to the place of their destina- 
tion. If, instead of putting Lord Stowell out of 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



439 



breath with driving, compelling the Duke of 
York to swear, and the chancellor to strike at 
them with the mace. Lord Liverpool would 
condescend, in his graceful manner, to walk 
before the Catholic doctors with a basket of 
barley, what a deal of ink and blood would be 
sav*l to mankind. 

Because the Catholics are intolerant we tvill be 
f^^iniolerant ; but did any body ever hear before 
!, that a government is to imitate the vices of its 
subjects ? If the Irish were a rash, violent, 
and intemperate race, are they to be treated 
^. with rashness, violence, and intemperance] 
f.,lf they were addicted to fraud and falsehood, 
are they to be treated by those who rule them 
with fraud and falsehood] Are there to be 
perpetual races in error and vice between the 
people and the lords of the people ] Is the su- 
preme power always to find virtues among the 
people ; never to teach them by example, or 
improve them by laws and institutions ■? Make 
all sects free, and let them learn the value of 
the blessing to others, by their own enjoyment 
. of it; but if not, let them learn it by your vigi- 
(j.lstnce and firm resistance to every thing intole- 
rant. Toleration will then become a habit 
and a practice, ingrafted upon the manners of 
a people, when they find the law too strong for 
,, them, and that there is no use in being intole- 
{■\jrant. 

:■ : It is very true that the Catholics have a 
.1 double allegiance,* but it is equally true that 
their second or spiritual allegiance has nothing 
to do with civil policy, and does not, in the 
most distant manner, interfere with their alle- 
giance to the crown. What is meant by alle- 
giance to the crown, is, I presume, obedience 
to acts of Parliament, and a resistance to those 
who are constitutionally proclaimed to be the 
enemies of the country. I have seen and heard 
of no instance, for this century and a half last 
past, where the spiritual sovereign has pre- 
sumed to meddle with the afi'airs of the tempo- 
ral sovereign. The Catholics deny him such 
power by the most solemn oaths which the wit 
of man can devise. In every war, the army 
and navy are full of Catholic officers and sol- 
diers ; and if their allegiance in temporal mat- 
),.ters is unimpeachable and unimpeached, what 
,, matters to whom they choose to pay spiritual 
obedience, and to adopt as their guide in genu- 
flexion and psalmody 1 Suppose these same 
Catholics were foolish enough to be governed 
by a set of Chinese moralists in their diet, this 
would be a third allegiance ; and if they were 
•'regulated by Brahmins in their dress, this 
..would be a fourth allegiance; and if they re- 
ceived the directions of the Patriarch of the 
Greek Church, in educating their children, here 
is another allegiance : and as long as they 
fought, and paid taxes, and kept clear of the 
quarter sessions and assizes, what matters 
how many fanciful supremacies and frivolous 
allegiances they choose to manufacture or ac- 
^.C]amulate for themselves ? 
(. , A great deal of time would be spared, if gen- 
tlemen, before they ordered their post-chaises 

* The same double allegiance exists in every Catholic 
country in Europe. The spiritual head of the country 
among French, Spanish, and Austrian Catholics, is the 
pope ; the political head, the king or emperor. 



for a no-Popery meeting, would read the most 
elementary defence of these people, and inform 
themselves even of the rudiments of the ques- 
tion. If the Catholics meditate the resumption 
of the Catholic property, why do they purchase 
that which they know (if the fondest object of 
their political life succeed) must be taken 
away from them ? Why is not an attempt 
made to purchase a quietus from the rebel who 
is watching the blessed revolutionary moment 
for regaining his possessions, and revelling in 
the unbounded sensuality of mealy and waxy 
enjoyments ] But after all, who are the de- 
scendants of the rightful possessors ] The 
estate belonged to the O'Rourkes, who were 
hanged, drawn and quartered in the time of 
Cromwell: true, but before that, it belonged to 
the O'Connors, who were hanged, drawn and 
quartered in the time of Henry VII. The 
O'Sullivans have a still earlier plea of suspen- 
sion, evisceration and division. Who is the 
rightful possessor of the estate ] We forget 
that Catholic Ireland has been murdered three 
times over by its Protestant masters. 

Mild and genteel people do not like the idea 
of persecution, and are advocates for tolera- 
tion ; but then they think it no act of intole- 
rance to deprive Catholics of political power. 
The history of all this is, that all men secretly 
like to punish others for not being of the same 
opinion with themselves, and that this sort of 
privation is the only species of persecution, of 
which the improved feeling and advanced 
cultivation of the age will admit. Fire and 
fagot, chains and stone walls, have been cla- 
moured away ; nothing remains but to mortify 
a man's pride, and to limit his resources, and 
to set a mark upon him, by cutting him off 
from his fair share of political power. By 
this receipt, insolence is gratified, and humani- 
ty is not shocked. The gentlest Protestant can 
see, with dry eyes. Lord Stourton excluded 
from Parliament, though he would abominate 
the most distant idea of personal cruelty to Mr.. 
Petre. This is only to say that he lives in the 
nineteenth, instead of the sixteenth century, 
and that he is as intolerant in religious matters 
as the state of manners existing in his age will 
permit. Is it not the same spirit which wounds 
the pride of a fellow-creature on account of his 
faith, or which casts his body into the flames ? 
Are they any thing else but degrees and modi- 
fications of the same principle ] The minds 
of these two men no more differ because 
they differ in their degrees of punishment, than 
their bodies differ, because one wore a doublet 
in the time of Mary, and the other wears a coat 
in the reign of George. I do not accuse them 
of intentional cruelty and injustice; I am sure 
there are very many excellent men who would 
be shocked if they could conceive themselves 
to be guilty of any thing like cruelty ; but they 
innocently give a wrong name to the bad spirit 
which is within them, and think they are tole- 
rant, because they are not as intolerant as they 
could have been in other times, but cannot 
be now. The true spirit is to search after God 
and for another life with lowliness of heart; to 
fling down no man's altar, to punish nO man's 
prayer ; to heap no penalties and no pains on 
those solemn supplications which, in divers 



440 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



tongues, and in varied forms, and in temples 
of a thousand shapes, but with one deep sense 
of human dependence, men pour forth to God. 

It is completely untrue that the Catholic re- 
ligion is what it was three centuries ago, or 
that it is unchangeable and unchanged. These 
are mere words, without the shadow of truth to 
support them. If the pope were to address a 
bull to the kingdom of Ireland, excommunicat- 
ing the Duke of York, and cutting him off from 
the succession, for his Protestant effusion in 
the House of Lords, he would be laughed at as 
a lunatic in all the Catholic chapels in Dublin. 
The Catholics wouldnotnowburn Protestants as 
heretics. In many parts of Europe, Catholics 
and Protestants worship in one church — Catho- 
lics at eleven, Protestants at one; they sit in the 
same Parliament, are elected to the same office, 
live together without hatred or friction, under 
equal laws. Who can see and know these 
things, and say that the Catholic religion is 
unchangeable and unchanged? 

I have often endeavoured to reflect upon the 
causes which, from time to time, raised such 
a clamour against the Catholics, and I think 
the following are among the most conspicuous : 

1. Historical recollections of the cruelties 
inflicted upon the Protestants. 

2. Theological differences. 

3. A belief that the Catholics are unfriendly 
to liberty. 

4. That their morality is not good. 

5. That they meditate the destruction of the 
Protestant Church. 

6. An unprincipled clamour by men who 
have no sort of belief in the danger of emanci- 
pation, but who make use of no Popery as a 
political engine. 

7. A mean and selfish spirit of denying to 
others the advantages we ourselves enjoy. 

8. A vindictive spirit or love of punishing 
others, who offend our self-love by presuming, 
on important points, to entertain opinions op- 
posite to our own. 

9. Stupid compliance with the opinions of 
the majority. 

10. To these I must, in justice and candour, 
add, as a tenth cause, a real apprehension on 
the part of honest and reasonable men, that it 
is dangerous to grant farther concessions to the 
•Catholics. 

To these various causes I shall make a short 
reply, in the order in which I have placed 
them. 

1. Mere historical recollections are very 
miserable reasons for the continuation of 
penal and incapacitating laws, and one side 
has as much to recollect as the other. 

2. The state has nothing to do with questions 
purely theological. 

3. It is ill to say this in a country whose 
free institutions were founded by Catholics, 
and it is often said by men who care nothing 
about free institutions. 

4. It is not true. 

5. Make their situation so comfortable, that 
it will not be worth their while to attempt an 
enterprise so desperate. 

6. This is an unfair political trick, because 
it is too dangerous ; it is spoiling the table in 

lorder to win the game. 



The 7th and 8th causes exercise a great 
share of influence in every act of intolerance. 
The 9th must, of course, comprehend the 
greatest number. 

10. Of the existence of such a class of no 
Poperists as this, it would be the height of in- 
justice to doubt, but I confess it excites in me 
a very great degree of astonishment. 

Suppose, after a severe struggle, you put the 
Irish down, if they are mad and foolish enough 
to recur to open violence ; yet are the retarded 
industry, and the misapplied energies of so 
many millions of men to go for nothing ? Is it 
possible to forget all the wealth, peace and 
happiness which are to be sacrificed for twenty 
years to come, to these pestilential and dis- 
graceful squabbles ? Is there no horror in 
looking forward to a long period in which men, 
instead of ploughing and spinning, will curse 
and hate, and burn and murder? 

There seems to me a sort of injustice and 
impropriety in our deciding at all upon the 
Catholic question. It should be left to those 
Irish Protestants whose shutters are bullet- 
proof; whose dinner-table is regularly spread 
with knife, fork, and cocked pistol ; salt cellar 
and powder-flask. Let the opinion of those 
persons be resorted to, who sleep in sheet-iron 
night-caps ; who have fought so often and so 
nobly before their scullery door, and defended 
the parlour passage as bravely as Leonidas de- 
fended the pass of Thermopylae. The Irish 
Protestant members see and know the state of 
their own country. Let their votes decide* 
the case. We are quiet and at peace ; our 
homes may be defended with a feather, and 
our doors fastened with a pin ; and as ignorant 
of what armed and insulted Popery is, as we 
are of the state of New Zealand, we pretend to 
regulate by our clamours the religious factions 
of Ireland. 

It is a very pleasant thing to trample upon 
Catholics, and it is also a very pleasant thing 
to have an immense number of pheasants run- 
ning about your woods ; but there come thirty 
or forty poachers in the night, and fight with 
thirty or forty game preservers ; some are 
killed, some fractured, some scalped, some 
maimed for life. Poachers are caught up and 
hanged ; a vast body of hatred and revenge 
accumulates in the neighbourhood of the great 
man ; and he says " the sport is not worth the 
candle. The preservation of game is a very 
agreeable thing, but I will not sacrifice the 
happiness of my life to it. This amusement, 
like any other, may be purchased too dearly." 
So it is with the Irish Protestants ; they are 
finding out that Catholic exclusion may be 
purchased too dearly. Maimed cattle, fired 
ricks, threatening letters, barricadoed houses, 
to endure all this, is to purchase superiority at 
too dear a rate, and this is the inevitable state 
of two parties, the one of whom are unwilling 
to relinquish their ancient monopoly of power, 
while the other party have, at length, disco- 
vered their strength, and are determined to be 
free. 

Gentlemen (with the best intentions, I am 



* A ^reat majority of Irkh •nembeTB voted for Catbolie 
emancipation. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



441 



sure) meet together in a county town, and 
enter into resolutions that no farther conces- 
sions are to be made to the Catholics ; but if 
you will not let them into Parliament, why not 
allow them to be king's counsel, or Serjeants 
at law ] Why are they excluded by law from 
some corporations in Ireland, and admissible, 
though not admitted, to others'! I think, before 
such general resolutions of exclusion are 
adopted, and the rights and happiness of so 
many millions of people disposed of, it would 
be decent and proper to obtain some tolerable 
information of what the present state of the 
Irish Catholics is, and of the vast number of 
insignificant offices from which they are ex- 
cluded. Keep them from Parliament, if you 
think it right, but do not, therefore, exclude 
them from any thing else, to which you think 
Catholics may be fairly admitted without 
danger ; and as to their content or discontent, 
there can be no sort of reason wh}' discontent 
should not be lessened, though it cannot be 
removed. 

You are shocked by the present violence and 
abuse used by the Irish Association; by whom 
are they driven to it] and whom are you to 
thank for it 1 Is there a hope left to them 1 
Is any term of endurance alluded to 1 any scope 
or boundary to their patience ] Is the minister 
waiting for opportunities T Have they reason 
to believe that they are wished well to by the 
greatest of the great] Have they brighter 
hopes in another reign 1 Is there one clear 
spot in the horizon? any thing that you have 
left to them, but that disgust, hatred and 
despair, which, breaking out into wild elo- 
quence, and acting upon a wild people, are 
preparing every day a mass of treason and dis- 
affection, which may shake this empire to its 
very centre 1 and you may laugh at Daniel 
O'Connell, and treat him with contempt, and 
turn his metaphors into ridicule ; but Daniel 
has, after all, a great deal of real and powerful 
eloquence ; and a strange sort of misgiving 
sometimes comes across me, that Daniel and 
the doctor are not quite so great fools as many 
most respectable country clergymen believe 
them to be. 

You talk of their abuse of the Reformation, 
but is there any end to the obloquy and abuse 
with which the Catholics are upon every point, 
and from every quarter, assailed ? Is there 
any one fplly, vice, or crime, which the blind 
fury of Protestants does not lavish upon them 1 
and do you suppose all this is to be heard in 
silence, and without retaliation 1 Abuse as 
much as you please, if you are going to eman- 
cipate, but if you intend to do nothing for the 
Catholics but to call them names, you must 
not be put out of temper if you receive a few 
ugly appellations in return. 

The great object of men who love party bet- 
ter than truth, is to have it believed that the 
Catholics alone have been persecutors; but 
what can be more flagrantly unjust than to 
take our notions of history only from the con- 
quering and triumphant party? If you think 
the Catholics have not their Book of Martyrs 
as well as the Protestants, take the following 
enumeration of some of their most learned and 
careful writers. 

56 



The whole number of Catholics who have 
suffered death in England for the exercise of 
the Roman Catholic religion since the Reforma- 
tion : 

Henry VIII., ... 59 

Elizabeth, - - - 204 

James I., ... 25 

Charles I., and 7 „•» 

Commonwealth, S ' ' 
Charles IF., ... 8 

Total, - - - 319 

Henry VIII., with consummate impartial- 
ity, burnt three Protestants and hanged four 
Catholics for different errors in religion on the 
same day, and the same place. Elizabeth 
burnt two Dutch Anabaptists for some theo- 
logical tenets, July 22, 1575, Fox the martyro- 
logist vainly pleading with the queen in their 
favour. In 1579, the same Protestant queen 
cut off the hand of Stubbs, the author of a tract 
against popish connection, of Singleton, the 
printer, and Page, the disperser of the book. 
Camden saw it done. Warburton properly 
says it exceeds in cruelty any thing done by 
Charles I. On the 4th of June, Mr. Elias 
Thacker and Mr. John Capper, two ministers 
of the Brownist persuasion, were hanged at St. 
Edmundsbury, for dispersing books against 
the Common Prayer. With respect to the 
great part of the Catholic victims, the law was 
fully and literally executed ; after being hanged 
up, they were cut down alive, dismembered, 
ripped up, and their bowels burnt before their 
faces ; after which, they were beheaded and 
quartered. The time employed in this butch- 
ery was very considerable, and, in one in- 
stance, lasted more than half an hour. 

The uncandid excuse for all this is, that the 
greater part of these men were put to death 
for political, not for religious crimes. That 
is, a law is first passed making it high treason 
for a priest to exercise his function in England, 
and so, when he is caught and burnt, this is 
not religious persecution, but an offence against 
the state. We are, I hope, all too busy to need 
any answer to such childish, uncandid reason- 
ing as this. 

The total number of those who suffered capi- 
tally in the reign of Elizabeth, is stated by 
Dodd, in his Church History,* to be one hun- 
dred and ninety-nine; further inquiries made 
their number to be two hundred and four: 
fifteen of these were condemned for denying 
the queen's supremacy; one hundred and 
twenty-six for the exercise of priestly functions ; 
and the others for being reconciled to the 
Catholic faith, or for aiding and assisting 
priests. In this list, no person is included who 
was executed for any plot, real or imaginary, 
except eleven, who suffered for the pretended 
plot of Rheims ; a plot, which Dr. Milner justly 
observes, was so daring a forgery, that even 
Camden allows the sufferers to have been po- 

* The total number of sufferers in the reijtn of Queen 
Mary, varies, I believe, from 200 in the Catholic to 280 in 
th-e Protestant accounts. I recomniend all young men 
who wish to form some notion of what answer the 
Catholics have to make, lo rear! Milner's " Letters to a 
Prebendary," and to follow the line of reading to which 
his references lead. They will then learn the importance 
of that sacred niu.xim, M-udi alteram partem. 



442 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



litical victims. Besides these, mention is 
made in the same work of ninety Catholic 
priests, or laymen, who died in prison in the 
same reign. " About the same time," he says, 
"I find fifty gentlemen lying prisoners in York 
Castle ; most of them perished there, of vermin, 
famine, hunger, thirst, dirt, damp, fever, whip- 
ping, and broken hearts, the inseparable cir- 
cumstances of prisons in those days. These 
were every week, for a twelve-month together, 
dragged by main force to hear the established 
service performed in the castle chapel." The 
Catholics were frequently, during the reign of 
Elizabeth, tortured in the most dreadful man- 
ner. In order to extort answers from Father 
Campian, he was laid on the rack, and his 
limbs stretched a little, to show him, as the 
executioner termed it, what the rack was. He 
persisted in his refusal ; then for several days 
successively, the torture was increased, and 
on the last two occasions he was so cruelly 
rent and torn, that he expected to expire under 
the torment. While under the rack, he called 
continually upon God. In the reign of the 
Protestant Edward VI., Joan Knell was burnt 
to death, and the year after, George Parry was 
burnt also. In 1575, two Protestants, Peterson 
and Turwort, (as before stated,) were burnt to 
death by Elizabeth. In 1589, under the same 
queen, Lewes, a Protestant, was burnt to death 
at Norwich, where Francis Kett was also burnt 
for religious opinions in 1589, under the same 
great queen, who, in 1591, hanged the Protest- 
ant Hacket for heresy, in Cheapside, and put 
to death Greenwood, Barrow, and Penry, for 
■ being Broumlsts. Southwell, a Catholic, was 
racked ten times during the reign of this sister 
of bloody Qaeen Mary. In 15^92, Mrs. Ward 
was hanged, drawn and quartered, for assisting 
a Catholic priest to escape in a box. Mrs. 
Lyne suffered the same punishment for har- 
bouring a priest; and in 1586, Mrs. Clitheroe, 
who was accused of relieving a priest, and re- 
fused to plead, was pressed to death in York 
Castle ; a sharp stone being placed underneath 
her back. 

Have not Protestants persecuted both Catho- 
lics and their fellow Protestants in Germany. 
Switzerland, Geneva, France, Holland, Sweden, 
and England 1 Look to the atrocious punish- 
ment of Leighton under Laud, for writing 
against prelacy; first, his ear was cut off, then 
his nose slit; then the other ear cut off, then 
whipped again. Look to the horrible cruelties 
exercised by the Protestant Episcopalians on 
the Scottish Presbyterians, in the reign of 
Charles II., of whom 8000 are said to" have 
perished in that persecution. Persecutions of 
Protestants by Protestants, are amply detailed 
by Chandler, in his History of Persecution ; by 
Neale, in his History'of the Puritans ; by Laing, 
in his History of Scotland; by Penn, in his 
Life of Fox; and in Brandt's History .of the 
Reformation in the Low Countries; which 
furnishes many very terrible cases of the suf- 
ferings of the Anabaptists and Remonstrants. 
In 1560, the Parliament of Scotland decreed, at 
one and the same time, the establishment of 
Calvinism, and the punishment of death against 
the ancient religion : "With such indecent haste 
(says Robertson) did the very persons who had 



just escaped ecclesiastical tyranny, proceed to* 
imitate their example." Nothing can be so 
absurd as to suppose, that in barbarous ages, 
the excesses were all committed by one religious 
party, and none by the other. The Huguenots 
of France burnt churches, and hung priests, 
wherever they found them. Froumenteau, one 
of their own writers, confesses, that in the 
single province of Dauphiny, they killed two 
hundred and twenty priests, and one hundred 
and twelve friars. In the Low Countries, 
wherever Vandemerk and Sonoi, lieutenants 
of the Prince of Orange, carried their arms, 
they uniformly put to death, and in cold blood, 
all the priests and religious they could lay 
their hands on. The Protestant Servetus was 
put to death by the Protestants of Geneva, for 
denying the doctrine of the Trinity, as the 
Protestant Gentilis was, on the same score, by 
those of Berne ; add to these, Felix Mans, Rot- 
man, and Barnevald. Of Servetus, Melancthon, 
the mildest of men, declared that he deserved 
to have his bowels pulled out, and his body 
torn to pieces. The last fires of persecution 
which were lighted in England, were by Pro- 
testants. Bartholomew Legate, an Arian, was 
burnt by order of King James in Smithfield, 
on the 18th of March, 1612; on the 11th of 
April, in the same year, Edward Weightmaa 
was burnt at Litchfield, by order of the Pro- 
testant Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry ; and 
this man was, I believe, the last person who was 
burnt in England for heresy. There was 
another condemned to the fire for the same 
heresy, but as pity was excited by the con- 
stancy of these sufferers, it was thought better 
to allow him to linger on a miserable life in 
Newgate. Fuller, who wrote in the reign of 
Charles II., and was a zealous Church of Eng- 
land man, speaking of the burnings in question, 
says, " It may appear that God was well pleased 
with them." 

There are, however, grievous faults on both 
sides : and as there are a set of men, who, not 
content with retaliating upon Protestants, deny 
the persecuting spirit of the Catholics,! would 
ask them what they think of the following code, 
draM'n up by the French Catholics against the 
French Protestants, and carried into execution 
for one hundred years, and as late as the year 
1765, and not repealed till 1782'! 

"Any Protestant clergyman remaining in 
France three days, without coming to the 
Catholic worship, to be punished with death. 
If a Protestant sends his son to a Protestant 
schoolmaster for education, he is to forfeit 250 
livres a month, and the schoolmaster who re- 
ceives him, 50 livres. If they sent their child- 
ren to any seminaiy abroad, they were to forfeit 
2000 livres, and the child so sent, became in- 
capable of possessing property in France. To 
celebrate Protestant worship, exposed the 
clergjonan to a fine of 2800 livres. The fine 
to a Protestant for hearing it, was 1300 livres. 
If any Protestant denied the authority of the 
pope in France, his goods were seized for the 
first offence, and he was hanged for the second. 
If any Common Praj^er-book, or book of Pro- 
testant worship be found in the possession of 
any Protestant, he shall forfeit 20 livres for the 
first offence, 40 livres for the second, and shall 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



443 



be imprisoned at pleasure for the third. Any 
person bringing from beyond sea, or selling 
any Protestant books of worship, to forfeit 100 
livres. Any magistrates may search Protestant 
houses for such articles. Any person, required 
by a magistrate to take an oath against the 
Protestant religion, and refusing, to be com- 
mitted to prison, and if he afterwards refuse 
again, to suffer forfeiture of goods. Any 
person, sending any money over sea to the 
support of a Protestant seminary, to forfeit his 
goods, and be imprisoned at the king's pleasure. 
Any person going over sea, for Protestant edu- 
cation, to forfeit goods and lands for life. The 
vessel to be forfeited which conveyed any 
Protestant woman or child over sea, without 
the king's license. Any person converting 
another to the Protestant religion, to be put to 
death. Death to any Protestant priest to come 
into France ; death to the person who receives 
him ; foi'feiture of goods and imprisonment to 
send money for the relief of any Protestant 
clergyman : large rewards for discovering a 
Protestant parson. Every Protestant shall 
cause his child, within one month after birth, 
to be baptized by a Catholic priest, under a 
penalty of 2000 livres. Protestants were fined 
4000 livres a-month for being absent from 
Catholic worship, were disabled from holding 
offices and employments, from keeping arms 
in their houses, from maintaining suits at law, 
from being guardians, from practising in law 
or physic, and from holding offices, civil or 
military. They were forbidden (bravo, Louis 
XIV.!) to travel more than five miles from 
home without license, under pain of forfeiting 
all their goods, and they might not come to 
court under pain of 2000 livres. A married 
Protestant woman when convicted of being of 
that persiiasion was liable to forfeit two-thirds 
of her jointure; she could not be executrix to 
her husband, nor have any part of his goods ; 
and during her marriage, slie might be kept in 
prison, unless her husband redeemed her at 
the rate of 200 livres a-month, or the third part 
of his lands. Protestants convicted of being 
such, were, within three months after their 
conviction, either to submit, and renounce their 
religion, or, if required by four magistrates, to 
abjure the realrn, and if they did not depart, or 
departing returned, were to suffer death. All 
'Protestants were required, under the most tre- 
mendous penalties, to swear that they con- 
sidered the pope as the head of the church. If 
they refused to take this oath, which might be 
tendered at pleasure by any two magistrates, 
ihey could not act as advocates, procureurs, or 
2iOtaries public. Any Protestant taking any 
office, civil or military, was compelled to abjure 
the Protestant religion ; to declare his belief in 
the doctrine of transubstantiation, and to take 
the Roman Catholic sacrament within six 
months, under the penalty of 10,000 livres. 
Any person professing the Protestant religion, 
and educated in the same, was required, in six 
months after the age of sixteen, to declare the 
pope to be the head of the church ; to declare 
his belief in transubstantiation, and that the 
invocation of saints was according to the doc- 
trine of the Christian religion ; failing this, he 
could not hold, possess, or inherit landed pro- 



perty; his lands were given to the nearest 
Catholic relation. Many taxes were doubled 
upon Protestants. Protestants keeping schools 
were imprisoned for life, and all Protestants 
were forbidden to come within ten miles of 
Paris or Versailles. If any Protestant had a 
horse worth more than 100 livres, any Catholic 
magistrate might take it away, and search the 
house of the said Protestant for arms." Is not 
this a monstrous code of persecution 1 Is it 
any wonder, after reading such a spirit of 
tyranny as is here exhibited, that the tendencies 
of the Catholic religion should be suspected, 
and that the ciy of no Popery should be a 
rallying sign to every Protestant nation in 

Europe 1 Forgive, gentle reader, and 

gentle elector, the trifling deception I have 
practised upon you. This code is not a code 
made by French Catholics against French 
Protestants, but by English and Irish Protest- 
ants against English and Irish Catholics ; I 
have given it to you, for the most part, as it is 
set forth in Burns' "Justice" of 1780: it was 
acted upon in the beginning of the last king's 
reign, and was notorious through the whole of 
Europe, as the most cruel and atrocious system 
of persecution ever instituted by one religious 
persuasion against another. Of this code, Mr. 
Burke says, that " it is a truly barbarous system; 
where all the parts are an outrage on the laws 
of humanity, and the rights of nature ; it is a 
system of elaborate contrivance, as well fitted 
for the oppression, imprisonment, and degra- 
dation of a people, and the debasement of 
human nature itself, as ever proceeded from 
the perverted ingenuity of man." It is in vain 
to say that these cruelties were laws of politi- 
cal safety ; such has always been the plea for 
all religious cruelties; by such arguments the 
Catholics defended the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew, and the burnings of Mary. 

With such facts as these, the cry of persecu- 
tion will not do ; it is miwise to make it, 
becaiise it can be so very easily, and so very 
justly retorted. The business is, to forget and 
forgive, to kiss and be friends, and to say- 
nothing of what has past, which is to the credit 
of neither party. There have been atrocious 
cruelties, and abominable acts of injustice on 
both sides. It is not worth while to contend 
who shed the most blood, or whether (as Dr. 
Sturgess objects to Dr. Milner) death by fire 
is worse than hanging or starving in prison 
As far as England itself is concerned, the 
balance may be better preserved. Cruelties 
exercised upon the Irish go for nothing in 
English reasoning; but if it were not uucandid 
and vexatious to consider Irish persecutions* 
as part of the case, I firmly believe there have 
been two Catholics put to death for religious 
causes in Great Britain for one Protestant who 
has suffered; not that this proves much, be- 
cause the Catholics have enjoyed the sovereign 
power for so few years between this period 



* Thurloe writes to Henry Cromwell to catch up some 
thousand Irish boys, to send to the colonies. Henry 
writes back he has done so ; and desires to know whether 
his highness would choose as many «irls to be caught up : 
and he adds, "doubtless it is a business, in which God 
will appear." Suppose bloothi Queen Marn had caught 
up an<l transported three or "four tliousand Protestant 
boys and girls from the three ridings of Yorkshire !!!!!! 



444 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



and the Reformation, and certainly it must be 
allowed that they were not inactive, during 
that period, in the great work of pious com- 
bustion. 

It is, however, some extenuation of the 
Catholic excesses, that their religion was the 
religion of the whole of Europe, when the in- 
novation began. They were the ancient lords 
and masters of faith, before men introduced 
the practice of thinking for themselves in these 
matters. The Protestants have less excuse, 
who claimed the right of innovation, and then 
turned round upon other Protestants who acted 
upon the same principle, or upon Catholics 
who remained as they were, and visited them 
with all the cruelties from which they had 
themselves so recently escaped. 

Both sides, as they acquired power, abused 
it; and both learnt, from their sufferings, the 
great secret of toleration and forbearance. If 
you wish to do good in the times in which you 
live, contribute your efforts to perfect this 
grand work. I have not the most distant in- 
tention to interfere in local politics, but I 
advise you never to give a vote to any man. 



whose only title for asking it is, that he means 
to continue the punishments, privations, and 
incapacities of any human beings, merely be- 
cause they worship God in the way they think 
best: the man who asks for your vote upon 
such a plea, is, probably, a very weak man, who 
believes in his own bad reasoning, or a very 
artful man, who is laughing at you for your 
credulity: at all events, he is a man who, 
knowingly or unknowingly, exposes his country 
to the greatest dangers, and hands down to 
posterity all the foolish opinions and all the 
bad passions which prevail in those times in 
which he happens to live. Such a man is so 
far from being that friend to the church which 
he pretends to be, that he declares its safety 
cannot be reconciled with the franchises of 
the people ; for what worse can be said of the 
Church of England than this, that wherever it 
is judged necessary to give it a legal establish- 
ment, it becomes necessary to deprive the 
body of the people, if they adhere to their old 
opinions, of their liberties, and of all their free 
customs, and to reduce them to a state of civil 
servitude? Stdnbt Smith. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



445 



A SEEMON 



KULES OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY BY WHICH OUR OPINIONS 
OF OTHER SECTS SHOULD BE FORMED: 

PBEACHED 

BEFORE THE MAYOR AND CORPORATION, IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF BRISTOL, ON 
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1828. 



I FT7BI.ISB this sermon (or rather allow others to publish it), because many persons, who 
know the city of Bristol better than I do, have earnestly solicited me to do so, and are con- 
vinced it will do good. It is not without reluctance (as far as I myself am concerned) that I 
send to the press such plain rudiments of common charity and common sense. 

SiDHET Smith. 
Nov. 8, 1828. 



Coi. in. 12, 13. 

* Put on, as the dect of Crod, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, hng-suffervng, forbearing one 

another, and forgiving one anotlier." 



The Church of England, in its wisdom and 
piety, has very properly ordained that a day 
of thanksgiving should be set apart, in which 
we may return thanks to Almighty God for the 
mercies vouchsafed to this nation in their 
escape from the dreadful plot planned for the 
destruction of the sovereign and his Parlia- 
ment, — the forerunner, no doubt, of such san- 
guinary scenes as were suited to the manners 
of that age, and must have proved the inevit- 
able consequence of such enormous wicked- 
ness and cruelty. Such an escape is a fair 
and lawful foundation for national piety. And 
it is a comely and Christian sight to see the 
magistrates and high authorities of the land 
obedient to the ordinances of the church, and 
holding forth to their fellow-subjects a wise 
example of national gratitude and serious de- 
votion. This use of this day is deserving of 
every commendation. The idea that Almighty 
God does sometimes exercise a special provi- 
dence for the preservation of a whole people 
is justified by Scripture, is not repugnant to 
reason, and can produce nothing but feelings 
and opinions favourable to virtue and religion. 

Another wise and lawful use of this day is 
an honest self-congratulation that we have 
burst through those bands which the Roman 
Catholic priesthood would impose upon human 
judgment ; that the Protestant Church not only 
pei-mits, but exhorts, every man to appeal from 
human authority to the Scriptures ; that it 
makes of the clergy guides and advisers, not 
masters and oracles ; that it discourages vain 
and idle ceremonies, unmeaning observances, 
and hypocritical pomp ; and encourages free- 
dom m thinking upon religion, and simplicity 



in religious forms. It is impossible that any 
candid man should not observe the marked 
superiority of the Protestants over the Catholic 
faith in these particulars; and difficult that 
any pious man should not feel grateful to 
Almighty Providence for escape from danger 
which would have plunged this country afresh 
into so many errors and so many absurdities. 

I hope, in this condemnation of the Catholic 
religion (in which I most sincerely join its 
bitterest enemies), I shall not be so far mis- 
taken as to have it supposed that I would con- 
vey the slightest approbation of any laws 
which disqualify or incapacitate any class of 
men from civil offices on account of religious 
opinions. I regard all such laws as fatal and 
lamentable mistakes in legislation ; they are 
mistakes of troubled times, and half-barbarous 
ages. All Europe is gradually emerging from 
their influence. This country has lately, with 
the entire consent of its prelates, made a noble 
and successful eflbrt, by the abolition of some 
of the most obnoxious laws of this class. In 
proportion as such example is followed, the 
enemies of church and state will be diminish- 
ed, and the foundation of peace, order, and 
happiness be strengthened. These are my 
opinions, which I mention, not to convert you, 
but to guard myself from misrepresentation. 
It is my duty, — it is my wish, — it is the sub- 
ject of this day to point out those evils of the 
Catholic religion from which we have escaped; 
but I should be to the last degree concerned, 
if a condemnation of theological errors were 
to be construed into an approbation of laws 
which I cannot but consider as deeply marked 
by a spirit of intolerance. Therefore. I beg 
2 P 



446 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



you to remember that I record these opinions 
not for the purpose of converting any one to 
them, which would be an abuse of the privi- 
lege of addressing you from the pulpit ; not 
that I attach the slightest degree of importance 
to them because they are mine ; but merely to 
guard myself from misrepresentation upon a 
point on which all men's passions are, at this 
moment, so powerfully excised. 

I have said that, at this moment, all men's 
passions are powerfully excited on this sub- 
ject. If this is true, it points out to me my 
line of duty. I must use my endeavours to 
guard against the abuse of this day ; to take 
care that the principles of sound reason are 
not lost sight of; and that such excitement, 
instead of rising into dangerous vehemence, 
is calmed into active and useful investigation 
of the subject. 

I shall, therefore, on the present occasion, 
not investigate generally the duties of charity 
and forbearance, but of charity and forbearance 
in religious matters ; of that Christian meek- 
ness and humility which prevent the intrusion 
of bad passions into religious concerns, and 
keep calm and pure the mind intent upon 
eternity. And remember, I beg of you, that 
the rules I shall offer you for the observation 
of Christian charity are general, and of uni- 
versal application. What you choose to do, 
and which way you incline upon any particu- 
lar question, are, and can be, no concern of 
mine. It would be the height of arrogance 
and presumption in me, or in any other minis- 
ter of God's word, to interfere oh such points ; 
I only endeavour to teach that spirit of forbear- 
ance and charity, which (though it cannot 
always prevent differences upon religious 
points) will ensure that these differences are 
carried on with Christian gentleness. I have 
endeavoured to lay down these rules for differ- 
ence with care and moderation ; and, if you 
will attend to them patiently, I think you will 
agree with me, that, however the practice of 
them may be forgotten, the propriety of them 
cannot be denied. 

It would always be easier to fall in with hu- 
man passions than to resist them ; but the 
ministers of God must do their duty through 
evil report, and through good report ; neither 
prevented nor excited by the interests of the 
present day. They must teach those general 
truths which the Christian religion has com- 
mitted to their care, and upon which the hap- 
piness and peace of the world depend. 

In pressing upon you the great duty of reli- 
gious charity, the inutility of the opposite de- 
fect of religious violence first offers itself to, 
and, indeed, obtrudes itself upon my notice. 
The evil of difference of opinion must exist; 
it admits of no cure. The wildest visionary 
does not now hope he can bring his fellow- 
creatures to one standard of faith. If history 
has taught us any one thing, it is that man- 
kind, on such sort of subjects, will form their 
own opinions. Therefore, to want charity in 
religious matters is at least useless ; it hardens 
error and provokes recrimination ; but it does 
not enlighten those whom we wish to reclaim, 
nor does it extend doctrines which to us ap- 
pear so clear and indisputable. But to do 



wrong, and to gain nothing by it, are surely to 
add folly to fault, and to proclaim an under- 
standing not led by the lule of reason, as well 
as a disposition unregulated bv the Christian 
faith. 

Religious charity requires that we should 
not judge any sect of Christians by the repre- 
sentations of their enemies alone, without 
hearing and reading what they have to say in 
their own defence ; it requires only, of course, 
to state such a rule to procure for it general 
admission. No man can pretend to say that 
such a rule is not founded upon the plainest 
principles of justice — upon those plain princi- 
ples of justice which no one thinks of violating 
in the ordinary concerns of life ; and yet I fear 
that rule is not always very strictly adhered to 
in religious animosities. Religious hatred is 
often founded on tradition, often on hearsay, 
often on. the misrepresentations of notorious 
enemies ; without inquiry, without the slightest 
examination of opposite reasons and authori- 
ties, or consideration of that which the accused 
party has to offer for defence or explanation. It 
is impossible, I admit, to examine every thing ; 
many have not talents, many have not leisure, 
for such pursuits ; many must be contented 
with the faith in which they have been brought 
up, and must think it the best modification of 
the Christian faith, because they are told it is 
so. But this imperfect acquaintance with re- 
ligious controversy, though not blameable 
when it proceeds from want of power, and 
want of opportunity, can be no possible justi- 
fication of violent and acrimonious opinions. 
I would say to the ignorant man, "It is not 
your ignorance I blame ; you have had no 
means, perhaps, of acquiring knowledge : the 
circumstances of your life have not led to it — 
may have prevented it ; but then I must tell 
you, if you have not had leisure to inquire, you 
have no right to accuse. If you are unacquaint- 
ed with the opposite arguments, — or, knowing, 
cannot balance them, it is not upon you the 
task devolves of exposing the ert'ors, and im- 
pugning the opinions of other sects." If cha- 
rity is ever necessary, it is in those who know 
accurately neither the accusation nor the de- 
fence. If invective, — if rooted antipathy, in 
religious opinions, is ever a breach of Chris- 
tian rules, it is so in those who, not being able 
to become wise, are not willing to become 
charitable and modest. 

Any candid man, acquainted with religious 
controversy, will, I think, admit that he has 
frequently, in the course of his studies, been 
astonished by the force of arguments with 
which that cause has been defended, which he 
at first thought to be incapable of any defence 
at all. Some accusations he has found to be 
utterly groundless; in others the facts and 
arguments have been mis-stated ; in other in- 
stances the accusation has been retorted ; in 
many cases the tenets have been defended by 
strong arguments and honest appeal to Scrip- 
ture; in many with consummate acuteness 
and deep learning. So that religious studies 
often teach to opponents a greater respect for 
each other's talents, motives, and acquire- 
ments ; exhibit the real difficulties of the suK 
ject ; lessen the surprise and anger which are 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



447 



• apt to be excited by opposition ; and, by these 
means, promote that forgiving one another, 
and forbearing one another, which are ,so 
powerfully recommended by the words of my 
text. 

A great deal of mischief is done by not at- 
tending to the limits of interference with each 
other's religious opinions, — by not leaving to 
the power and wisdom of God that which be- 
longs to God alone. Our holy religion con- 
sists of some doctrines which influence prac- 
tice, and of others which are purely specula- 
tive. If religious errors are of the former 
description, they may, perhaps, be fair objects 
of human interference ; but, if the opinion is 
merely theological and speculative, there the 
right of human interference seems to end, be- 
cause the necessity for such interference 
does not exist. Any error of this nature is 
between the Creator and the creature, — be- 
tween the Redeemer and the redeemed. If 
such opinions are not the best opinions which 
can be found, God Almighty will punish the 
error, if mere error seemeth to the Almighty 
a fit object of punishment. Why may not 
man wait if God waits 1 Where are we called 
upon in Scripture to pursue men for errors 
purely speculative ? — to assist Heaven in 
punishing those offences which belong only to 
Heaven "? — in fighting unasked for what we 
deem to be the battles of God, — of that patient 
and merciful God, who pities the frailties we 
do not pity — who forgives the errors we do 
not forgive, — who sends rain upon the just 
and the unjust, and maketh his sun to shine 
upon the evil and the good ? 

Another canon of religious charity is to re- 
vise, at long intervals, the bad opinions we 
have been compelled, or rather our forefathers 
have been compelled, to form of other Christian 
sects ; to see whether the different bias of the 
age, the more general diffusion of intelligence, 
do not render those tenets less pernicious : 
that which might prove a very great evil under 
other circumstances, and in other times, may, 
perhaps, however weak and erroneous, be 
harmless in these times, and under these cir- 
cumstances. We must be aware, too, that we 
do not mistake recollections for apprehen- 
sions, and confound together what has passed 
with what is to come, — history with futurity. 
For instance, it would be the most enormous 
abuse of this religious institution to imagine 
that such dreadful scenes of wickedness are 
to be apprehended from the Catholics of the 
present day, because the annals of this coun- 
try were disgraced by such an event two hun- 
dred years ago. It would be an enormous 
abuse of this day to extend the crimes of a 
few desperate wretches to a whole sect ; to 
fix the passions of dark ages upon times of 
refinement and civilization. All these are 
mistakes and abuses of this day, which vio- 
late every principle of Christian charity, en- 
danger the peace of society, and give life and 
perpetuity to hatreds, which must perish at 
one time or another, and had better, for the 
peace of societ}^, perish now. 

It would be religiously charitable, also, to 

■ consider whether the objectionable tenets, 

which different sects profess, are in their 



hearts as well as in their books. There is, 
unfortunately, so much pride where there 
ought to be so much humility, that it is diffi- 
cult, if not almost impossible, to make religious 
sects abjure or recant the doctrines they have 
once professed. It is not in this manner, I 
fear, that the best and purest churches are 
ever reformed. But the doctrine gradually be- 
comes obsolete ; and, though not disowned, 
ceases in fact to be a distinguishing charac- 
teristic of the sect which professes it. These 
modes of reformation, — this silent antiquation 
of doctrines, — this real improvement, which 
the parties themselves are too wise not to feel, 
though not wise enough to own, must, I am 
afraid, be generally conceded to human in- 
firmity. They are indulgences not unneces- 
sary to many sects of Christians. The more 
generous method would be to admit error 
where error exists, to say these were- the 
tenets and interpretations of dark and igno- 
rant ages ; wider inquiry, fresh discussion, 
superior intelligence have convinced us we are 
wrong ; we will act in future upon better and 
wiser principles. This is what men do in 
laws, arts, and sciences ; and happy for them 
would it be if they used the same modest do- 
cility in the highest of all concerns. But it 
is, I fear, more than experience will allow us 
to expect ; and therefore the kindest and most 
charitable method is to allow religious sects 
silently to improve without reminding them 
of, and taunting them with, the improvement ; 
without bringing them to the humiliation of 
former disavowal, or the still more pernicious 
practice of defending what they know to be 
mdefensible. The triumphs which proceed 
from the neglect of these principles are not 
(what they pretend to be) the triumphs of re- 
ligion, but the triumphs of personal vanity. 
The object is not to extinguish the dangerous 
errors with as little pain and degradation as 
possible to him who has fallen into the error, 
but the object is to exalt ourselves, and to de- 
preciate our theological opponents, as much 
as possible, at any expense to God's service, 
and to the real interests of truth and religion. 
There is another practice not less common 
than this, and equally uncharitable ; and that 
is to represent the opinions of the most violent 
and eager persons who can be met with, as 
the common and received opinions of the 
whole sect. There are, in every denomination 
of Christians, individuals, by whose opinion 
or by whose conduct the great body would 
very reluctantly be judged. Some men aim at 
attracting notice by singularity; some are de- 
ficient in temper; some in learning; some 
push every principle to the extreme ; distort, 
overstate, pervert ; fill every one to whom 
their cause is dear with concern that it should 
have been committed to such raSh and intem- 
perate advocates. If you wish to gain a vic- 
tory over your antagonists, these are the men 
whose writings you should study, whose opi- 
nions you should dwell on, and should care- 
fully bring forward to notice ; but if you wish, 
as the elect of God, to put on kindness and 
humbleness, meekness and long-suffering, — if 
you wish to forbear and to forgive, it will then 
occur to you that you should seek the true 



448 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



opinions of any sect from those only who are 
approved of, and reverenced by that sect ; to 
whose authority that sect defer, and by whose 
arguments they consider their tenets to be 
properly defended. This may not suit your 
purpose, if you are combating for victory ; but 
it is your duty if 3^011 are combating for truth ; 
it is the safe, honest, and splendid conduct of 
him who never writes nor speaks on religious 
subjects, but that he may diffuse the real bless- 
ings of religion among his fellow-creatures, 
and restrain the bitterness of controversy by 
the feelings of Christian charity and forbear- 
ance. 

Let us also ask ourselves, when we are sit- 
ting in severe judgment upon the faults, follies, 
and errors of other Christian sects, whether it 
is not barely possible that we have fallen into 
some mistakes and misrepresentations T Let 
us ask ourselves, honestly and fairly, whether 
we are wholly exempt from prejudice, from 
pride, from obstinate adhesion to what candour 
calls upon us to alter, and to yield 1 Are 
there no violent and mistaken members of 
our own community, by whose conduct we 
should be loath to be guided, — by whose 
tenets we should not choose our faith should 
be judged 1 Has time, that improves all, 
found nothing in us to change for the bet- 
ter 1 Amid all the manifold divisions of the 
Christian world, are we the only Christians 
who, without having any thing to learn from 
the knowledge and civilization of the last three 
centuries, have started up, without infancy, 
and without error, into consummate wisdom 
and spotless perfection 1 

To listen to enemies as well as friends is a 
rule which not only increases sense in com- 
mon life, but is highly favourable to the in- 
crease of religious candour. You find that 
you are not so free from faults as your friends 
suppose, nor so full of faults as your enemies 
suppose. You begin to think it not impossi- 
ble that you may be as unjust to others as they 
are to you ; and that the wisest and most 
Christian scheme is that of mutual indulgence; 
that it is better to put on, as the elect of God, 
kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- 
suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving 
one another. 

Some men cannot understand how they are 
to be zealous if they are candid in religious 
matters ; how the energy necessary for the one 
virtue is compatible with the calmness which 
the other requires. But remember that the 
Scriptures carefully distinguish between laud- 
able zeal and indiscreet zeal ; that the apostles 
and epistolary writers knew they had as much 
to fear from the over-excitement of some men as 
from the supineness of others ; and in nothing 
have they laboured more than in preventing 
religion from arming human passions instead 
of allaying them, and rendering those princi- 
ples a source of mutual jealousy and hatred 
which were intended for universal peace. I 
admit that indifference sometimes puts on the 
appearance of candour ; but, though there is 
a counterfeit, yet there is a reality ; and the 
imitation proves the value of the original, be- 
cause men only attempt to multiply the appear- 
ances of useful and important things. The j 



object is to be at the same time pious to God 
and charitable to man ; to render your own 
faith as pure and perfect as possible, not only 
without hatred of those' who differ from you, 
but with a constant recollection that it is possi- 
ble, in spite of.thought and study, that you may 
have been mistaken, — that other sects may be 
right, and that a zeal in his service, which 
God does not want, is a very bad excuse for 
those bad passions which his sacred word 
condemns. 

Lastly, I would suggest that many differences 
between sects are of less importance than 
the furious zeal of many men would make 
them. Are the tenets of any sect of such a 
description, that we believe they will be saved 
under the Christian faith 1 Do they fulfil the 
common duties of life 1 Do they respect pro- 
perty ? Are they obedient to the laws 1 Do 
they speak the truth 1 If all these things are 
right, the violence of hostility may surely sub- 
mit to some little softness and relaxation ;. 
honest difference of opinion cannot call for 
such entire separation and complete antipathy ; 
such zeal as this, if it be zeal, and not some- 
thing worse, is not surely zeal according to 
discretion. 

The arguments, then, which I have adduced 
in support of the great principles of religious 
charity are, that violence upon such subjects 
is rarely or ever found to be useful; but gene- 
rally to produce effects opposite to those which 
are intended. I have observed that religious 
sects are not to be judged from the represen- 
tations of their enemies ; but that they are to 
be heard for themselves, in the pleadings of 
their best writers, not in the representations 
of those whose intemperate zeal is a misfor- 
tune to the sect to which they belong. If you 
will study the principles of your religious 
opponents, you will often find your contempt 
and hatred lessened in proportion as you are 
better acquainted with what you despise. Many 
religious opinions, which are purely specu- 
lative, are without the limits of human inter- 
ference. In the numerous sects of Christianity, 
interpreting our religion in very opposite 
manners, all cannot be right. Imitate the for- 
bearance and long-suffering of God, who 
throws the mantle of his mercy over all, and 
who will probably save, on the last day, the 
piously right and the piously wrong, seeking 
Jesus in humbleness of mind. Do not drive 
religious sects to the disgrace (or to what they 
foolishly think the disgrace) of formally disa- 
vowing tenets they once professed, but concede 
something to human weakness ; and, when 
the tenet is virtually given up, treat it as if it 
were actually given up ; and always consider 
it to be very possible that you yourself may 
have made mistakes, and fallen into erroneous 
opinions, as well as any other sect to which 
you are opposed. If you put on these dispo- 
sitions, and this tenor of mind, you cannot be 
guilty of any religious fault, take what part 
you will in the religious disputes which ap- 
pear to be coming on the world. If you choose 
to perpetuate the restrictions upon your fellow- 
creatures, no one has a right to call you bigoted ; 
if you choose to do them away, no one has any 
right to call you lax and indifferent; you have 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



449 



done yonr utmost to do right, and, whether you 
err, or do not err, in your mode of interpreting 
the Christian religion, you show at least that 
you have caught its heavenly spirit, — that you 
have put on, as the elect of God, kindness, 
humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, 
forbearing one another, and forgiving one 
another. 

I have thus endeavoured to lay before you 
the uses and abuses of this day; and, having 
stated the great mercy of God's interference, 
and the blessings this country has secured to 
itself in resisting the errors, and follies, and 
superstitions of the Catholic Church, I have 
endeavoured that this just sense of our own 
superiority should not militate against the 
sacred principles of Christian charity. That 
charity which I ask for others, I ask also for 
myself. I am sure I am preaching before 
those who will think (whether they agree 
with me or not) that I have spoken consci- 
entiously, and from good motives, and from 
honest feelings, on a very difficult subject, — 
not sought for by me, but devolving upon 
me in the course of duty ; — in which I should 
have been heartily ashamed of myself (as 
you would have been ashamed of me), if I 
had thought only how to flatter and please, 
or thought of any thing but what I hope I 



always do think of in the pulpit, — that I am 
placed here by God to tell the truth, and to do 
good. 

I shall conclude my sermon, (pushed, I am 
afraid, already to an unreasonable length,) by 
reciting to you a very short and beautiful apo- 
logue, taken from the rabbinical writers. It is, 
I believe, quoted by Bishop Taylor in his 
" Holy Living and Dying." I have not now 
access to that book, but I quote it to you from 
memory ; and should be made truly happy if 
you would quote it to others from memory 
also. 

" As Abraham was sitting in the door of his 
tent, there came unto him a wayfaring man ; 
and Abraham gave him water for his feet, and 
set bread before him. And Abraham said unto 
him, 'Let us now worship the Lord our God 
before we eat of this bread.' And the wayfar- 
ing man said unto Abraham, 'I will not wor- 
ship the Lord thy God, for thy God is not my 
God, but I will worship my God, even the God 
of my fathers.' But Abraham was exceeding 
wroth ; and he rose up to put the wayfaring 
ipan forth from the door of his tent. And the 
voice of the Lord was heard in the tent, — Abra- 
ham, Abraham ! have I borne with this man 
for threescore and ten years, and canst not 
thou bear with him for one hour 1" 



LETTERS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE CATHOLICS, 

TO 

MY BROTHER ABRAHAM, WHO LIVES IN THE COUNTRY. 
BY PETER PLYMLEY. 



LETTER L 

Dbar Abraham, 

A woKTHiKR and better man than yourself 
does not exist ; but I have always told you, 
from the time of our boyhood, that you Avere a 
bit of a goose. Your parochial affairs are go- 
verned with exemplary order and regularity ; 
you are as powerful in the vestry as Mr. Per- 
ceval is in the House of Commons, — and, I 
must say, with much more reason ; nor do I 
know any church where the faces and smock- 
frocks of the congregation are so clean, or 
their eyes so uniformly directed to the preacher. 
There is another point upon which I will do 
)'ou ample justice ; and that is, that the eyes 
so directed towards you are wide open ; for 
the rustic has, in general, good principles, 
though he cannot control his animal habits ; 
and, however loud he may snore, his face is 
perpetually turned towards the fountain of 
orthodoxy. 

Having done you this act of justice, I shall 
proceed, according to our ancient intimacy 
and familiarity, to explain to you my opinions 
about the Catholics, and to reply to yours. 
5V 



In the first place, my sweet Abraham, the 
pope is not landed — nor are there any curates 
sent out after him — nor has he been hid at St. 
Alban's by the Dowager Lady Spencer — nor 
dined privately at Holland House — nor been 
seen near Dropmore. If these fears exist 
(which I do not believe), they exist only in the 
mind of the chancellor of the exchequer ; they 
emanate from his zeal for the Protestant inte- 
rest; and, though they reflect the highest 
honour upon the delicate irritability of his 
faith, must certainly be considered as more 
ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigour of 
his understanding. By this time, however, 
the best informed clergy in the neighbourhood 
of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour 
is without foundation ; and, though the pope is 
probably hovering about our coast in a fishing 
smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to 
the vigilance of our cruisers ; and it is certain 
he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our 
soil. 

Exactly in the same manner, the story of 

the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by 

an order from the Foreign Office, turns out to 

be without the shadow of a foundation ; m- 

2p 2 



450 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



stead of the angels and archangels, mentioned 
by the informer, nothing was discovered but a 
wooden image of Lord Mulgrave, going down 
to Chatham, as a head-piece for the Spanker 
gun-vessel; it was an exact resemblance of 
his lordship in his military uniform ; and there- 
fore as little like a god as can well be imagined. 

Having set your fears at rest as to the extent 
of the conspiracy formed against the Protestant 
religion, I will now come to the argument 
itself. 

You say these men interpret the Scriptures 
in an orthodox manner ; and that they eat their 
God. — Very likely. All this may seem very 
important to you, who live fourteen miles from 
a market-town, and, from long residence upon 
your living, are become a kind of holy ve- 
getable ; and, in a theological sense, it is highly 
important. But I want soldiers and sailors 
for the state ; I want to make a greater use than 
I now can do of a poor country full of men ; I 
want to render the military service popular 
among the Irish; to check the power of 
France ; to make every possible exertion for 
the safety of Europe, which in twenty years' 
time will be nothing but a mass of French 
slaves ; and then you, and ten thousand other 
such boobies as you, call out — "For God's 
sake, do not think of raising cavalry and in- 
fantry in Ireland ! . . . . They interpret the 
Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from 
what we do ! ... . They eat a bit of wafer 
every Sunday, which they call their God!" 

.... I wish to my soul they would eat you, 
and such reasoners as you are. What ! when 
Turk, Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protest- 
ant, are all combined against this country; 
when men of every religious persuasion, and 
no religious persuasion ; when the population 
of half the globe is up in arms against us ; are 
we to stand examining our generals and armies 
as a bishop examines a candidate for holy or- 
ders? and to suffer no one to bleed for Eng- 
land who does not agree with you about the 
2d of Timothy ■? You talk about the Catholics ! 
If you and your brotherhood have been able to 
persuade the country into a continuation of 
this grossest of all absurdities, you have ten 
times the power which the Catholic clergy 
ever had in their best days. Louis XIV., when 
he revoked the Edict of Nantes, never thought 
of preventing the Protestants from fighting his 
battles ; and gained accordingly some of his 
most splendid victories by the talents of his 
Protestant generals. No power in Europe, but 
yourselves, has ever thought, for these hundred 
years past, of asking whether a bayonet is 
Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran; but 
whether it is sharp and well-tempered. A bigot 
delights in public ridicule; for he begins to 
think he is a martyr. I can promise you the 
full enjoyment of this pleasure, from one ex- 
tremity of Europe to the other. 

lam as disgusted with the nonsense of the Ro- 
man Catholic religion as you can be ; and no 
man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe 
the product of the earth, nor meddle with the 
ecclesiastical establishment in any shape ; — 
but what have I to do with the speculative 
nonsense of his theology, when the object is 
to elect the mayor of a country town, or to 



appoint a colonel of a inarching regiment! 
Will a man discharge the solemn imperti- 
nences of the one office with the less zeal, or 
shrink from the bloody boldness of the other 
with greater timidity, because the blockhead be- 
lieves in all the Catholic nonsense of the real 
presence. I am sorry there should be such 
impious folly in the world, but I should be ten ' 
times a greater fool than he is, if I refused, in ' 
consequence of his folly, to lead him out ' 
against the enemies of the state. Your whole 
argument is wrong; the state has nothing 
whatever to do with theological errors which 
do not violate the common rules of morality, 
and militate against the fair power of the rukr : 
it leaves all these errors to you, and to such 
as you. You have every tenth porker in your 
parish for refuting them ; and take care that 
you are vigilant and logical in the task. 

I love the church as well as you do ; but you 
totally mistake the nature of an establishment, 
when you contend that it ought to be connected 
with the military and civil career of every in- 
dividual in the state. It is quite right that 
there should be one clergyman to every parish 
interpreting the Scriptures after a particular 
manner, ruled by a regular hierarchy, and paid 
with a rich proportion of haycocks and wheat- 
sheafs. When I have laid this foundation for 
a rational religion in the state — when I have 
placed ten thousand well-educated men in dif- 
ferent parts of the kingdom to preach it up, 
and compelled every body to pay them, whether 
they hear them or not — I have taken such 
measures as I know must always procure an 
immense majority in favour of the established 
church ; but I can go no farther. I cannot set 
up a civil inquisition, and say to one, you 
shall not be a butcher, because you are not or- 
thodox ; and prohibit another from brewing, 
and a third from administering the law, and a 
fourth from defending the country. If com- 
mon justice did not prohibit me from such a 
conduct, common sense would. The advan- 
tage to be gained by quitting the heresy would 
make it shameful to abandon it ; and men who 
had once left the church would continue in 
such a state of alienation from a point of 
honour, and transmit that spirit to the latest 
posterity. This is just the effect your disquali- 
fying laws have produced. They have fed Dr. 
Rees and Dr. Kippis ; crowded the congrega- 
tion of the Old Jewry to suffocation ; and ena- 
bled every sublapsarian, and supralapsarian, 
and semipelagian clergyman, to build himself 
a neat brick chapel, and live with some distant 
resemblance to the state of a gentleman. 

You say the king's coronation oath will not 
allow him to consent to any relaxation of the 
Catholic laws — Why not relax the Catholic 
laws as well as the laws against Protestant 
dissenters 1 If one is contrary to his oath, the 
other must be so too; for the spirit of the oath 
is, to defend the church establishment ; which 
the Quaker and the Presbyterian difier from 
as much or more than the Catholic ; and yet 
his majesty has repealed the Corporation and 
Test Act in Ireland, and done more for the 
Catholics of both kingdoms than had been 
done for them since the Reformation. In 1778, 
the ministers said nothing about the royal con 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



451 



science; in 1793* no conscience; in 1804 no 
conscience ; the common feeling; of humanity 
and justice then seem to have had their fullest 
influence upon the advisers of the crown ; but 
in 1807 — a year, I suppose, eminently fruitful 
in moral and religious scruples, (as some years 
are fruitful in apples, some in hops, — it is con- 
tended by the well-paid John Bowles, and by 
Mr. Perceval (who tried to be well paid), that 
that is now perjury which we had hitherto 
called policy and benevolence! Religious 
liberty has never made such a stride as under 
the reign of his present majesty; nor is there 
any instance in the annals of our history, 
where so many infamous and damnable laws 
have been repealed as those against the Ca- 
tholics, which have been put an end to by 
him; and then, at the close of this useful po- 
licy, his advisers discover that the very mea- 
sures of concession and indulgence, or (to use 
my own language), the measures of justice, 
which he has been pursuing through the whole 
of his reign, are contrary to the oath he takes 
at its commencement! That oath binds his 
majesty not to consent to any measure con- 
trary to the interests of the established church ; 
but who is to judge of the tendency of each 
particular measure 1 Not the king alone ; it 
can never be the intention of this law that the 
king, who listens to the advice of his Parlia- 
ment upon a road bill, should reject it upon 
the most important of all measures. What- 
ever be his own private judgment of the ten- 
dency of any ecclesiastical bill, he complies 
most strictly with his oath, if he is guided in 
that particular point by the advice of his Par- 
liament, who may be presumed to understand 
its tendency better than the king, or any other 
individual. You say, if Parliament had been 
unanimous in their opinion of the absolute 
necessity for Lord Howick's bill, and the king 
had thought it pernicious, he would have been 
perjured if he had not rejected it. I say, on 
the contrary, his majesty would have acted in 
the most conscientious manner, and have com- 
plied most scrupulously with his oath, if he 
had sacrificed his own opinion to the opinion 
of the great council of the nation ; because the 
probability was that such opinion was better 
than his own ; and upon the same principle, 
in common life, you give up your opinion to 
your physician, your lawyer, and your builder. 
You admit this bill did not compel the king 
to elect Catholic officers, but only gave him 
the option of doing so if he pleased; but you 
add, that the king was right in not trusting 
such dangerous power to himself or his suc- 
cessors. Now, you are either to suppose that 
the king, for the time being, has a zeal for the 
Catholic establishment, or that he has not. If 
he has not, where is the danger of giving such 
an option 1 If you suppose that he may be 
influenced by such an admiration of the Ca- 
tholic religion, why did his present majesty, 
in the year 1804, consent to that bill which 
empowered the crown to station ten thousand 
Catholic soldiers in any part of the kingdom, 
and placed them absolutely at the disposal of 



* These feelings of humanity and justice were at some 
■periods a little quickened by the representations of 
40,000 armed volunteers. 



the crown? If the King^ of England for the 
time being is a good Protestant, there can be 
no danger in making the Catholic eligible to 
any thing; if he is not, no power can possibly 
be so dangerous as that conveyed by the bill 
last quoted; to which, in point of peril. Lord 
Howick's bill is a mere joke. But the real 
fact is, one bill opened a door to his majesty's 
advisers for trick, jobbing, and intrigue ; the 
other did not. 

Besides, what folly to talk to me of an oath, 
which, under all possible circumstances, is to 
prevent the relaxation of the Catholic laws ! 
for such a solemn appeal to God sets all con- 
ditions and contingencies at defiance. Sup- 
pose Bonaparte was to retrieve the only very 
great blunder he has made, and were to suc- 
ceed, after repeated trials, in making an im- 
pression upon Ireland, do you think we should 
hear any thing of the impediment of a coro- 
nation oath 1 or would the spirit of this country 
tolerate for an hour such ministers, and such 
unheard-of nonsense, if the most distant pros- 
pect existed of conciliating the Catholics by 
every species even of the most abject conces- 
sion 1 And yet, if your argument is good for 
any thing, the coronation oath ought to reject, 
at such a moment, every tendency to concilia- 
tion, and to bind Ireland forever to the crown 
of France. 

I found in your letter the usual remarks 
about fire, fagot, and bloody Mary. Are you 
aware, my dear priest, that there were as many 
persons put to death for religious opinions 
under the mild Elizabeth as under the bloody 
Mary1 The reign of the former was, to be 
sure, ten times as long ; but I only mention the 
fact, merely to show you that something de- 
pends upon the age in which men live, as 
well as on their religious opinions. Three 
hundred years ago, men burnt and hanged each 
other for these opinions. Time has softened 
Catholic as well as Protestant; they both re- 
quired it ; though each perceives only his own 
improvement, and is blind to that of the other. 
We are all the creatures of circumstances. I 
know not a kinder and better man than your- 
self; but you (if you had lived in those times) 
would certainly have roasted your Catholic; 
and I promise you, if the first exciter of this 
religious mob had been as powerful then as 
he is now, you would soon have been elevated 
to the mitre. I do not go the length of saying 
that the world has suffered as much from Pro- 
testant as from Catholic persecution ; far from 
it: but you should remember the Catholics 
had all the power, when the idea first started 
up in the world that there could be two modes 
of faith ; and that it was much more natural 
they should attempt to crush this diversity of 
opinion by great and cruel efforts, than that 
the Protestants should rage against those who 
difiered from them, when the very basis of 
their system was complete freedom in all spirit- 
ual matters. 

I cannot extend my letter any further at 
present, but you shall soon hear from me 
again. You tell me I am a party man. I hope 
I shall always be so, when I see my country 
in the hands" of a pert London joker and a se- 
cond-rate lawyer. Of the first, no other good 



452 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



is known than that he makes pretty Latin 
verses ; the second seems to me to have the 
head of a country parson, and the tongue of 
an Old Bailey lawyer. 

If I could see good measures pursued, I care 
not a farthing who is in power ; but I have a 
passionate love for common justice, and for 
common sense, and I abhor and despise ever)^ 
man who builds up his political fortune upon 
their ruin. 

God bless you, reverend Abraham, and de- 
fend you from the pope, and all of us from 
that administration who seek power by oppos- 
ing a measure which Burke, Pitt, and Fox all 
considered as absolutely necessary to the exist- 
ence of the country. 



LETTER IL 

De^r Abraham, 

The Catholic not respect an oath ! why not? 
What upon earth has kept him out of Parlia- 
ment, or excluded him from all the offices 
whence he is excluded, but his respect for 
oaths 1 There is no law which prohibits a 
Catholic to sit in Parliament. There could be 
no such law ; because it is impossible to find 
out what passes in the interior of any man's 
mind. Suppose it were in contemplation to 
exclude all men from certain offices who con- 
tended for the legality of taking tithes : the 
only mode of discovering that fervid love of 
decimation which I know you to possess would 
be to tender you an oath "against that damna- 
ble doctrine, that it is lawful for a spiritual 
man to take, abstract, appropriate, subduct, or 
lead away the tenth calf, sheep, lamb, ox, pi- 
geon, duck," &c., &c., &c., and every other ani- 
mal that ever existed, which of course the 
lawyers would take care to enumerate. Now 
this oath I am sure you would rather die than 
lake ; and so the Catholic is excluded from 
Parliament because he will not swear that he 
disbelieves the leading doctrines of his reli- 
gion ! The Catholic asks you to abolish some 
oaths which oppress him; your answer is, that 
he does not respect oaths. Then why subject 
him to the test of oaths ? The oaths keep him 
out of Parliament ; why then he respects them. 
Turn which way you will, either your laws 
are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by reli- 
gious obligations as you are ; but no eel in the 
well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve 
of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as 
an orthodox parson does when he is compelled 
by the gripe of reason to admit any thing in 
favour of a dissenter. 

I will not dispute with you whether the pope 
be or be not the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. I 
hope it is not so ; because I am afraid it will 
induce his majesty's chancellor of the exche- 
quer to introduce several severe bills against 
Popery, if that is the case ; and though he will 
have the decency to appoint a previous com- 
mittee of inquiry as to the fact, the committee 
will be garbled, and the report inflammatory. 
Leaving this to be settled as he pleases to 
settle it, I wish to inform you, that previously 
■0 the bill last passed in favour of the Catho- 



lics, at the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, and for his 
satisfaction, the opinions of six of the most 
celebrated of the foreign Catholic universities 
were taken as to the right of the pope to inter- 
fere in the temporal concerns of any country. 
The answer cannot possibly leave the shadow 
of a doubt, even in the mind of Baron Ma- 
seres ; and Dr. Rennel would be compelled to 
admit it, if three bishops lay dead at the ver 
moment the question were put to him. T<j 
this answer might be added also the soleml 
declaration and signature of all the Catholics 
in Great Britain. 

I should perfectly agree with you, if the 
Catholics admitted such a dangerous dispens- 
ing power in the hands of the pope ; but they 
all deny it, and laugh at it, and are ready to 
abjure it in the most decided manner you can 
devise. They obey the pope as the spiritual 
head of their church ; but are you really so 
foolish as to be imposed upon by mere names'? 
— What matters it the seven-thousandth part 
of a farthing who is the spiritual head of any 
church ■? Is not Mr. Wilberforce at the head 
of the church of Clapham ? Is not Dr. Letsom 
at the head of the Quaker church ? Is not the 
general assembly at the head of the church of 
Scotland ] How is the government disturbed 
by these many-headed churches 1 or in what 
way is the power of the crown augmented by 
this almost nominal dignity 1 

The king appoints a fast-day once a year, 
and he makes the bishops ; and if the govern- 
ment would take half the pains to keep the 
Catholics out of the arms of France that it 
does to widen Temple Bar, or improve Snow 
Hill, the king would get into his hands the 
appointments of the titular bishops of Ireland. 

— Both Mr. C 's sisters enjoy pensions 

more than sufficient to place the two greatest 
dignitaries of the Irish Catholic Church entirely 
at the disposal of the crown. — Every body who 
knows Ireland knows perfectly well, that 
nothing would be easier, with the expenditure 
of a little money, than to preserve enough of 
the ostensible appointment in the hands of the 
pope to satisfy the scruples of the Catholics, 
while the real nomination remained with the 
crown. But, as I have before said, the mo- 
ment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, 
the English seem to bid adieu to common 
feeling, common prudence, and to common 
sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, 
and the fatuity of idiots. 

Whatever your opinion may be of the follies 
of the Roman Catholic religion, remember they 
are the follies of four millions of human 
beings, increasing rapidly in numbers, wealth 
and intelligence, who, if firmly united with 
this country, would set at defiance the power 
of France, and if once wrested from their 
alliance with England, would in three years 
render its existence as an independent nation 
absolutely impossible. You speak of danger 
to the establishment : I request to know when 
the establishment was ever so much in danger 
as when Hoche was in Bantry Bay, and 
whether all the books of Bossuet, or the arts 
of the Jesuits, were half so terrible 1 Mr. Per- 
ceval and his parsons forgot all this, in their 
horror lest twelve or fourteen old women may 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



45.3 



■t<be converted to holy water, and Catholic non- 
p sense. They never see that, while they are 
'saving these venerable ladies from perdition, 
Ireland may be lost, England broken down, 
,and the Protestant Church, with all its deans, 
prebendaries, Percevals and Rennels, be swept 
into the vortex of oblivion. 

Do not, I beseech you, ever mention to me 
again the name of Dr. Duigonan. I have been 
in every corner of Ireland, and have studied 
its present strength and condition with no 
common labour. Be assured Ireland does not 
contain at this moment less than five millions 
of people. There were returned in the year 
1791 to the hearth tax 701,000 houses, and 
there is no kind of question that there were 
about 50,000 houses omitted in that return. 
Taking, however, only the number returned 
for the tax, and allowing the average of six to 
a house (a very small average for a potato-fed 
people), this brings the population to 4,200,000 
people in the year 17S1 ; and it can be shown 
from the clearest evidence, (and Mr. Newen- 
ham in his book shows it,) that Ireland for the 
last fifty years has increased in its population 
at the rate of 50 or 60,000 per annum ; which 
leaves the present population of Ireland at 
about five millions, after every possible deduc- 
tion for existing circumstanres, just and necessary 
wars, monstrous and rmnatural rebellions, and all 
other sources of human destruction. Of this 
population, two out of ten are Protestants ; and 
the half of the Protestant population are dis- 
senters, and as inimical to the church as the 
Catholics themselves. In this state of things, 
thumb-screws and whipping — admirable en- 
gines of policy, as they must be considered to 
be — will not ultimately avail. The Catholics 
will hang over you ; they will watch for the 
moment; and compel you hereafter to give 
them ten times as much, against your will, as 
they would now be contented with, if it was 
voluntarily surrendered. Remember what hap- 
pened in the American war: when Ireland 
compelled you to give her every thing she 
asked, and to renounce, in the most explicit 
manner, your claim of sovereignty over her. 
God Almighty grant the folly of these present 
men may not bring on such another crisis of 
public affairs ! 

What are your dangers which threaten the 
establishment 1 — Reduce this declamation to a 
point, and let us understand what you mean. 
The most ample allowance does not calculate 
that there would be more than twenty mem- 
bers who were Roman Catholics in one house, 
and ten in the other, if the Catholic emancipa- 
tion were carried into effect. Do you mean 
that these thirty members would bring in a bill 
to take away the tithes from the Protestant, 
and to pay them to the Catholic clergy 1 Do 
you mean that a Catholic general would march 
his army into the House of Commons and 
purge it of Mr. Perceval and Mr. Duigenan? 
or, that the theological writers would become 
all of a sudden more acute and more learned, 
if the present civil incapacities were removed] 
Do you fear for your tithes, or your doctrines, 
or your person, or the English constitution 1 
Every fear, taken separately, is so glaringly 
absurd, that no man has the folly or the bold- 



ness to state it. Every one conceals his igno- 
rance, or his baseness, in a stupid general 
panic, whi«h, when called on, he is utterly 
incapable of explaining. Whatever you think 
of the Catholics, there they are — you cannot 
get rid of them ; your alternative is, to give 
them a lawful place for stating their griev- 
ances, or an unlawful one : if you do not admit 
them to the House of Commons, they will hold 
their Parliament in Potato-place, Dublin, and 
be ten times as violent and inflammatory as 
they would be in Westminster. Nothing would 
give me such an idea of security, as to see 
twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parlia- 
ment, looked upon by all the Catholics as the" 
fair and proper organ of their party. I should 
have thought it the height of good fortune that 
such a wish existed on their part, and the very 
essence of madness and ignorance to reject it. 
Can you murder the Catholics 1 — Can you 
neglect them? They are too numerous for 
both these expedients. What remains to be 
done is obvious to every human being — but to 
that man who, instead of being a Methodist 
preacher, is, for the curse of us, and otir 
children, and for the ruin of Troy, and the 
misery of good old Priam and his sons, become 
a legislator and a politician. 

A distinction, I perceive, is taken, by one 
of the most feeble noblemen in Great Britain, 
between persecution and the deprivation of 
political power; whereas, there is no more 
distinction between these two things than 
there is between him who makes the distinc- 
tion and a booby. If I strip off the relic-co- 
vered jacket of a Catholic, and give him 
twenty stripes .... I persecute ; if I say, every 
body in the town where you live shall be a 
candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, 
but you who are a Catholic .... I do not per- 
secute ! — What barbarous nonsense is this ! as 
if degradation was not as great an evil as 
bodily pain, or as severe poverty ; as if I could 
not be as great a tyrant by saying, You shall 
not enjoy — as by saying, You shall suffer. 
The English, I believe, are as truly religious 
as any nation in Europe ; I know no greater 
blessing; but it carries with it this evil in its 
train, that any villain who will bawl out " The 
church is in danger /" may get a place, and a 
good pension; and that any administration 
who will do the same thing may bring a set ot 
men into power who, at a moment of stationary 
and passive piety, would be hooted by the very 
boys in the streets. But it is not all religion; 
it is, in great part, that narrow and exclusive 
spirit which delights to keep the common 
blessings of sun, and air, and freedom from 
other human beings. "Your religion has 
always been degraded; you are in the dust, 
and i will take care you never rise again. I 
should enjoy less the possession of an earthly- 
good, by every additional person to whom it 
was extended." You may not be aware of it 
yourself, most reverend Abraham, but you 
deny their freedom to the Catholics upon the 
same principle that Sarah your wife refuses 
to give the receipt for a ham or a gooseberry 
dumpling ; she values her receipts, not because 
they secure to her a certain flavour, but be- 
cause they remind her that her neighbours 



454 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



want it : — a feeling laughable in a priestess, 
shameful in a priest ; venial when it withholds 
the blessings of a ham, tyrannical and exe- 
crable when it narrows the boon of religious 
freedom. 

You spend a great deal of ink about the 
character of the present prime-minister. Grant 
you all that you write ; I say, I fear he will 
ruin Ireland, and pursue a line of policy de- 
structive to the true interest of his country; 
and then you tell me, he is faithful to Mrs. 
Perceval, and kind to the Master Percevals ! 
These are, undoubtedly, the first qualifications 
to be looked to in a time of the most serious 
public danger; but somehow or another (if 
public and private virtues must always be in- 
compatible), I should prefer that he destroyed 
the domestic happiness of Wood or Cockell, 
owed for the veal of the preceding year, whip- 
ped his boys, and saved his country. 

The late administration did not do right; 
they did not build their measures upon the 
solid basis of facts. They should have caused 
several Catholics to have been dissected after 
death by surgeons of either religion ; and the 
report to have been published with accompa- 
nying plates. If the viscera, and other organs 
of life, had been found to be the same as in 
Protestant bodies ; if the provision of nerves, 
arteries, cerebrum, and cerebellum, had been 
the same as we are provided with, or as the 
dissenters are now known to possess ; then, 
indeed, they might have met Mr. Perceval 
upon a proud eminence, and convinced the 
country at large of the strong probability that 
the Catholics are really human creatures, en- 
dowed with the feelings of men, and entitled to 
all their rights. But instead of this wise and 
prudent measure, Lord Howick, with his usual 
precipitation, brings forward a bill in their 
favour, without offering the slightest proof to 
the country that they were any thing more than 
horses and oxen. The person who shows the 
lama at the corner of Piccadilly has the pre- 
caution to write up — Allowed by Sir Joseph Banks 
to be a real quadruped: so his lordship might 
have said — Allowed by the Bench of Bishops to he 
real human creatures .... I could write j'ou 
twenty letters upon this subject: but I am tired, 
and so I suppose are you. Our friendship is 
now of forty years' standing; you know me to 
be a truly religious man ; but I shudder to see 
religion treated like a cockade, or a pint of 
beer, and made the instrument of a party. I 
love the king, but I love the people as well as 
the king ; and if I am sorry to see his old age 
molested, I am much more sorry to see four 
millions of Catholics baffled in their just ex- 
pectations. If I love Lord Grenville, and 
Lord Howick, it is because they love their 
country; if I abhor ******, it is because I 
know there is but one man among them who 
is not laughing at the enormous folly and cre- 
dulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant 
and mischievous bigot. As for the light and 
frivolous jej^ter, of whom it is your misfortune 
to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, 
that this political Killigrew, just before the 
breaking-up of the last administration, was in 
actual treaty with them for a place ; and if they 
had survived twenty-four hours longer, he 



the 1 

L— 1 



would have been now declaiming against 
cry of No Popery ! instead of inflaming it — 
With this practical comment on the baseness 
of human nature, I bid you adieu ! 



LETTER III. 

All that I have so often told you, Mr. Abra- 
ham Plymley, is now come to pass. The 
Scythians, in whom you' and the neighbouring 
country gentlemen placed such confidence, are 
smitten hip and thigh ; their Benningsen put 
to open shame; their magazines of train oil 
intercepted, and we are waking from our dis- 
graceful drunkenness to all the horrors of Mr. 
Perceval and Mr. Canning .... We shall 
now see if a nation is to be saved by school- 
boy jokes and doggerel rhymes, by afi'ronting 
petulance, and by the tones and gesticulations 
of Mr. Pitt. But these are not all the auxilia- 
ries on which we have to depend ; to these his 
colleague will add the strictest attention to the 
smaller parts of ecclesiastical government, to 
hassocks, to psalters, and to surplices; in the 
last agonies of England, he will bring in a bill 
to regulate Easter-offerings ; and he will adjust 
the stipends of curates,* when the flag of 
France is unfurled on the hills of Kent. What- 
ever can be done by very mistaken notions of 
the piety of a Christian, and by very wretched 
imitation of the eloquence of Mr. Pitt, will be 
done by these two gentlemen. After all, if 
they both really were what they both either 
wish to be or wish to be thought; if the one 
were an enlightened Christian, who drew from 
the Gospel the toleration, the charity, and the 
sweetness which it contains ; and if the other 
really possessed any portion of the great un- 
derstanding of his Nisus who guarded him from 
the weapons of the whigs, I should still doubt 
if they could save us. But I am sure we are 
not to be saved by religious hatred, and by re- 
ligious trifling; by any psalmody, however 
sweet ; or by any persecution, however sharp : 
I am certain the sounds of Mr. Pitt's voice, and 
the measure of his tones, and the movement 
of his arms, will do nothing for us ; when these 
tones, and movements, and voice bring us 
always declamation without sense or know- 
ledge, and ridicule without good humour or 
conciliation. Oh, Mr. Plymley, Mr. Plymley, 
this never will do. Mrs. Abraham Plymley, 
my sister, will be led away captive by an 
amorous Gaul ; and Joel Plymley, your first- 
born, will be a French drummer. 

Out of sight, out of mind, seems to be a pro- 
verb which applies to enemies as well as 
friends. Because the French army was no 
longer seen from the cliffs of Dover; because 
the sound of cannon was no longer heard by 
the debauched London bathers on the Sussex 
coast ; because the Morning Post no longer fixed 
the invasion sometimes for Monday, sometimes 
for Tuesday, sometimes (positively for the last 
time of invading) on Saturday; because all 
these causes of terror were suspended, you 



* The reverend the chancellor of the exchequer has,^ 
since this was written, found time, in the heat of the ses- 
sion, to write a book on the stipends of curates. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



455' 



conceived the power of Bonaparte to be at an 
end, and were setting off for Paris, with Lord 
Hawkesbury the conqueror.— This is precisely 
the method in which the English have acted 
during ihe whole of the revolutionary war. If 
Austria or Prussia armed, doctors of divinity 
immediately printed those passages out of 
Habakkuk, in which the destruction of the 
usurper by General Mack, and the Duke of 
Brunswick, are so clearly predicted. If Bona- 
parte halted, there was a mutiny, or a dysen- 
tery. If any one of his generals were eaten 
up by the light troops of Russia, and picked 
(as their manner is) to the bone, the sanguine 
spirit of this country displayed itself in all its 
glory. What scenes of infamy did the Society 
for the Suppression of Vice lay open to our 
astonished eyes : tradesmen's daughters danc- 
ing ; pots O'f beer carried out between the first 
and second lesson ; and dark and distant ru- 
mours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. 
Canning's cousins arrived by the waggon ; all 
the contractors left their cards with Mr. Rose ; 
and every plunderer of the public crawled out 
of his hole, like slugs and grubs, and worms, 
after a shower of rain. 

If my voice could have been heard at the 
late changes, I should have said, "Gently; 
patience ; stop a little ; the time is not yet 
come ; the mud of Poland will harden, and the 
bowels of the French grenadiers will recover 
their tone. When honesty, good sense, and 
liberality have extricated you out of your pre- 
sent embarrassment, then dismiss them as a 
matter of course ; but you cannot spare them 
just now; don't be in too great a hurry, or 
there will be no monarch to flatter, and no 
country to pillage ; only submit for a little time 
to be respected abroad ; overlook the painful 
absence of the tax-gatherer for a few years ; 
bear up nobly under the increase of freedom 
and of liberal policy for a little time, and I 
promise you, at the expiration of that period, 
you shall be plundered, insulted, disgraced, 
and restrained to your heart's content. Do 
not imagine I have any intention of putting 
servility and canting hypocrisy permanently 
out of place, or of filling up with courage and 
sense those offices which naturally devolve 
upon decorous imbecility and inflexible cun- 
ning: give us only a little time to keep off the 
hussars of France, and then the jobbers and 
jesters shall return to their birth-right, and 
public virtue be called by its old name of 
fanaticism."* Such is the advice I would have 
offered to my infatuated countrymen ; but it 
rained very hard in November, Brother Abra- 
ham, and the bowels of our enemies were 
loosened, and we put our trust in white fluxes, 
and wet mud ; and there is nothing now to 
oppose to the conqueror of the world, but a 



* This is Mr. Canning's term for the detection of public 
abuses ; a term invented by him, and adopted by that 
simious parasite who is always grinning at his heels. — 
Nature descends down to infinite smallness. Mr. Can- 
ning; has his parasites ; and if you take a large buzzing 
blue-bottle fly, and look at it in a microscope, you may 
see 20 or 30 little ugly insects crawling about it, which 
doubtless think their fly to be the bluest, grandest, mer- 
riest, most important animal in the universe, and are 
convinced the world would be at an end if it ceased to 
buzz. 



small table wit, and the sallow surveyor of the 
meltings. 

You ask me, if I think it possible for this 
country to survive the recent misfortunes of 
Europe! — I answer you without the slightest 
degree of hesitation, that, if Bonaparte lives,, 
and a great deal is not immediately done for 
the conciliation of the Catholics, it does seem 
to me absolutely impossible but that we must 
perish; and take this with you, that we shall 
perish without exciting the slightest feeling of 
present or future compassion, but fall amidst 
the hootings and revilings of Europe, as a na- 
tion of blockheads, Methodists, and old women. 
If there were any great scenery, any heroic 
feelings, any blaze of ancient virtue, any exalt- 
ed death, any termination of England that 
would be ever remembered, ever honoured in 
that western world, where liberty is now retir- 
ing, conquest would be more tolerable, and 
ruin more sweet ; but it is doubly miserable to 
become slaves abroad, because we would be 
tyrants at home ; to persecute, when we are 
contending against persecution ; and to perish, 
because we have raised up worse enemies 
within, from our own bigotry, than we are ex- 
posed to without from the unprincipled ambi- 
tion of France. It is, indeed, a most silly and 
afflicting spectacle to rage at such a moment 
against our own kindred and our own blood ; 
to tell them they cannot be honourable in war, 
because they are conscientious in religion ; to 
stipulate (at the very moment when we should 
buy their hearts and swords at any price) that 
they must hold up the right hand in prayer, and 
not the left; and adore one common God, by 
turning to the east rather than to the west. 

What is it the Catholics ask of you 1 Do 
not exclude us from the honours and emolu- 
ments of the stale, because we worship God in 
one way, and you worship him in another, — in a 
period of the deepest peace, and the fattest pros- 
perity, this would be a fair request ; it should 
be granted, if Lord Hawkesbury had reached 
Paris, if Mr. Canning's interpreter had threat- 
ened the Senate in an opening speech, or Mr. 
Perceval explained to them the improvements 
he meant to introduce into the Catholic reli- 
gion ; but to deny the Irish this justice now, 
in the present state of Europe, and in the sum- 
mer months, just as the season for destroying 
kingdoms is coming on, is (beloved Abraham), 
whatever you may think of it, little short of 
positive insanity. 

Here is a frigate attacked by a corsair of im- 
mense strength and size, rigging cut, masts in 
danger of coming by the board, four foot water 
in the hold, men dropping off very fast; in this 
dreadful situation how do you think the captain 
acts (whose name shall be Perceval) ? He 
calls all hands upon deck ; talks to them of 
king, country, glory, sweethearts, gin, French 
prison, wooden shoes, old England, and hearts 
of oak ; they give three cheers, rush to their 
guns, and, after a tremendous conflict, succeed 
in beating off the enemy. Not a syllable of all 
this ; this is not the manner in which the hon- 
ourable commander goes to work ; the first 
thing he does is to secure 20 or 30 of his prime 
sailors who happen to be Catholics, to clap 



456 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



them in irons, ana set over them a guard of as 
many Protestants ; having taken this admirable 
method of defending himself against his infidel 
opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sail- 
ors, in a very bitter harangue, that they are of 
different religions ; exhorts the Episcopal gun- 
ner not to trust to the Presbyterian quarter-mas- 
ter; issues positive orders that the Catholics 
should be fired at upon the first appearance of 
discontent ; rushes through blood and brains, ex- 
amining his men in the catechism and 39 Arti- 
cles, and positively forbids every one to spunge 
or ram who has not taken the sacrament ac- 
cording to the Church of England. Was it 
right to take out a captain made of excellent 
British stufl", and to put in such a man as this? 
Is not he more like a parson, or a talking law- 
yer, than a thorough-bred seaman? And built 
as she is of heart of oak, and admirably 
manned, is it possible, with such a captain, to 
save this ship from going to the bottom? 

You have an argument, I perceive, in com- 
mon with many others, against the Catholics, 
that their demands complied with would only 
lead to farther exactions, and that it is better to 
resist them now, before any thing is conceded, 
than hereafter, when it is found that all conces- 
sions are in vain. I wish the chancellor of the 
exchequer, who uses this reasoning to exclude 
others from their just rights, had tried its effica- 
cy, not by his understanding, but by (what are 
full of much better things) his pockets. Sup- 
pose the person to whom he applied for the 
meltings had withstood every plea of wife and 
fourteen children, no business, and good cha- 
racter, and refused him this paltry little office, 
because he might hereafter attempt to get hold 
of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster for 
life; would not Mr. Perceval have contended 
eagerly against the injustice of refusing mode- 
rate requests, because immoderate ones may 
hereafter be made ? Would he not have said, 
(and said truly,) leave such exorbitant attempts 
as these to the general indignation of the Com- 
mons, who will take care to defeat them when 
they do occur; but do not refuse me the irons, 
and the meltings now, because I may totally 
lose sight of all moderation hereafter. Leave 
hereafter to the spirit and the wisdom of here- 
after; and do not be niggardly now, from the 
apprehension that men as wise as you should 
be profuse in times to come. 

You forget, Brother Abraham, that it is a 
vast art (where quarrels cannot be avoided) to 
turn the public opinion in your favour and to 
the prejudice of your enemy; a vast privilege 
to feel that you are in the right, and to make 
him feel that he is in the wrong : a privilege 
which makes you more than a man, and your 
antagonist less ; and often secures victory, by 
convincing him who contends, that he must 
submit to injustice if he submits to defeat. 
Open every rank in the army and navy to the 
Catholic; let him purchase at the same price 
as the Protestant (if either Catholic or Protest- 
ant can purchase such refined pleasures) the 
privilege of hearing Lord Castlereagh speak 
for three hours; keep his clergy from starving, 
soften some of the most odious powers of the tith- 
ing-man, and you will for ever lay this formi- 
dable question to rest. But if I am wrong, and 



you must quarrel at last, quarrel upon just rather 
than unjust grounds ; divide the Catholic, and j 
unite the Protestant; be just, and your own ex- 
ertions will be more formidable and their exer- 
tions less formidable ; be just, and you will take 
away from their party all the best and wisest 
understandings' of both persuasions, and knit 
them firmly to your own cause. " Thrice is 
he armed who has his quarrel just;" and ten 
times as much may he be taxed. In the begin- 
ning of any war, however destitute of common 
sense, every mob will roar, and every lord of 
the bedchamber address; but if you are en- 
gaged in a war that is to last for years, and to 
require important sacrifices, take care to make 
the justice of your case so clear and so obvious, 
that it cannot be mistaken by the most illiterate 
country gentleman who rides the earth. No- 
thing, in fact, can be so gi-ossly absurd as the 
argument which says, I will deny justice to 
you now, because I suspect future injustice 
from you. At this rate, you may lock a man 
up in your stable, and refuse to let him out be- 
cause you suspect that he has an intention, at 
some future period, of robbing your hen-roost 
You may horsewhip him at Lady-day, because 
you believe he will afi'ront you at Midsummer. 
You may commit a greater evil, to guard 
against a less, which is merely contingent, and 
may never happen. You may do what you 
have done a century ago in Ireland, made the 
Catholics worse than Helots, because you sus- 
pected that they might hereafter aspire to be 
more than fellow-citizens ; rendering their suf- 
ferings certain from your jealousy, while yours 
were only doubtful from their ambition ; an am- 
bition sure to be excited by the very measures 
which were taken to prevent it. 

The physical strength of the Catholics will 
not be greater because you give them a share 
of political power. You may, by these means, 
turn rebels into friends ; but I do not see how 
you make rebels more formidable. If they 
taste of the honey of lawful power, they will 
love the hive from whence they procure it ; if 
they will struggle with us like men in the same 
state for civil influence, we are safe. All that I 
dread is, the physical strength of four millions 
of men combined with an invading French 
army. If you are to quarrel at last with this 
enormous population, still put it off as long as 
you can; you must gain, and cannot lose, by 
the delay. The state of Europe cannot be 
worse ; the conviction which the Catholics 
entertain of your tyranny and injustice cannot 
be more alarming, nor the opinions of your 
own people more divided. Time, which pro- 
duces such effect upon brass and marble, may 
inspire one minister with modesty, and another 
with compassion; every circumstance may be 
better; some certainly will be so, none can be 
worse ; and, after all, the evil may never happen. 

You have got hold, I perceive, of all the vul- 
gar English stories respecting the hereditary 
transmission of forfeited property, and serious- 
ly believe that every Catholic beggar wears 
the terriers of his father's land next his skin, 
and is only waiting for better times to cut the 
throat of the Protestant professor, and get 
drunk in the hall of his ancestors. There is 
one irresistible answer to this mistake, and 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



457 



that is, that the forfeited lands are purchased 
indiscriminately by Catholic and Protestant, 
and that the Catholic purchaser never objects 
to. such a title. Now the land (so purchased 
by a Catholic) is either his own family estate, 
or it is not. If it is, you suppose him so desi- 
rous of coming into possession, that he resorts 
to the double method of rebellion and purchase ; 
if it is not his own familjf estate of which he 
becomes the purchaser, you suppose him first 
to purchase, then to rebel, in order to defeat the 
purchase. These things may happen in Ire- 
land; but ii; is totally impossible they can hap- 
pen anywhere else. In fact, what land can any 
man of any sect purchase in Ireland, but for- 
feited property? In all other oppressed coun- 
tries which I have ever heard of, the rapacity 
of the conqueror was bounded by the territorial 
limits in which the objects of his avarice were 
contained ; but Ireland has been actually con- 
fiscated twice over, as a cat is twice killed by 
a wicked parish-boy. 

I admit there is a vast luxury in selecting a 
particular set of Christians, and in worrying 
them as a boy worries a puppy dog ; it is an 
amusement in which all the young English 
are brought up from their earliest days. I like 
the idea of saying to men who use a different 
hassock from me, that till they change their 
ha&sock, they shall never be colonels, alder- 
men, or Parliament-men. While I am gratify- 
ing my personal insolence respecting religious 
forms, I fondle myself into an idea that I am 
religious, and that I am doing my duty in the 
most exemplary (as I certainly am in the most 
easy) way. But then, my good Abraham, this 
sport, admirable as it is, is become, with re- 
spect to the Catholics, a little dangerous ; and 
if we are not extremely careful in taking the 
amusement, we shall tumble into the holy 
water, and be drowned. As it seems neces- 
sary to your idea of an established church to 
have somebody to worry and torment, suppose 
we were to select for this purpose William 
Wilberforce, Esq., and the patent Christians 
of Clapham. We shall by this expedient en- 
joy the same opportunity for cruelty and in- 
justice, without being exposed to the same 
■ risks; we will compel them to abjure vital 
clergymen by a public test, to deny that the 
said William Wilberforce has any power of 
working miracles, touching for barrfenness or 
any other infirmity, or that he is endowed with 
any preternatural gift whatever. We will 
swear them to the doctrine of good works, 
compel them to preach common sense, and to 
heaV it ; to frequent bishops, deans, and other 
high churchmen; and to appear (once in the 
quarter at the least) at some melodrame, opera, 
pan toil) ime, or other light scenical representa- 
tioa ; in short, we will gratify the love of inso- 
lence and power; we will enjoy the old orthodox 
sport of witnessing the impotent anger of men 
compelled to submit to civil degradation, or to 
sacrifice their notions of truth to ours. And 
all this we may do without the slightest risk, 
because their numbers are (as yet) not very 
considerable. Cruelty and injustice must, of 
course, exist; but why connect them with 
danger 1 Why torture a bull-dog when you 
can get a frog or a rabbit? I am sure my 



proposal will meet with the most universal 
approbation. Do not be apprehensive of any 
opposition from ministers. If it is a case of 
hatred, we are sure that one man will defend 
it by the Gospel ; if it abridges human free- 
dom, we know that another will find precedents 
for it in the Revolution. 

In the name of Heaven, what are we to gain 
by suflering Ireland to be rode by that faction 
which now predominates over it? Why are 
we to endanger our own church and state, not 
for 500,000 Episcopalians, but for ten or twelve 
great Orange families, who have been sucking 
the blood of that country for these hundred 
years last past? and the folly of the Orange- 
men* in playing this game themselves, is 
almost as absurd as ours in playing it for 
them. They ought to have the sense to see 
that their business now is to keep quietly the 
lands and beeves of which the fathers of the 
Catholics were robbed in days of yore ; they 
must give to their descendants the sop of 
political power; by contending with them for 
names, they will lose realities, and be com- 
pelled to beg their potatoes in a foreign land, 
abhorred equally by the English, who have 
witnessed their oppression, and by the Catho- 
lic Irish, who have smarted under them. 



LETTER IV. 

Then comes Mr. Isaac Hawkins Brown (the 
gentleman who dancedf so badly at the court 
of Naples), and asks, if it is not an anomaly 
to educate men in another religion than your 
own? It certainly is our duty to gei rid of 
error, and above all, of religious error; but 
this is not to be done per saltum, or the mea- 
sure will miscarry, like the queen. It may be 
very easy to dance away the royal embryo of 
a great kingdom ; but Mr. Hawkins Brown 
must look before he leaps, when his object is 
to crush an opposite sect in religion ; false 
steps aid the one effect as much as they are 
fatal to the other ; it will require not only the 
lapse of Mr. Hawkins Brown, but the lapse of 
centuries, before the absurdities of the Catho- 
lic religion are laughed at as much as they 
deserve to be ; but surely, in the mean time, 
the Catholic religion is better than none ; four 
millions of Catholics are better than four mil- 
lions of wild beasts; two hundred priests, 
educated by our own government, are better 
than the same number educated by the man 
who means to destroy us. 

The whole sum now appropriated by govern- 
ment to the religious education of four millions 
of Christians is 13,000^.; a sum about one 



♦ This remarlt bpsins to be sensibly felt in Ireland. 
The Protestants in Ireland are fast coming over to the 
Catholic cause. 

+ In the third year of his present majesty, and in the 
30th of his own age, Mr. Isaac Haivkins IJrown, then 
upon liis travels, danced one evenins at the court of 
Naples. His dress was a volcanic silk with lava buttons. 
Whether (as the Neapolitan wits said) he had studied 
dancing under St. Vitus, or whether David, dancing in a 
linen vesi, was his model, is not known; hut Mr. Brown 
danced with such inconceivable alacrity and vigour,' that 
he threw the Queen of Naples into convulsions of laugh- 
ter, which terminated in a miscarriage, and changed the 
dynasty of the NeafKilitan throne. 
2Q 



458 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



hundred limes as large being appropriated in 
the same country to about one-eighth part of 
this number of Protestants. Wheii it was 
proposed to raise this grant from 8,000/. to 
13,000/., its present amount, this sum was 
objected to by that most indulgent of Chris.- 
tians, Mr. Spencer Perceval, as enormous; he 
himself having secured for his own eating and 
drinking, and the eating and drinking of the 
Master and Miss Percevals, the reversionary 
sum of 21,000/. a year of the public money, 
and having just failed in a desperate and rapa- 
cious attempt to secure to himself for life the 
revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster ; and the 
best of it is, that this minister, after abusing 
his predecessors for their impious bounty to 
the Catholics, has found himself compelled, 
from the apprehension of immediate danger, 
to grant the sum in question; thus dissolving 
his pearl* in vinegar, and destroying all the 
value of the gift by the virulence and reluc- 
tance with which it was granted. 

I hear from some persons in Parliament, 
and from others in the sixpenny societies for 
debate, a great deal about unalterable laws 
passed at the Revolution. When I hear any 
man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect 
it produces upon me is to convince me that he 
is an unalterable fool. A law passed when 
there were Germany, Spain, Russia, Sweden, 
Holland, Portugal, and Turkey; when there 
was a disputed succession ; when four or five 
hundred acres were won and lost after ten 
years' hard fighting; when armies were com- 
manded by the sons of kings, and campaigns 
passed in an interchange of civil letters and 
ripe fruit ; and for these laws, when the whole 
state of the world is completely changed, we 
are now, according to my Lord Hawkesbury, 
to hold ourselves ready to perish. It is no 
mean misfortune, in times like these, to be 
forced to say any thing about such men as 
Lord Hawkesbury, and to be reminded that we 
are governed by them; but as I am driven to 
it, I must take the liberty of observing, that 
the wisdom and liberality of my Lord Hawkes- 
bury are of that complexion which always 
shrinks from the present exercise of these 
virtues, by praising the splendid examples of 
them in ages past. If he had lived at such 
periods, he would have opposed the Revolution 
by praising the Reformation, and the Reforma- 
tion by speaking handsomely of the crusades. 
He gratifies his natural antipathy to great and 
courageous measures, by playing off the wis- 
dom and courage which have ceased to inflvx- 
ence human affairs against that wisdom and 
courage which living men would employ for 
present happiness. Besides, it happens un- 
fortunately for the warden of the Cinque 
Ports, that to the principal incapacities under 
which the Irish suffer, they were subjected 
after that great and glorious revolution, to 
which we are indebted for so many blessings, 
and his lordship for the termination of so 
many periods. The Catholics were not ex- 
cluded from the Irish House of Commons, or 
military commands, before the 3d and 4th of 

* Perfectly ready at the same time to follow the other 
half of Cleopatra's example, and to swallow the solution 
himself. 



William and Mary, and the 1st and 2d of 
Queen Anne. 

If the great mass of the people, environed 
as they are on every side with Jenkinsons, 
Percevals, Melvilles, and other perils, were to 
pray for divine illumination and aid, what 
more could Providence in its mercy do than 
send them the example of Scotland"? For 
what a length of years was it attempted to 
compel the Scotch to change their religion : 
horse, foot, artillery, and armed prebendaries, 
were sent out after the Presbyterian parsons 
and their congregations. The Percevals of 
those days called for blood ; this call is never 
made in vain, and blood was shed ; but, to the 
astonishment and horror of the Percevals of 
those days, they could not introduce the Book 
of Common Prayer, nor prevent that meta- 
physical people from going to heaven their 
true way, instead of our true way. With a 
little oatmeal for food, and a little sulphur for 
friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with the 
one hand, and holding his Calvinistical creed 
in the other, Sawney ran away to his flinty 
hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, 
and listened to his sermon of two hours long, 
amid the rough and imposing melancholy of 
the tallest thistles. But Sawney brought up 
his unbreeched offspring in a cordial hatred 
of his oppressors ; and Scotland was as much 
a part of the weakness of England then as 
Ireland is at this moment. The true and the 
only remedy was applied ; the Scotch were 
suffered to worship God after their own tire- 
some manner, without pain, penalty, and pri- 
vation. No lightnings descended from hea- 
ven ; the country was not ruined ; the world 
is not yet come to an end ; the dignitaries, who 
foretold all these consequences, are utterly 
forgotten ; and Scotland has ever since been 
an increasing source of strength to Great 
Britain. In the six hundredth year of our 
empire over Ireland, we are making laws to 
transport a man, if he is found out of his 
house after eight o'clock at.night. That this is 
necessary, I know too well ; but tell me why 
it is necessary "? It is not necessary in Greece, 
where the Turks are masters. 

Are you aware, that there is at this moment 
an universal clamour throughout the whole 
of Ireland against the union 1 It is now one 
month since I returned from that country ; I 
have never seen so extraordinary, so alarming, 
and so rapid a change in the sentiments of any 
people. Those who disliked the union before 
are quite furious against it now ; those who 
doubted doubt no more ; those who were friend- 
ly to it have exchanged that friendship for the 
most rooted aversion ; in the midst of all this 
(which is by far the most alarming symptom), 
there is the strongest disposition on the part 
of the northern dissenters to unite with the 
Catholics, irritated by the faithless injustice 
with which they have been treated. If this 
combination does take place (mark what I say 
to you), you will have meetings all over Ire- 
land for the cry of No Union ; that cry will 
spread like wild-fire, and blaze over every op- 
position ; and if this is the case, there is no 
use in mincing the matter, Ireland is gone, and 
the death-blow of England is struck ; and this 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



459 



event may happen in.sUiatly — before Mr. Can- 
ning and Mr. Hookham Frere have turned 
Lord Howick's last speech into doggerel 
rhyme ; before " the near and dear relations" 
have received another quarter of their pen- 
sion, or Mr. Perceval conducted the curates' 
salary bill safely to a third reading. — If the 
mind of the English people, cursed as they 
now are with that madness of religious dis- 
sension which has been breathed into them for 
the purpose of private ambition, can be alarm- 
ed by any remembrances, and warned by any 
events, they should never forget how nearly 
Ireland was lost to this country during the 
American war ; that it was saved merely by 
the jealousy of the Protestant Irish towards 
the Catholics, then a much more insignificant 
and powerless body than they now are. The 
Catholic and the dissenter have since com- 
bined together against you. Last war, the 
[ ^ winds, those ancient and unsubsidized allies 
' of England ; the winds, upon which English 
ministers depend as much for saving king- 
doms as washerwomen do for drying clothes ; 
the winds stood your friends ; the French 
could only get into Ireland in small numbers, 
and the rebels were defeated. Since then, all 
the remaining kingdoms of Europe have been 
destroyed ; and the Irish see that their national 
independence is gone, without having received 
any single one of those advantages which 
they were taught to expect from the sacrifice. 
All good things were to flow from the union ; 
they have none of them gained any thing. 
Every man's pride is wounded by it ; no man's 
interest is promoted. In the seventh year of 
that union, four million Catholics, lured by 
all kinds of promises to yield up the separate 
dignity and sovereignty of their country, are 
forced to squaMle with such a man as Mr. 
Spencer Perceval for five thousand pounds 
with which to educate their children in their 
own mode of worship ; he, the same Mr. Spen- 
cer, having secured to his own Protestant 
,|j pelf a reversionary portion of the public mo- 
.^,< ney amounting to four times that sum. A 
i,„senior proctor of the University of Oxford, 
!.. the head of a house, or the examining chap- 
lain to a bishop, may believe these things can 
last; but every man of the world, whose un- 
derstanding has been exercised in the business 
of life, must see (and see with a breaking 
heart) that they will soon come to a fearful 
termination. 

Our conduct to Ireland, during the whole 
(ijt of this war, has been that of a man who sub- 
»•).' scribes to hospitals, weeps at charity sermons, 
carries out broth and blankets to beggars, and 
then comes home and beats his wife and 
children. We had compassion for the victims 
of all other oppression and injustice, except 
our own. If Switzerland was threatened, 
away went a treasury clerk with a hundred 
thousand pounds for Switzerland ; large bags 
of money were kept constantly under sailing 
orders; upon the slightest demonstration to- 
wards Naples, down went Sir William Hamil- 
ton upon his knees, and begged for the love of 
St. Januarius they would help us e-ff with a 
little money; all the arts of Machiavel were 
resorted to, to persuade Europe to borrow ; 



troops were sent off in all directions to save 
the Catholic and Protestant world ; the pope 
himself was guarded by a regiment of English 
dragoons ; if the Grand Lama had been at hand, 
he would have had another; every Catholic 
clergyman, who had the good fortune to be 
neither English nor Irish, was immediately 
provided with lodgings, soup, crucifix, missal, 
chapel-beads, relics, and holy water ; if Turks 
had landed, Turks would have received an 
order from the treasury for coffee, opium, ko- 
rans, and seraglios. In the midst of all this 
fury of saving and defending, this crusade for 
conscience and Christianity, there was an uni- 
versal agreement among all descriptions of 
people to continue every species of internal 
persecution ; to deny at home every just right 
that had been denied before ; to pummel poor 
Dr. Abraham Rees and his dissenters ; and to 
treat the unhappy Catholics of Ireland as if 
their tongues were mute, their heels cloven, 
their nature brutal, and designedly subjected 
by Providence to their Orange masters. 

How would my admirable brother, the Rev. 
Abraham Plymley, like to be marched to a 
Catholic chapel, to be sprinkled with the sanc- 
tified contents of a pump, to hear a number 
of false quantities in the Latin tongue, and to 
see a number of persons occupied in making 
right angles upon the breast and forehead? 
And if all this would give you so much pain, 
what right have you to march Catholic sol 
diers to a place of worship where there is no 
aspersion, no rectangular gestures, and where 
they understand every word they hear, having 
first, in order to get him to enlist, made a so- ' 
lemn promise to the contrary ? Can you won- 
der, after this, that the Catholic priest stops 
the recruiting in Ireland, as he is now doing 
to a most alarming degree ] 

The late question concerning military rank 
did not individually affect the lowest persons 
of the Catholic persuasion; but do you ima- 
gine that they do not sympathize with the 
honour and disgrace of their superiors 1 Do 
you think that satisfaction and dissatisfaction 
do not travel down from Lord Fingal to the 
most potatoless Catholic in Ireland, and that 
the glory or shame of the sect is not felt by 
many more than these conditions personally 
and corporally affect 1 Do you suppose that 
the detection of Sir H. M., and the disappoint- 
ment of Mr. Perceval in the matter of the Duchy 
of Lancaster, did not affect every dabbler in 
public property 1 Depend upon it these things 
were felt through all the gradations of small 
plunderers, down to him who filches a pound 
of tobacco from the king's warehouses; while, 
on the contrary, the acquittal of any noble and 
official thief would not fail to diffuse the most 
heartfelt satisfaction over the larcenous aad 
burglarious world. Observe, I do not say be- 
cause the lower Catholics are affected by what 
concerns their superiors, that they are not af- 
fected by what concerns themselves. There 
is no disguising the horrid truth ; there must be 
some relaxation with respect to tithe: this is the 
cruel and heart-rending price which must be 
paid for national preservation. I feel how 
little existence will be worth having, if any 
alteration, however sH^ht^is made in the pro-,. 



460 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



perty of Irish rectors ; I am conscious how 
much such changes must afiect the daily and 
hourly comforts of every Englishman ; I shall 
feel too happy if they leave Europe untouched, 
and are not ultimately fatal to the destinies of 
America; but I am madly bent upon keeping 
foreign enemies out of the British empire, and 
my limited understanding presents me with no 
other means of effecting my object. 

You talk of waiting till another reign, before 
any alteration is made ; a proposal full of 
good sense and good nature, if the measure 
in question were to pull down St. James's Pa- 
lace, or to alter Kew Gardens. Will Bona- 
parte agree to put off his intrigues, and his in- 
vasion of Ireland "? If so, I will overlook the 
question of justice, and finding the danger sus- 
pended, agree to the delay. I sincerely hope 
this reign may last many years, yet the delay 
of a single session of Parliament may be fa- 
tal ; but if another year elapses without some 
serious concession made to the Catholics, I 
believe, before God, that all future pledges and 
concessions will be made in vain. I do not think 
that peace will do you any good under such 
circumstances ; if Bonaparte gives you a res- 
pite, it will only be to get ready the gallows on 
which he means to hang you. The Catholic 
and the dissenter can unite in peace as well as 
war. If they do, the gallows is ready; and 
your executioner, in spite of the most solemn 
promises, will turn you off the next hour. 

With every disposition to please (where to 
please within fair and rational limits is an high 
duty), it is impossible for public men to be 
long silent about the Catholics: pressing evils 
are not got rid of because they are not talked 
of. A man may command his family to say 
nothing more about the stone, and surgical 
operations ; but the ponderous malice still lies 
■upon the nerve, and gets so big, that the patient 
breaks his own law of silence, clamours for 
the knife, and expires under its late operation. 
Believe me, you talk folly, when you talk of 
suppressing the Catholic question. I wish to 
God the case admitted of such a remedy: bad 
as it is, it does not admit of it. If the wants of 
the Catholics are not heard in the manly tones 
of Lord Grenville, or the servile drawl of Lord 
Castlereagh, they will be heard ere long in the 
madness of mobs, and the conflicts of armed 
men. 

I observe, it is now universally the fashion 
to speak of the first personage in the slate as 
the great obstacle to the measure. In the first 
place, I am not bound to believe such rumours 
because I hear them ; and in the next place, I 
object to such language as unconstitutional. 
Whoever retains his situation in the ministry, 
while the incapacities of the Catholics remain, 
is the advocate for those incapacities ; and to 
him, and to him only, am I to look for respon- 
sibility. But waive this question of the Catho- 
lics, and put a general case : How is a minister 
of this country to act when the conscientious 
scruples of his sovereign prevent the execution 
of a measure deemed by him absolutely neces- 
sary to the safety of the country 1 His conduct 
is quite clear — he should resign. But what is 
his successor to dol — Resign. But is the king 
to be left without ministers, and is he in this 



manner to be compelled to act against his own 
conscience 1 Before I answer this, pray tell 
me, in my turn, what better defence is there 
against the machinations of a wicked, or the 
errors of a weak monarch, than the impossi- 
bility of finding a minister who will lend him- 
self to vice and folly 1 Every English monarch, 
in such a predicament, would sacrifice his 
opinions and views to such a clear expression 
of the public will ; and it is one method in 
which the constitution aims at bringing about 
such a sacrifice. You may say, if you please, 
the ruler of a state is forced to give up his 
object, when the natural love of place and 
power will tempt no one to assist him in its 
attainment. This may be force; but it is force 
without injury, and therefore without blame. 
I am not to be beat out of these obvious rea- 
sonings, and ancient constitutional provisions, 
by the term conscience. There is no fantasy, 
however wild, that a man may not persuade 
himself that he cherishes from motives of 
conscience; eternal war against impious 
France, or rebellious America, or Catholic 
Spain, may in times to come be scruples of 
conscience. One English monarch may, from 
scruples of conscience, wish to abolish every 
trait of religious persecution ; another monarch 
may deem it his absolute and indispensable 
duty to make a slight provision for dissenters 
out of the revenues of the Church of England. 
So that you see. Brother Abraham, there are 
cases where it would be the duty of the best 
ana most loyal subjects to oppose the consci- 
entious scruples of their sovereign, still taking 
care that their actions were constitutional, and 
their modes respectful. Then you come upon 
me with personal questions, and say, that no 
such dangers are to be apprehended now under 
our present gracious sovereign, of whose good 
qualities we must be all so well convinced. 
All these sorts of discussions I beg leave to 
decline ; what I have said upon constitutional 
topics, I mean of course for general, not for 
particular application. I agree with you in all 
the good you have said of the powers that be, 
and I avail myself of the opportunity of point- 
ing out general dangers to the constitution, at 
a moment when we are so completely exempted 
from their present influence. I cannot finish 
this letter without expressing my surprise and 
pleasure at your abuse of the servile addresses 
poured in upon the throne; nor can I conceive 
a greater disgust to a monarch, with a true 
English heart, than to see such a question as 
that of Catholic emancipation argued, not with 
a reference to its justice or its importance, but 
universally considered to be of no farther con- 
sequence than as it affects his own private 
feelings. That these sentiments should be 
mine, is not wonderful ; but how they come to 
be yours, does, I confess, fill me with surprise. 
Are you moved by the arrival of the Irish 
brigade at Antwerp, and the amorous violence 
which awaits Mrs. Plymley? 



LETTER V. 
Deab. Abraham, 
I jfEVKH met a parson in my life who did not 
consider the Corporation and Test Acts as the 



WORKS OF. THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



461 



great bulwarks of the church ; and yet it is now 
just sixty-four years since bills of indemnity 
to destroy their penal effects, or, in other words, 
to repeal them, have been passed annually as 
a matter of course. 

Hen vatiwi igtiara: mentes. 

These bulwarks, without which no clergyman 
thinks he could sleep with his accustomed 
soundness, have actually not been in existence 
since any man now living has taken holy 
orders. Every year the indemnity act pardons 
past breaches of these two laws, and prevents 
any fresh actions of informers from coming to 
a conclusion before the period for the next 
mdemnity bill arrives; so that these penalties, 
by which alone the church remains in existence, 
have not had one moment's operation for sixty- 
four years. You will say the legislature, during 
the whole of this period, has reserved to itself 
the discretion of suspending, or not suspending. 
But had not the legislature the right of re- 
enacting, if it was necessary 1 And now, when 
you have kept the rod over these people (with 
the most scandalous abuse of all principle) for 
sixty-four years, and not found it necessary to 
strike once, is not that the best of all reasons 
why the rod should be laid aside "? You talk 
to me of a very valuable hedge running across 
I your fields which- you would not part with on 
any account. I go down, expecting to find a 
limit impervious to cattle, and highly useful 
for the preservation of property; but, to my 
utter astonishment, I find that the hedge was 
cut down half a cetitury ago, and that every 
year the shoots are clipped the moment they 
appear above ground: it appears, upon farther 
inquiry, that the hedge never ought to have 
existed at all; that it originated in the malice 
of antiquated quarrels, and was cut down be- 
cause It subjected you to vast inconvenience, 
and broke up your intercourse with a country 
absolutely necessary to your existence. If the 
remains of this hedge serve only to keep up an 
irritation in 3'-our neighbours, and to remind 
them of the feuds of former times, good nature 
and good sense teach you that you ought to 
grub it up, and cast it into the oven. This is 
the exact state of these two laws; and yet it is 
made a great argument against concession to 
the Catholics, that it involves their repeal; 
which is to say. Do not make rhe relinquish a 
folly that will lead to my ruin ; because, if you 
do, I must give up other follies ten times 
greater than this. 

I confess, with all our bulwarks and hedges, 
it mortifies me to the very quick, to contrast 
with our matchless stupidity and inimitable 
folly, the conduct of Bonaparte upon the subject 
trt' religious persecution. At the moment when 
we are tearing the crucifixes from the necks of 
the Catholics, and washing pious mud from the 
foreheads of the Hindoos; at that moment this 
man is assembling the very Jews at Paris, and 
endeavouring to give them stability and import- 
ance. I shall never be reconciled to mending 
shoes in America; but I see it must be my lot, 
and I will then take a dreadful revenge upon 
Mr. Perceval, if I catch him preaching within 
ten miles of me. I cannot for the soul of me 
conceive whence this man has gained his 



notions of Christianity; he has the most evan- 
gelical charity for errors in arithmetic, and the 
most inveterate malice against errors in con- 
science. While he rages against those whom, 
in the true spirit of the Gospel, he ought to in- 
dulge, he forgets the only instance of severity 
which that Gospel contains, and leaves the 
jobbers, and contractors, and money-changers 
at their seats, without a single stripe. 

You cannot #nagine, you say, that England 
will ever be ruined and conquered ; and for no 
other reason that I can find, but because it 
seems so very odd it should be ruined and 
conquered. Alas I so reasoned, in their time, 
the Austrian, Russian and Prussian Plymleys. 
But the English are brave; so were all these 
nations. You might get together an hundred 
thousand men individually brave; but without 
generals capable of commanding such a ma- 
chine, it Would be as useless as a first-rate 
man-of-war manned by Oxford clergymen, or 
Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say this to the 
disparagement of English ofticers; they have 
had no means of acquiring experience; but I 
do say it to create alarm ; for we do not appear 
to me to be half alarmed enough, or to entertain 
that sense of our danger which leads to the 
most obvious means of self-defence. ■ As for 
the spirit of the peasantry, in making a gallant 
defence behind hedge-rows, and through plate- 
racks and hen-coops, highly as I think of their 
braver)^ I do not know any nation in Europe 
so likely to be struck with panic as the English ; 
and this from their total unacquaintance with 
the science of war. Old wheat and beans 
blazing for twenty miles round; cart mares 
shot; sows of Lord Somerville's breed running 
wildoverthe country ; the minister of the parish 
wounded solely in his hinder parts; Mrs. 
Plymley in fits; all these scenes of war an 
Austrian or a Russian has seen three or four 
times over; but it is now three centuries since 
an English pig has fallen in a fair battle upon 
English ground, or a farm-house been rifled, 
or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any 
other proposals of love than the connubial 
endearments of her sleek and orthodox mate. 
The old edition of Plutarch's Lives, which 
lies in the corner of your parlour window, has 
contributed to work you up to the most 
romantic expectations of our Roman behaviour. 
You are persuaded that Lord Amherst will 
defend Kew Bridge like Codes ; that some 
maid of honour will break awa}-- from her 
captivity, and swim over the Thames ; that the 
Duke of York will burn his capitulating hand; 
and little Mr. Sturges Bourne* give forty years' 
purchase for Moulsham Hall, while the French 
are encamped upon it. I hope we shall witness 
all this, if the French do come ; but in the mean 
time I am so enchanted with the ordinaiy 
English behaviour of these invaluable persons, 
that I earnestly pray no opportunity may be 
given them for Roman valour, and for those 
very un-Roman pensions which they would 
all, of course, take especial care to claim in 



* There is nothiii? more objectionable in Plymley's 
Letters than the abuse of Mr. Stiirces Bourne, who is an 
honourable, able, and excellent person ; but such are the 
malevolent efleets of party spirit. 

2 a 2 



462 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



consequence. But whatever was our conduct, 
if every ploughman was as great a hero as he 
who was called from his oxen to save Rome 
from her enemies, I should still say, that at 
such a crisis you want the affections of all 
your subjects in both islands ; there is no spirit 
which you must alienate, no heart you must 
avert; every man must feel he has a country, 
and that there is an urgent and pressing cause 
why he should expose himself to death. 

The effects of penal laws, in matters of reli- 
gion, are never confined to those limits in 
which the legislature intended they should be 
placed ; it is not only that I am excluded from 
certain offices and dignities because I am a 
Catholic, but the exclusion carries with it a 
certain stigma, which degrades me in the eyes 
of the monopolizing sect, and the very name 
of my religion becomes odious. These effects 
are so very striking in England, that I solemnly 
believe blue and red baboons to be more popu- 
lar here than Catholics and Presbyterians ; they 
are more understood, and there is a greater dis- 
position to do something for them. When a 
country squire hears of an ape, his first feeling 
is to give it nuts and apples; when he hears 
of a dissenter, his immediate impulse is to 
commit it to the county jail, to shave its head, 
to alter its customary food, and to have it 
privately whipped. This is no caricature, but 
an accurate picture of national feelings, as they 
degrade and endanger us at this very moment. 
The Irish Catholic gentleman- would bear his 
legal disabilities with greater temper, if these 
were all he had to bear — if they did not enable 
every Protestant cheesemonger and tidewaiter 
to treat him with contempt. He is branded on 
the forehead with a red-hot iron, and treated 
like a spiritual felon, because, in the highest 
of all considerations, he is led by the noblest 
of all guides, his own disinterested conscience. 
Why are nonsense and cruelty a bit the better 
because they are enacted? If Providence, 
which gives wine and oil, had blessed us with 
that tolerant spirit which makes the counte- 
nance more pleasant and the heart more glad 
than these can do; if our statute book had 
never been defiled with such infamous laws, 
the sepulchral Spencer Perceval would have 
been hauled through the dirtiest horse-pond in 
Hampstead, had he ventured to propose them. 
But now persecution is good, because it exists ; 
every law which originated in ignorance and 
malice, and gratifies the passions from whence 
it sprang, we call the wisdom of our ancestors ; 
when such laws are repealed, they will be 
cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, 
they are policy and caution. 

I was somewhat amused with the imputation 
brought against the Catholics by the University 
of Oxford, that they are enemies to liberty. I 
immediately turned to my history of England, 
and marked as an historical error that passage 
in which it is recorded that, in the reign of 
Queen Anne, the famous decree of the Univer- 
sity of Oxford, respecting passive obedience, 
was ordered, by the House of Lords, to be 
burnt by the hands of the common hangman, 
as contrary to the liberty of the subject, and 
the law of the land. Nevertheless, I wish, 
whatever be the modesty of those who impute^ 



that the imputation was a little more true; the 
Catholic cause would not be quite so desperate 
with the present administration. I fear, how- 
ever, that the hatred to liberty in these poor 
devoted wretches may ere long appear more 
doubtful thanit is at present to the vice-chan- 
cellor and his clergy, inflamed, as they doubt- 
less are, with classical examples of republican 
virtue, and panting, as they always have been, 
to reduce the power of the crown within nar- 
rower and safer limits. What mistaken zeal 
to attempt to connect one religion with free- 
dom, and another with slavery ! Who laid the 
foundations of English liberty 1 What was the 
mixed religion of Switzerland ? What has the 
Protestant religion done for liberty in Den- 
mark, in Sweden, throughout the north of Ger- 
many, and in Prussia 1 The purest religion in 
the world, in my humble opinion, is the religion 
of the Church of England ; for its preservation 
(so far as it is exercised without intruding upon 
the liberties of others), I am ready at this mo- 
ment to venture my present life, and but 
through that religion I have no hopes of any 
other ; yet I am not forced to be silly because I 
am pious ; nor will I ever join in eulogiums on 
my faith, which every man of common reading 
and common sense can so easily refute. 

You have either done too much for the 
Catholics (worthy Abraham), 'or too little; if 
you had intended to refuse them political 
power, you should have refused them civil 
rights. After you had enabled them to acquire 
property, after you had conceded to them all 
that you did concede in 78 and 93, the rest is 
wholly out of your power; you may choose 
whether you will give the rest in an honour- 
able or a disgraceful mode, but it is utterly out 
of your power to withhold it. 

In the last year, land to the amount of eight 
hundred thousand jwnnds was purchased by the 
Catholics in Ireland. Do you think it possible 
to be-Perceval, and be-Canning, and be-Castle- 
reagh such a body of men as this out of their 
common rights and their sense? Mr. George 
Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of 
Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, 
under the 9th clause of the sunset bill; but if 
some better remedy is not applied to the dis- 
tractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. 
Canning, they will soon put an end to his pen- 
sion, and to the pension of those "near and 
dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, 
washing, and clothing, every man in the United 
Kingdoms now pays his two-pence or three- 
pence a year. You may call these observa- 
tions coarse, if you please ; but I have no idea 
that the Sophias and Carolines of any man 
breathing are to eat national veal, to drink 
public tea, to wear treasury ribands, and then 
that we are to be told that it is coarse to 
animadvert upon this pitiful and eleemosynary 
splendour. If this is right, why not mention 
it? If it is wrong, why should not he who 
enjoys the ease of supporting his sisters in this 
manner bear the shame of it? Every body 
seems hitherto to have spared a man who 
never spares any body. 

As for the enormous wax candles, and super- 
stitious mummeries, and painted jackets of the , 
Catholic priests, I fear them not. Tell me that 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



463 



the world will return again under the influence 
of the small-pox; that Lord Castlereagh will 
hereafter oppose the power of the court; that 
Lord Howick and Mr. Grattan will do each of 
them a mean and dishonourable action ; that 
any body who has heard Lord Redesdale speak 
once will knowingly and willingly hear him 
again ; that Lord Eldon has assented to the 
fact of two and two making four, without 
shedding tears, or expressing the smallest 
doubt or scruple; tell me any other thing 
absurd or incredible, but, for the love of com- 
mon sense, let me hear no more of the danger 
to be apprehended from the general diffusion 
of Popery. It is too absurd to be reasoned 
upon ; every man feels it is nonsense when he 
hears it stated, and so does every man while he 
is stating it. 

I cannot imagine why the friends to the 
church establishment should entertain such an 
horror of seeing the doors of Parliament flung 
open to the Catholics, and view so passively 
the enjoyment of that right by the Presbyte- 
rians, and by every other species of dissenter. 
In their tenets, in their church government, in 
the nature of their endowments, the dissenters 
are infinitely more distant from the Church of 
England than the Catholics are ; yet the dis- 
senters have never been excluded from Parlia- 
ment. There are 45 members in one house 
and 16 in the other, who always are dissenters. 
There is no law which would prevent every 
member of the Lords and Commons from 
being dissenters. The Catholics could not 
bring into Parliament half the number of the 
Scotch members ; and yet one exclusion is of 
such immense importance, because it has taken 
place ; and the other no human being thinks of, 
because no one is accustomed to it. I have 
often thought, if the wisdom of our ancestors had 
excluded all persons with red hair from the 
House of Commons, of the throes and convul- 
sions it would occasion to restore them to their 
natural rights. What mobs and riots would it 
produce 1 To what infinite abuse and obloquy 
would the capillary patriot be exposed? what 
wormwood would distil from Mr. Perceval, 
what froth would drop from Mr. Canning ; how 
(I will not say wiy, but our Lord Hawkesbury, 
for he belongs to us all), how our Lord Hawkes- 
bury would work away about the hair of King 
William and Lord Somers, and the authors of 
the great and glorious Revolution; how Lord 
Elton would appeal to the Deity and his own 
virtues, and to the hair of his children: some 
would say that red-haired men were supersti- 
tious; some would prove they were atheists; 
they would be petitioned against as the friends 
of slavery, and the advocates for revolt ; in 
short, such a corrupter of the heart and the un- 
derstanding is the spirit of persecution, and 
these unfortunate people (conspired against by 
their fellow-subjects of every complexion), if 
they did not emigrate to countries where hair 
of another colour was persecuted, would be 
driven to the falsehood of perukes, or the hy- 
pocrisy of the Tricosian fluid. 

As for the dangers of the church (in spite of 
the staggering events which have lately taken 
place), I have not )'et entirely lost my confi- 
dence in the power of common sense, and I 



believe the church to be in no danger at all ; 
but if it is, that danger is not from the Catho- 
lics, but from the Methodists, and from that 
patent Christianity which has been for some 
time manufacturing at Clapham, to the preju- 
dice of the old and admirable article prepared 
by the church. I would counsel my lords the 
bishops to keep their eyes upon that holy vil- 
lage, and its hallowed vicinity ; they will find 
there a zeal in making converts far superior to 
any thing which exists among the Catholics ; 
a contempt for the great mass of English 
clergy much more rooted and profound ; and 
a regular fund to purchase livings for those 
groaning and garrulous gentlemen, whom they 
denominate (by a standing sarcasm against 
the regular church) gospel preachers, and 
vital clergymen. I am too firm a believer in 
the general propriety and respectability of the 
English clergy, to believe they have much to 
fear either from old nonsense, or from new ; 
but if the church must be supposed to be in 
danger, I prefer that nonsense which is grown 
half venerable from time, the force of which 
I have already tried and baffled, which at least 
has some excuse in the dark and ignorant 
ages in which it originated. The religious 
enthusiasm manufactured by living men before 
my own eyes disgusts m}^ understanding as 
much, influences my imagination not at all, 
and excites my apprehensions much more. 

I may have seemed to you to treat the situa- 
tion of public afiairs with some degree of 
levity ; but I feel it deeply, and with nightly 
and daily anguish; because I know Ireland; I 
have known it all my life ; I love it, and I fore- 
see the crisis to which it will soon be exposed. 
Who can doubt but that Ireland M'ill experience 
ultimately from France a treatment to which 
the conduct they have experienced from Eng- 
land is the love of a parent, or a brother? 
Who can doubt but that five years after he has 
got hold of the country, Ireland will be tossed 
away by Bonaparte as a present to some one 
of his ruffian generals, who will knock the 
head of Mr. Keogh against the head of Cardi- 
nal Troy, shoot twenty of the most noisy block- 
heads of the Roman persuasion, wash his 
pug-dogs in holy water, and confiscate the salt 
butter of the Milesian republic to the last tub? 
But what matters this ? or who is wise enough 
in Ireland to heed it? or when had common 
sense much influence with my poor dear Irish? 
Mr. Perceval does not know the Irish ; but I 
know them, and I know that at every rash and 
mad hazard, they will break the union, revenge 
their wounded pride and their insulted religion, 
and fling themselves into the open arms of 
France, sure of dying in the embrace. And 
now, what means have you of guarding against 
this coming evil, upon which the future happi- 
ness or misery of every Englishman depends? 
Have you a single ally in the whole world? 
Is there a vulnerable point in the French em- 
pire where the astonishing resources of that 
people can be attracted and employed ? Have 
you a ministry wise enough to comprehend 
the danger, manly enough to believe unplea- 
sant intelligence, honest enough to state their 
apprehensions at the peril of their places ? Is 
there anywhere the slightest disposition to join 



46^ 



WORKS OP THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



any measure of love, or conciliation, or hope, 
with that dreadful bill which the distractions 
of Ireland have rendered necessary? At the 
very moment that the last monarchy in Europe 
has fallen, are we not governed by a man of 
pleasantry, and a man of theology] In the 
six hundredth year of our empire over Ireland, 
have we any memorial of ancient kindness to 
refer to ? any people, any zeal, any country on 
which we can depend 1 Have we any hope, 
but in the winds of heaven, and the tides of 
the sea? any prayer to prefer to the Irish, but 
that they should forget and forgive their op- 
pressors, who, in the very moment that they 
are calling upon them for their exertions, 
solemnly assure them that the oppression 
shall still remain ? 

Abraham, farewell! If I have tired you, 
remember how often you have tired me and 
others. I do not think we really differ in 
politics so much as you suppose ; or at least, 
if we do, that difference is in the means, and 
not in the end. We both love the constitution, 
respect the king, and abhor the French. But 
though you love the constitution, you would 
perpetuate the abuses which have been en- 
grafted upon it; though you respect the king, 
5'ou would confirm his scruples against the 
Catholics; though you abhor the French, you 
would open to them the conquest of Ireland. 
My method of respecting my sovereign is by 
protecting his honour, his empire, and' his last- 
ing happiness ; I evince my love of the consti- 
tution, by making it the guardian of all men's 
rights and the source of their freedom; and I 
prove my abhorrence of the French, by uniting 
against them the disciples of every church in 
the only remaining nation in Europe. As for 
the men of whom I have been, compelled, in 
this age of mediocrity, to say so much, they 
cannot of themselves be worth a moment's 
consideration to you, to me, or to any body. 
In a year after their death, they will be forgotten 
as completely as if they had' never been ; and 
are now of no farther importance than as they 
are the mere vehicles of carrying into effect 
the common-place and mischievous prejudices 
of the times in which they live. 



LETTER VI. 
Dear Abraham, 

What amuses me the most is, to hear of the 
indulgences which the Catholics have received, 
and their exorbitance in not being satisfied 
with those indulgences: now if you complain 
to me that a man is obtrusive and shameless 
in his requests, and that it is impossible to 
bring him to reason, I must first of all hear 
the whole of your conduct towards him ; for 
you may have taken from him so much in the 
first instance, that, in spite of a long series of 
restitution, a vast latitude for petition may still 
remain behind. 

There is a village (no matter where) in 
which the inhabitants, on one day in the year, 
sit down to a dinner prepared at' the common 
expense ; by an extraordinary piece of tyranny 
(which Lord Hawkesbury would call the wis- 
dom of the village ancestors), the inhabitants 



of three of the streets, about an hundred years 
ago, seized upon the inhabitants of the fourth 
street, bound them hand and foot, laid them 
upon their backs, and compelled them to look 
on while the rest were stuffing themselves 
with beef andbeer; the next year, the inhabit- 
ants of the persecuted street (though they 
contributed an equal quota of the expense) 
were treated precisely in the same manner. 
The tyranny grew into a custom ; and (as the 
manner of our nature is) it was considered as 
the most sacred of all duties to keep these 
poor fellows without their annual dinner ; the 
village was so tenacious of this practice, that 
nothing could induce them to resign it ; every 
enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever 
in Divine Providence, and any nefarious 
churchwarden who wished to succeed in his 
election had nothing to do but to represent his 
antagonist as an abolitionist, in order to frus- 
trate his ambition, endanger his life, and throw 
the village into a state of the most dreadful 
commotion. By degrees, however, the ob- 
noxious street grew to be so well peopled, and 
its inhabitants so firmly united, that their op- 
pressors, more afraid of injustice, were more 
disposed to be just. At the next dinner they 
are unbound, the year after allowed to sit up- 
right, then a bit of bread and a glass of water; 
till at last, after a long series of concessions, 
they are emboldened to ask, in pretty plain 
terms, that they may be allowed to sit down at 
the bottom of the table, and to fill their bellies 
as well as the rest. Forthwith a general cry 
of shame and scandal : " Ten years ago, were 
you not laid upon your backs? Don't you 
remember what a great thing you thought it to 
get a piece of bread? How thankful you 
were for cheese parings ? Have you forgotten 
that memorable era, when the lord of the manor 
interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public 
pudding? And now with an audacity only 
equalled by your ingratitude, you have the 
impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to 
request, in terms too plain to be mistaken, that 
you may sit down to table with the rest, and 
be indulged even with beef and beer: there 
are not more than half a dozen dishes which 
we have reserved for ourselves ; the rest has 
been thrown open to you in the utmost profu- 
sion; you have potatoes, and carrots, suet 
dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious toast 
and water, in incredible quantities. Beef, 
mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours ; and if 
you were not the most restless and dissatisfied 
of human beings, you would never think of 
aspiring to enjoy them." 

Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very 
nonsense and the very insult which is talked 
to and practised upon the Catholics ? You are 
surprised that men who have tasted of partial 
justice should ask for perfect justice; that he 
who has been robbed of coat and cloak will 
not be contented with the restitution of one of 
his garments. He would be a very lazy block- 
head if he were content, and I (who, though 
an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, 
thank God, some sense of justice) most earn- 
estly counsel these half-fed claimants to per- 
severe in their just demands, till they are ad- 
mitted to a more complete share of a dinner. 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



465 



for which they pay as much as the others ; and 
if they see a little attenuated lawyer squabbling 
at the head of their opponents, let them desire 
him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all 
the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding, which 
he has filched from the public feast, to carry 
home to his wife and children. 

You parade a great deal upon the vast con- 
cessions made by this country to the Irish be- 
fore the union. I deny that any voluntary 
concession was ever made by England to Ire- 
land. — What did Ireland ever ask that was 
granted 1 What did she ever demand that was 
refused? How did she get her mutiny bill — 
a limited Parliament — a repeal of Poyning's 
law — a constitution ] Not by the concessions 
of England, but by her fears. When Ireland 
asked for all these things upon her knees, her 
petitions were rejected with Percevalism and 
contempt : when she demanded them with the 
voice of 60,000 armed men, they were granted 
with every mark of consternation and dismay. 
Ask of Lord Auckland the fatal consequences 
of trifling with«such a people as the Irish. He 
himself was the organ of these refusals. — 
As secretary, to the lord-lieutenant, the inso- 
lence and tyranny of this country passed 
through his hands. Ask him if he remembers 
the consequences. Ask him if he has forgotten 
that memorable evening, when he came down 
booted and mantled to the House of Commons, 
when he told the House he was about to set 
off for Ireland that night, and declared, before 
God, if he did not carry with him a compliance 
with all their demands, Ireland was for ever 
lost to this country. The present generation 
have forgotten this ; but I have not forgotten 
it; and I know, hasty and undignified as the 
submission of England then was, that Lord 
Auckland was right, that the delay of a single 
day might very probably have separated the 
two people for ever. The terms submission 
and fear are galling terms, when applied from 
the lesser nation to the greater; but it is the 
plain historical truth, it is the natural conse- 
quence of injustice, it is the predicament in 
which every country places itself which leaves 
such a mass of haired and discontent by its 
side. No empire is powerful enough to endure 
it; it would exhaust the strength of China, and 
sink it with all its mandarins and tea-kettles 
to the bottom of the deep. By refusing them 
justice now, when you are strong enougli to 
refuse them any thing more than justice, you 
will act over again, with the Catholics, the same 
scene of mean and precipitate submission 
which disgraced you before America, and be- 
fore the volunteers of Ireland. We shall live 
to hear the Hampstead Protestant pronouncing 
such extravagant panegyrics upon holy water, 
and paying such fulsome compliments to the 
thumbs and offals ofdeparted saints, that parties 
will change sentiments, and Lord Henry Petty 
and Sam Whitbread take a spell at No-Popery. 
The wisdom of Mr. Fox was alike employed in 
teaching his country justice when Ireland was 
weak, and dignity when Ireland was strong. We 
ar^fast pacing round the same miserable circle 
ofruin and imbecility. Alas! where is our guide? 

You say that Ireland is a millstone about 
our necks ; that it would be better for us if Ire- 
59 



land were sunk at the bottom of the sea ; that 
the Irish are a nation of irreclaimable savages 
and barbarians. How often have I heard 
these sentiments fall from the plump and 
thoughtless squire, and from the thriving Eng- 
lish shopkeeper, who has never felt the rod 
of an Orange master upon his back. Ireland 
a millstone about your neck ! Why is it not 
asloneof Ajax in your handl I agree with 
you most cordially, that, governed as Ireland 
now is, it would be a vast accession of strength 
if the waves of the sea were to rise and ingulf 
her to-morrow. At this moment, opposed as 
we are to all the world, the annihilation of one 
of the most fertile islands on the face of the 
globe, containing five millions of human crea- 
tures, would be one of the most solid advan- 
tages which could happen to this country. I 
doubt very much, in spite of all the just abuse 
which has been lavished upon Bonaparte, 
whether there is any one of his conquered 
countries the blotting out of which would be 
as beneficial to him as the destruction of Ire- 
land would be to us: of countries, I speak, 
differing in language from the French, little 
habituated to their intercourse, and inflamed 
with all the resentments of a recently conquered 
people. Why will you attribute the turbulence 
of our people to any cause but the right — to 
any cause but your own scandalous oppres- 
sion ] If you tie your horse up to a gate, and 
beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks 
you ■? If you have plagued and worried a 
mastiff dog for years, is he mad because he 
flies at you whenever he sees you 1 Hatred is ' 
an active, troublesome passion. Depend upon 
it, whole nations have always some reason for 
their hatred. Before you refer the turbulence 
of the Irish to indurable defects in their cha- 
racter, tell me if you have treated them as 
friends and equals 1 Have you protected their 
commerce 1 Have you respected their reli- 
gion ■? Have you been as anxious for their 
freedom as your own ] Nothing of all this. 
What then ] — Why, you have confiscated the 
territorial surface of the countrj^ twice over ; 
you have massacred and exported her inhabit- 
ants ; you have deprived four-fifths of them 
of every civil privilege ; you have at every 
period made her commerce and manufactures 
slavishly subordinate to your own ; and yet 
the hatred which the Irish bear to you is the 
result of an original turbulence of character, 
and of a primitive, obdurate wildness, utterly 
incapable of civilization. The embroidered 
inanities and the sixth-form effusions of Mr. 
Canning, are really not powerful enough to 
make me believe this ; nor is there any autho- 
rity on earth (always excepting the Dean of 
Christ-Church) which could make it credible to 
me. I am sick of Mr. Canning. There is not a 
ha'p'orth of bread to all this sugar and sack. I 
love not the cretaceous and incredible counte- 
nance of his colleague. The only opinion in 
which I agree with these two gentlemen, is that 
which they entertain of each other; I am sure 
that the insolence of Mr. Pitt, and the unbalanced 
accounts of Melville, were far belter than the 
perils of this new ignorance : — 

Nonne fuit satius tristes Aiuaryllidis iras 

Atque superba paii I'astidia — nonne Menalcam, , . . 

Quamvie ille niger ? M^jjllium 



466 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



In the midst of the most profound peace, the 
secret articles of the treaty of Tilsit, in which 
the destruction of Ireland is resolved upon, in- 
duce you to rob the Danes of their fleet. — After 
the expedition sailed comes the treaty of Tilsit, 
containing no article,* public or private, allud- 
ing to Ireland. The state of the world, you tell 
me, justified us in doing this. — Just God ! do 
we think only of the state of the world when 
there is an opportunity for robbery, for mur- 
der, and for plunder ; and do we forget the 
state of the world when Ave are called upon to 
be wise, and good, and just ! Does the state 
of the world never remind us, that we have 
four millions of subjects whose injuries we 
ought to atone for, and whose aflections we 
ought to conciliate 1 Does the state of the 
world never warn us to lay aside our infernal 
bigotry, and to arm every man who acknow- 
ledges a God and can grasp a sword ■? Did it 
never occur to this administration, that they 
might virtuously get hold of a force ten times 
greater than the force of the Danish fleet ] Was 
there no other way of protecting Ireland, but 
by bringing eternal shame upon Great Britain, 
and by making the earth a den of robbers ] See 
what the men whom you have supplanted would 
have done. They would have rendered the 
invasion of Ireland impossible, by restoring to 
the Catholics their long-lost rights ; they would 
have acted in such a manner that the French 
would neither have wished for invasion, nor 
dared to attempt it ; they would have increased 
the permanent strength of the country while 
they preserved its reputation unsullied. No- 
thing of this kind your friends have done, be- 
cause they are solemnly pledged to do nothing 
of this kind ; because to tolerate all religions, 
and to equalize civil rights to all sects, is to 
oppose some of the Avorst passions of our na- 
ture — to plunder and to oppress is to gratify 
them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, 
and they have for ever blasted the fame of 
England to obtain them. Were the fleets of 
Holland, France, and Spain, destroyed by lar- 
ceny? You resisted the power of 150 sail of 
the line by sheer courage, and violated every 
principle of morals from the dread of 15 hulks, 
while the expedition itself cost you three times 
more than the value of the larcenous matter 
brought away. The French trample upon the 
laws of God and man, not for old cordage, but 
for kingdoms, and always take care to be well 
paid for their crimes. We contrive, under the 
present administration, to unite moral with in- 
tellectual deficiency, and to grow weaker and 
worse by the same action. If they had any 
evidence of the intended hostility of the Danes, 
why was it not produced ? Why have the na- 
tions of Europe been allowed to feel an indig- 
nation against this country beyond the reach 
of all subsequent information 1 Are these 
times, do you imagine, when we can trifle with 
a year of universal hatred, dally with the curses 
of Eui'ope, and then regain a lost character at 
pleasure, by the parliamentary perspirations 
of the foreign secretary, or the solemn asseve- 
rations of the pecuniary Rose 1 Believe me, 
Abraham, it is not under such ministers as 



* This Is now completely confessed to be the case by 
ttninuters. 



these that the dexterity of honest Englishmen 
will ever equal the dexterity of French knaves ; 
it is not in their presence that the serpent of 
Moses will ever swallow up the serpents of the 
magicians. 

Lord Hawkesbury says, that nothing is to be 
granted to the Catholics from fear. What ! 
not even justice? Why not? There are four 
millions of disaffected people within twenty 
miles of your own coast. I fairly confess, that 
the dread which I have of their physical 
power, is with me a very strong motive for 
listening to their claims. To talk of not 
acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant. 
From what motive but fear, I should be glad 
to know, have all the improvements in our 
constitution proceeded ? I question if any 
j\;stice has ever been done to large masses of 
mankind from any other motive. By what 
other motives can the plunderers of the Baltic 
suppose nations to be governed in their inter- 
course ivith each other '■! If I say. Give this 
people what they ask because it is just, do 
you think I should get ten people* to listen to 
me ? Would not the lesser of the two Jenkin- 
sons be the first to treat me with contempt? 
The only true way to make the mass of man- 
kind see the beauty of justice, is by showing 
to them in pretty plain terms the consequences 
of injustice. If any body of French troops 
land in Ireland, the whole population of that 
country will rise against you to a man, and 
you could not possibly survive such an event 
three years. Such, from the bottom of my 
soul, do I believe to be the present state of that 
country; and so far does it appear to me to be 
impolitic and unstatesmanlike to concede any 
thing to such a danger, that if the Catholics, in 
addition to their present just demands, were to 
petition for the perpetual removal of the said 
Lord Hawkesbury from his majesty's coun- 
cils, I think, Avhatever might be the effect upon 
the destinies of Europe, and however it might 
retard our own individual destruction, that the 
prayer of the petition should be instantly com- 
plied with. Canning's crocodile tears should 
not move me ; the hoops of the maids of 
honour should not hide him. I would tear 
him from the banisters of the back stairs, and 
plunge him in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest 
of all his Cinque Ports. 



LETTER Vn. 

Dear Abhahak, 

\ts the correspondence which is passing be- 
tween us, you are perpetually alluding to the 
foreign secretary ; and in answer to the dan- 
gers of Ireland, which I am pressing upon 
your notice, you have nothing to urge but the 
confidence which you repose in the discretion 
and sound sense of this gentleman.* I can 



* The attack upon virtue and morals in the debate 
upon Copenhagen is brought forward with great ostenta- 
tion by this gentleman's friends. But is Harlequin less 
Harlequin because he acts well 1 I was present : he 
leaped about, touched facts with his wand, turned yes 
into no, and no into yes ; it was a pantomime well 
played, but a pantomime ; Harlequin deserves higher 
wages ihan he did two years ago ; is he therefore fit for 
serious parts ? 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



467 



■only say, that I have listened to him long and 
often, with the greatest attention ; I have used 
every exertion in nay power to take a fair 
measure of him, and it appears to me impos- 
sible to hear him upon any arduous topic 
without perceiving that he is eminently defi- 
cient in those solid and serious qualities upon 
which, and upon which alone, the confidence 
of a great country can properly repose. He 
sweats, and labours, and works for sense, and 
Mr. Ellis seems always to think it is coming, 
but it does not come ; the machine can't draw 
up what is not to be found in the spring; 
Providence has made him a light, jesting, 
paragraph-writing man, and that he will re- 
main to his dying day. When he is jocular 
he is strong, when he is serious he is like 
Samson in a wig; any ordinary person is a 
match for him ; a song, an ironical letter, a 
burlesque ode, an attack in the newspaper 
upon Nicoll's eye, a smart speech of twenty 
minutes, full of gross misrepresentations and 
clever turns, excellent language, a spirited 
manner, lucky quotation, success in provoking 
dull men, some half information picked up in 
Pail Mall in the morning ; these are your 
friend's natural weapons ; all these things he 
can do ; here I allow him to be truly great ; 
nay, I will be just, and go still farther, if he 
would confine himself to these things, and 
consider the facet c and the pla}iul to be the 
basis of his character, he would, for that spe- 
cies of man, be universally regarded as a 
person of a very good understanding ; call him 
a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of 
the atfairs of a great nation, and it seems to 
me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach 
bees to make honey. That he is an extraor- 
dinary writer of small poetry, and a diner out 
of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit. 
After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, 
there has been no such man for this half cen- 
tury. The foreign secretary is a gentleman, a 
respectable as well as an highly agreeable 
man in private life ; but you may as well feed 
me with decayed potatoes as console me for 
ihe miseries of Ireland by the resources of his 
sense and his discretion. It is only the public 
situation which this gentleman holds which 
entitles me or induces me to say so much 
about him. He is a fly in amber; nobody 
cares about the fly : the only question is. How 
the devil did it get there 1 Nor do I attack 
him from the love of glory, but from the love 
of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a 
Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. 
The friends of the Catholic question are, I 
observe, extremely embarrassed in arguing 
when they come to the loyalty of the Irish 
Catholics. As for me, I shall go straight for- 
warcf to my object, and state what I have no 
manner of doubt, from an intimate knowledge 
of Ireland, to be the plain truth. Of the great 
Roman Catholic proprietors, and of the Ca- 
-tholic prelates, there may be a few, and but a 
few, who would follow the fortunes of England 
at all events ; there is another set of men M'ho, 
thoroughly detesting this country, have too 
much property and too much character to 
lose, not to wait for some very favourable 
event before thev show themselves; but the 



great mass of Catholic population, upon the 
slightest appearance of a French force in that 
country, would rise upon you to a man. It is 
the most mistaken policy to conceal the plain 
truth. There is no loyalty among the Catho- 
lics ; they detest you as their worst oppressors, 
and they will continue to detest you till you 
remove the cause of their hatred. It is in your 
power in six months' time to produce a total 
revolution of opinions among this people ; and 
in some future letter I will show you that this 
is clearly the case. At present, see what a 
dreadful state Ireland is in. The common 
toast among the low Irish is, the feast of the 
passover. Some allusion to Bonaparte, in a 
play lately acted at Dublin, produced thunders 
of applause from the pit and the galleries ; and 
a politician should not be inattentive to the 
public feelings expressed in theatres. Mr. 
Perceval thinks he has disarmed the Irish ; he 
has no more disarmed the Irish than he has 
resigned a shilling of his own public emolu- 
ments. An Irish* peasant fills the barrel of 
his gun full of tow dipped in oil, butters up 
the lock, buries it in a bog, and allows the 
Orange bloodhound to ransack his cottage at 
pleasure. Be just and kind to the Irish, and 
you will indeed disarm them : rescue them 
from the degraded servitude in which they are . 
held by an handful of their own countrymen, 
and you will add four millions of brave and 
affectionate men to your strength. Nightly 
visits, Protestant inspectors, licenses to pos- 
sess a pistol or a knife and fork, the odious 
vigour of the evangelical Perceval — acts of 
Parliament, drawn up by some English attor- 
ney, to save you from the hatred of four mil- 
lion people — the guarding yourselves from 
universal disaflection by a police ; a confidence 
in the little cunning of Bow Street, when you 
might rest your security upon the eternal basis 
of the best feelings ; this is the meanness and 
madness to which nations are reduced when 
they lose sight of the first elements of justice, 
without which a country can be no more se- 
cure than it can be healthy without air. I 
sicken at such policy and such men. The 
fact is, the ministers know nothing about the 
present state of Ireland ; Mr. Perceval sees a 
few clergymen, Lord Castlereagh a few gene- 
ral officers, who take care, of course, to report 
what is pleasant rather than what is true. As 
for the joyous and lepid consul, he jokes upon 
neutral flags and feuds, jokes upon Irish re- 
bels, jokes upon northern, and western, and 
southern foes, and gives himself no trouble 
upon any subject; nor is the mediocrity of the 
idolatrous deputy of the slightest use. Dis- 
solved in grins, he reads no memorials upon 
the state of Ireland, listens to no reports, asks 
no questions, and is the 

"Bourn from whom no traveller returns." 
The danger of an immediate insurrection is 
now, Ibelieve,-\ blown over. You have so strong 

* No man who is not intimately acquainted with the 
Irish, can tell to what a curious extent this concealment 
of arms is carried. I have stated the exact mode in 
which it is done. 

1 1 know too much, however, of the state of Ireland 
not to speak tremblingly about this. I hope to God I am 
right. 



468 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



an army in Ireland, and the Irish are become 
so much more cunning from the last insurrec- 
tion, that you may perhaps be tolerably secure 
just at present from that evil: but are you se- 
cure from the eiTorts which the French may 
make to throw a body of troops into Ireland? 
and do you consider that event to be difficult 
and improbable ! From Brest Harbour to 
Cape St. Vincent, you have above three thou- 
sand miles of hostile sea-coast, and twelve or 
fourteen harbours quite capable of contain- 
ing a sufficient force for the powerful invasion 
of Ireland. The nearest of these harbours is 
not two days' sail from the southern coast of 
Ireland, with a fair leading wind; and the 
farthest not ten. Five ships of the line, for so 
very short a passage, might carry five or six 
thousand troops with cannon and ammunition ; 
and Ireland presents to their attack a southern 
coast of more than 500 miles, abounding in 
deep bays, admirable harbours, and disafiected 
inhabitants. Your blockading ships may be 
forced to come home for provisions and repairs, 
or they may be blown off in a gale of wind and 
compelled to bear away for their own coast ; — 
and you will observe, that the very same wind 
which locks you up in the British Channel, 
when you are got there, is evidently favourable 
for the invasion of Ireland. And yet this is 
called government, and the people huzza Mr. 
Perceval for continuing to expose his country 
day after day to such tremendous perils as 
these ; cursing the men who would have given 
up a question in theology to have saved us 
from such a risk. The British empire at this 
moment is in the state of a peach-blossom — if 
the wind blows gently from one quarter, it sur- 
vives; if furiously from the other, it perishes. 
A stiff breeze may set in from the north, the 
Rochefort squadron will be taken, and the 
minister will be the most holy of men ; if it 
comes from some other point, Ireland is gone, 
we curse ourselves as a set of monastic mad- 
men, and call out for the unavailing satisfac- 
tion of Mr. Perceval's head. Such a state of 
political existence is scarcely credible ; it is 
the action of a mad young fool standing upon 
one foot, and peeping down the crater of Mount 
^tna, not the conduct of a wise and sober 
people deciding upon their best and dearest 
interests: and in the name, the much injured 
name, of Heaven, what is it all for that we 
expose ourselves to these dangers! Is it that 
we may sell more muslin? Is it that we may 
acquire more territory 1 Is it that we may 
strengthen what we have already acquired 1 
No: nothing of all this; but that one set of 
Irishmen may torture another set of Irishmen — 
that Sir Phelim O'Callagan may continue to 
whip Sir Toby M'Tackle, his next-door neigh- 
bour, and continue to ravish his Catholic 
daughters; and these are the measures which 
the honest and consistent secretary supports ; 
and this is the secretary whose genius, in the 
estimation of Brother Abraham, is to extin- 
guish the genius of Bonaparte. Pompey was 
killed by a slave, Goliath smitten by a stripling, 
Pyrrhus died by the hand of a woman ; tremble, 
thou great Gaul, from whose head an armed 
Minerva leaps forth in the hour of danger; 
tremble, thou scourge of God, a pleasant man 



is come out against thee, and thou^halt be laid;*, 
low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his 
pleasant talk against thee, and thou shall be no 
more ! 

You tell me, in spite of all this parade of 
sea-coast, Bonaparte has neither ships nor 
sailors : but this is a mistake. He has not 
ships and sailors to contest the empire of the 
seas with Great Britain, but there remains 
quite sufficient of the navies of France, Spain, 
Holland, and Denmark, for these short excur- 
sions and invasions. Do you think, too, that 
Bonaparte does not add to his navy every year? 
Do you suppose, with all Europe at his feet, that 
he can find any difficulty in obtaining timber, 
and that money will not procure for him any 
quantity of naval stores he may want 1 The 
mere machine, the empty ship, he can build as 
well, and as quickly, as you can ; and though 
he may not find enough of practised sailors to 
man large fighting fleets — it is not possible to 
conceive that he can want sailors for such sort 
of purposes as I have stated? He is at pre- 
sent the despotic monarch of above twenty 
thousand miles of sea-coast, and yet you sup- 
pose he cannot procure sailors for the invasion 
of Ireland. Believe, if you please, that such 
a fleet met at sea by any number of our ships 
at all comparable to them in point of force, 
would be immediately taken; let it be so ; I 
count nothing upon their power of resistance, 
only upon their power of escaping unobserved. 
If experience has taught us any thing, it is the 
impossib'lity of perpetual blockades. The in- 
stances are innumerable, during the course of 
this war, where whole fleets have sailed in and 
out of harbour in spite of every vigilance used 
to prevent it. I shall only mention those cases 
where Ireland is concerned. In December, 
1796, seven ships of the line, and ten trans- 
ports, reached Bantry Bay from Brest, with- 
out having seen an English ship in their pas- 
sage. It blew a storm when they were off 
shore, and therefore England still continues to 
be an independent kingdom. You will observe 
that at the very time the French fleet sailed out 
of Brest harbour. Admiral Colpoys was cruis- 
ing off there with a powerful squadron, and 
still, from the particular circumstances of the 
weather, found it impossible to prevent the- 
French from coming out. During the time that 
Admiral Colpoys was cruising off Brest, Ad- 
miral Richery, with six ships of the line, passed 
him, and got safe into the harbour. At the 
very moment when the French squadron was 
lying in Bantry Bay, Lord Bridport with his 
fleet was locked up by a foul wind in the 
Channel, and for several days could not stir to 
the assistance of Ireland. Admiral Colpoys, 
totally unable to find the French fleet, came 
home. Lord Bridport, at the change of»the 
wind, cruised for them in vain, and they got 
safe back to Brest, without having seen a 
single one of these floating bulwarks, the pos- 
session of which we believe will enable us 
with impunity to set justice and common sense 
at defiance. Such is the miserable and preca- 
rious state of an anemocracy, of a people who 
put their trust in hurricanes, and are governed 
by wind. In August, 1798, three forty-gua 
frigates landed 1100 men under Humbert, mak- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



469 



ing the passage from Rochelle to Killala with- 
out seeing any English ship. In October of 
the same year, four French frigates anchored 
in Killala Bay with 2000 troops; and though 
they did not land their troops, they returned to 
France in safety. In the same month, a line 
of battle ship, eight stout frigates, and a brig, 
all full of troops and stores, reached the coast 
of Ireland, and were fortunately, in sight of 
land, destroyed, after an obstinate engagement, 
by Sir John Warren. 

If you despise the little troop which, in these 
numerous experiments, did make good its land- 
ing, take with you, if you please, this precis of 
its exploits : eleven hundred men, commanded 
by a soldier raised from the ranks, put to rout 
a select army of 6000 men, commanded by 
General Lake, seized their ordinance, ammuni- 
tion, and stores, advanced 150 miles into a 
country containing an armed force of 150,000 
men, and at last surrender-ed to the viceroy, an 
experienced general, gravely and cautiously 
advancing at the head of all his chivalry and 
of an immense army to oppose him. You 
must excuse these details about Ireland, but it 
appears to me to be of all other subjects the 
most important. If we conciliate Ireland, we 
can do nothing amiss ; if we do not, we can do 
nothing well. If Ireland was friendly, we might 
equally set at defiance the talenis of Bonaparte 
and the blunders of his rival, Mr. Canning; we 
could then support the ruinous and silly bustle 
of our useless expeditions, and the almost in- 
credible ignorance of our commercial orders in 
council. Let the present administration give 
up but this one point, and there is nothing 
which I would not consent to grant them. Mr. 
Perceval shall have full liberty to insult the 
tomb of Mr. Fox, and to torment every eminent 
dissenter in Great Britain ; Lord Camden shall 
have large boxes of plums ; Mr. Rose receive 
permission to prefix to his name the appella- 
tive of virtuous ; and to the Viscount Castle- 
reagh* a round sum of ready money shall be 
•well and truly paid into his hand. Lastly, what 
remains to Mr. George Canning, but that he 
rides up and down Pall Mall glorious upon a 
white horse, and that they cry out before him, 
Thus shall it be done to the statesman who 
hath written "The Needy Knife-Grinder," and 
the German play 1 Adieu only for the present; 
you shall soon hear from me again ; it is a sub- 
ject upon which I cannot long be silent. 



LETTER Vm. 

Nothing can be more erroneous than to sup- 
pose that Ireland is not bigger than the Isle of 
Wight, or of more consequence than Guernsey 
or Jersey ; and yet I am almost inclined to be- 
lieve, from trie general supineness which pre- 
vails here respecting the dangerous stale of 
that country, that such is the rank which it 
holds in our statistical tables. I have been 
writing to you a great deal about Ireland, and 
perhaps it may be of some use to state to you 
concisely the nature and resources of the 
country which has been the subject of our long 

=^TbiB is a very unjust imputation on Lord Castlereagh- 



and strange correspondence. There were re- 
turned, as I have before observed, to the hearth 
tax, in 1791, 701,132* houses, which Mr.New- 
enham shows from unquestionable documents 
to be nearly 80,000 below the real number of 
houses in that country. There are 27,457 
square English miles in Ireland,-]- and more 
than five millions of people. 

By the last survey, it appears that the inha- 
bited houses in England and Wales amount to 
1,574,902, and the population to 9,343,578, 
which gives an average of 5g to each house, in 
a country where the density of population is 
certainly less considerable than in Ireland. It 
is commonly supposed that two-fifths of the 
army and navy are Irishmen, at periods when 
political disaffection does not avert the Catho- 
lics from the service. The current value of 
Irish exports in 1807 was 9,314,854/. 17s. 7d.; 
a state of commerce about equal to the com- 
merce of England in the middle of the reign of 
George II. The tonnage of ships entered in- 
ward and cleared outward in the trade of Ire- 
land, in 1807, amounted to 1,567,430 tons. The 
quantity of home spirits exported amounted to 
10,284 gallons in 1796, and to 930,800 gallons 
in 1804. Of the exports, which I have stated, 
provisions amounted to four millions, and linen 
to about four millions and a half. There was 
exported from Ireland, upon an average of two 
years ending in January, 1804, 591,274 barrels 
of barley, oats, and wheat; and by weight 
910,848 cwts. of flour, oatmeal, barley, oats 
and wheat. The amount of butter exported in 
1804, from Ireland, was worth, in money, 
1,704,680/. sterling. The importation of ale 
and beer from the immense manufactures now 
carrying on of these articles, was diminished 
to 3209 barrels, in the year 1804, from 111,920 
barrels, which was the average importation 
per annum, taking from three years ending in 
1792; and at present there is an export trade 
of porter. On an average of the three years, 
ending March, 1783, there were imported into 
Ireland, of cotton wool, 3326 cwts., of cotton 
yarn, 5405 lbs. ; but on an average of three 
years, ending January, 1803, there were im- 
ported, of the first article, 13,159 cwts., and of 
the latter, 628,406 lbs. It is impossible to con- 
ceive any manufacture more flourishing. The 
export of linen has increased in Ireland from 
17,776,862 yards, the average in 1770, to 
43,534,971 yards, the amount in 1805. The 
tillage of Ireland has more then trebled within 
the last twenty-one years. The importation 
of coals has increased from 230,000 tons in 
1783, to 417,030 in 1804; of tobacco, from 
3,459,861 lbs. in 1783, to 6,611,543 in 1804; of 
tea, from 1,703,855 lbs. in 1783, to 3,3-58,256, in 
1804; of sugar, from 143,117 cwts. in 1782, to 
309,076, in 1804. Ireland now supports a 
funded debt of above 64 millions, and it is 
computed that more than three millions of 
money are annually remitted to Irish absentees 
resident in this country. In Mr. Foster's re- 



* The checks to population were very trifling from the 
rebellion. It lasted two months : of his majesty's Irish 
forces, there perished about 1600; of the rebels, 11,000 
were killed in the field, and 2000 hanged or exported : 
400 loyal persons were assassinated. 

t Id England 49,450. 

2R 



470 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



port, of 100 folio pages, presented to the House 
of Commons in the year 1806, the total expen- 
diture of Ireland is stated at 9,760,013Z. Ire- 
land has increased about two-thirds in its 
population within twenty-five years, and yet, 
and in about the same space of time, its ex- 
ports of beef, bullocks, cows, pork, swine, but- 
ter, wheat, barley, and oats, collectively taken, 
have doubled; and this in spite of two years' 
famine, and the presence of an immense army, 
that is always at hand to guard the most valu- 
able appanage of our empire from joining our 
most inveterate enemies. Ireland has the 
greatest possible facilities for carrying on com- 
merce with the whole of Europe. It contains, 
within a circuit of 750 miles, 66 secure har- 
bours, and presents a western frontier against 
Great Britain, reaching from the Frith of Clyde 
. \ north to the Bristol Channel south, and vary- 
, 'ing in distance from 20 to 100 miles; so that 
the subjugation of Ireland would compel us to 
guard with ships and soldiers a new line of 
coast, certainly amounting, with all its sinuosi- 
ties, to more than 700 miles — an addition of po- 
lemics, in our present stale of hostility with all 
the world, which must highly gratify the vigor- 
ists, and give them an ample opportunity of 
displaying that foolish energy upon which 
their claims to distinction are founded. Such 
, ,, is the country which the right reverend the 
,- chancellor of the exchequer would drive into 
the arms of France, and for the conciliation of 
which we are requested to wait, as if it were 
one of those sinecure places which were given 
to Mr. Perceval snarling at the breast, and 
which cannot be abolished till his decease. 

How sincerely and fervently have I often 
wished that the Emperor of the French had 
thought as Mr. Spencer Perceval does upon the 
subject of government ; that he had entertained 
doubts and scruples upon the propriety of ad- 
mitting the Protestants to an equality of rights 
with the Catholics, and that he had left in the 
middle of his empire these vigorous seeds of 
hatred and disaffection : but the world was 
„^never yet conquered by a blockhead. One of 
, the very first measures we saw him recurring 
to was the complete establishment of religious 
liberty ; if his subjects fought and paid as 
he pleased, he allowed them to believe as they 
pleased; the moment I saw this, my best hopes 
were lost. I perceived in a nioment the kind of 
man we had to do with. I was well aware of 
the miserable ignorance and folly of this 
.,,, country upon the subject of toleration; and 
,jj every year has been adding to the success of 
jj^, that game which it was clear he had the will 
j and the ability to play against us. 
i^j ', You say Bonaparte is not in earnest upon the 
,., subject of religion, and that this is the cause 
of his tolerant spirit ; but is it possible you can 
intend to give us such dreadful and unamiable 
notions of religion ? Are we to understand 
^^ that the moment a man is sincere he is narrow- 
minded ; that persecution is the child of belief; 
and that a desire to leave all men in the quiet 
and unpunished exercise of their own creed 
can only exist in the mind of an infidell 
Thank God ! I know many men whose prin- 
ciples are as firm as they are expanded, who 
cling tenacioasly to their own modification of 



the Christian faith, without the slightest dispo 
sition to force that modification upon other 
people. If Bonaparte is liberal in subjects of 
religion because he has no religion, is this a 
reason why we should be illiberal because we 
are Christians 1 If he owes this excelientquality 
to a vice, is that any reason why we may not 
owe it to a virtue] Toleration is a great good, 
and a good to be imitated, let it come from 
whom it will. If a sceptic is tolerant, it only 
shows that he is not foolish in practice as well 
as erroneous in theory. If a religious man is 
tolerant, it evinces that he is religious from 
thought and inquiry, because he exhibits in his 
conduct one of the most beautiful and import- 
ant consequences of a religious mind, — an in- 
violable charity to all the honest varieties of 
human opinion. 

Lord Sidmouth, and all the anti-Catholic 
people, little foresee that ihey will hereafter be 
the sport of the .antiquary; that their prophe- 
cies of ruin and destruction from Catlvolic 
emancipation will be clapped into the notes of 
some quaint history, and be matter of plea- 
santry even to the sedulous housewife and the 
rural dean. There is always a copious sup- 
ply of Lord Sidmouths in the world: nor is 
there one single source of human happiness 
against which they have not uttered the most 
lugubrious predictions. Turnpike roads, navi- 
gable canals, inoculation, hops, tobacco, the 
Reformation, the Revolution — there are always 
a set of worthy and moderately-gifted men, 
who bawl out death and ruin upon every valu- 
able change which the varying aspect of human 
affairs absolutely and imperiously requires. I 
have often thought that it would be extremely 
useful to make a collection of the hatred and 
abuse that all those changes have experienced^, 
which are now admitted to be marked improve- 
ments in our condition. Such an history might 
make folly a little more modest, and suspicious 
of its own decisions. 

Ireland, you say, since the union, is to be 
considered as a part of the whole kingdom; 
and therefore, however Catholics may predo- 
minate in that particular spot, yet, taking the 
whole empire together, they are to be consi- 
dered as a much more insignificant quota of 
the population. Consider them in what light 
you please, as part of the whole, or by them- 
selves, or in what manner may be most con- 
sentaneous to the devices of your holy mind — 
I say in a very few words, if you do not relieve 
these people from the civil incapacities to 
which they are exposed, you will lose them ; 
or you must employ great strength and much 
treasure in watching over them. In the pre- 
sent state of the world, you can afford to do 
neither the one nor the other. Having slated 
this, I shall leave you to be ruined, Puffendorf 
in hand, (as Mr. Secretary Canning says,) and 
to lose Ireland, just as you have found out what 
proportion the aggrieved people should bear to 
the whole population, before their calamities 
meet with redress. As for your parallel cases, 
I am no more afraid of deciding upon them than 
I am upon their prototype. If ever any one 
heresy should so far spread itself over the prin- 
cipality of Wales that the established church 
were left in a minority of one to four; if you 



n 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



471 



had subjected these heretics to very severe 
civil privations; if the consequence of such 
privations were an universal state of disaffec- 
tion among that caseous and wrathful people; 
and if, at the same time, you were at war with 
all the world, how can you doubt for a moment 
that I would instantly restore them to a state of 
the most complete civil liberty 1 What matters 
it under what name you put the same easel 
Common sense is not changed by appellations. 
I have said how I would act to Ireland, and I 
would act so to all the world. 

I admit that, to a certain degree, the govern- 
ment will lose the allections of the Orangemen 
by emancipating the Catholics ; much less, 
however, at present, than three years past. 
The few men, who have ill-treated the whole 
crew, live in constant terror that the oppressed 
people will rise upon them and carry the ship 
into Brest : — they begin to find that it is a very 
tiresome thing to sleep every night with cocked 
pistols under their pillows, and to breakfast, 
dine, and sup with drawn hangers. They 
suspect that the privilege of beating and kick- 
ing the rest of the sailors is hardly worth all 
this anxiety, and that if the ship does ever fall 
into the hands of the disaffected, all the cruel- 
ties which they have experienced will be tho- 
roughly remembered and amply repaid. To a 
short period of disaffection among the Orange- 
men, I confess I should not much object: my 
love of poetical justice does carry me as far 
as that; one summer's whipping, only one: 
the thumb-screw for a short season; a little 
light, easy torturing between Lady-day and 
Michaelmas; a short specimen of Mr. Perce- 
val's rigour. I have malice enough to ask this 
slight atonement for the groans and shrieks 
of the poor Catholics, unheard by any human 
tribunal, but registered by the angel of God 
against their Protestant and enlightened op- 
pressors. 

Besides, if you who count ten so often can 
count five, you must perceive that it is better 
to have four friends and one enemy than four 
enemies and one friend; and the more violent 
the hatred of the Orangemen, the more certain 
the reconciliation of the Catholics. The dis- 
affection of the Orangemen will be the Irish 
rainbow ; when I see it, I shall be sure that the 
storm is over. 

If those incapacities, from which the Ca- 
tholics ask to be relieA^ed, were to the mass of 
them only a mere feeling of pride, and if the 
question were respecting the attainment of 
privileges which could be of importance only 
to the highest of the sect, I should still say, 
that the pride of the mass was very naturally 
wounded by the degradation of their superiors. 
Indignity to George Rose would be felt by the 
smallest nummary gentleman in the king's 
employ; and Mr. John Bannister could not be 
indifferent to any thing which happened to 
Mr. Canning. But the truth is, it is a most 
egregious mistake to suppose that the Catholics 
are contending merely for the fringes and fea- 
thers of their chiefs. I will give you a list, 
in my next letter, of those privations which 
are represented to be of no consequence to 
any body but Lord Fingal, and some twenty 
or thirty of the principal persons of their sect. 
In the mean time, adieu, and be wise. 



LETTER IX. 

Dear. Abraham, 

No catholic can be chief governor or go- 
vernor of this kingdom, chancellor or keeper 
of the great seal, lord high-treasurer, chief of 
any of the courts of justice, chancellor of the 
exchequer, puisne judge, judge in the admi- 
ralty, master of the rolls, secretary of state, 
keeper of the privy seal, vice-treasurer or his 
deputy, teller or cashier of exchequer, auditor 
or general, governor or custos rotulorurn of 
counties, chief governor's secretary, privy 
councillor, king's counsel, serjeant, attorney, 
solicitor-general, master in chancery, provost 
or fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, post- 
master-general, master and lieutenant-general 
of ordnance, commander-in-chief, general on 
the staff, sheriff, sub-sheriff, mayor, bailiff, 
recorder, burgess, or any other officer in a 
city, or a corporation. No Catholic can be 
guardian to a Protestant, and no priest guar- 
dian at all ; no Catholic can be a gamekeeper, 
or have for sale, or otherwise, any arms or 
warlike stores ; no Catholic can present to a 
living, unless he chooses to turn Jew in order 
to obtain that privilege; the pecuniary quali- 
fication of Catholic jurors is made higher than 
that of Protestants, and no relaxation of the 
ancient rigorous code is permitted, unless to 
those who shall take an oath prescribed by 13 
& 14 Geo. III. Now if this is not picking the 
plums out of the pudding, and leaving the 
mere batter to the Catholics, I know not what 
is. If it were merely the privy council, it 
would be (I allow) nothing but a point of 
honour for which the mass of Catholics were 
contending, the honour of being chief mourn- 
ers or pall-bearers to the country ; but surely 
no man will contend that every barrister may 
not speculate upon the possibility of being a 
puisne judge ; and that every shopkeeper must 
not feel himself injured by his exclusion from 
borough offices. 

One of the greatest practical evils which the 
Catholics suffer in Ireland, is their exclusion 
from the offices of sheriff and deputy sheriff. 
Nobody who is unacquainted with Ireland 
can conceive the obstacles which this opposes 
to the fair administration of justice. The for- 
mation of juries is now entirely in the hands 
of the Protestants : the lives, liberties, and 
properties of the Catholics in the hands of the 
juries ; and this is the arrangement for the ad- 
ministration of justice in a country where re- 
ligious prejudices are inflamed to the greatest 
degree of animosity ! In this country, if a man 
is a foreigner, if he sells slippers, and sealing 
wax and artificial flowers, we are so tender of 
human life, that we take care half the number 
of persons who are to decide upon his fate 
should be men of similar prejudices and feel- 
ings with himself: but a poor Catholic in Ire- 
land may be tried by twelve Percevals, and 
destroyed according to the manner of that gen- 
tleman in the name of the Lord, and with all 
the insulting forms of justice. I do not go the 
length of saying that deliberate and wilful in- 
justice is done. I have no doubt that the 
Orange deputy-sheriff thinks it would be a 
most unpardonable breach of his duty if he 
did not summon a Protestant panel. I can 



472 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



easily believe that the Protestant panel may 
conduct themselves very conscientiously in 
hanging the gentleman of the crucifix; but I 
blame the law which does not guard the Ca- 
tholic against the probable lenour of those 
feelings which must unconsciously influence 
the judgments of mankind. I detest that state 
of society which extends unequal degrees of 
protection to different creeds and persuasions; 
and I cannot describe to you the contempt I 
feel for a man who, calling himself a states- 
man, defends a system which fills the heart of 
every Irishman with treason, and makes his 
allegiance prudence, not choice. 

I request to know if the vestry taxes, in 
Ireland, are a mere matter of romantic feeling, 
which can affect only the Earl of Fingall In 
a parish where there are four thousand Catho- 
lics and fifty Protestants, the Protestants may 
meet together in a vestry meeting, at which 
no Catholic has the right to vote, and tax all 
the lands in the parish Is. 6f/. per acre, or in 
the pound, I forget which, for the repairs of 
the church — and how has the necessity of 
these repairs been ascertained'? A Protestant 
plumber has discovered that it wants new 
leading; a Protestant carpenter is convinced 
the timbers are not sound, and a glazier, who 
hates holy water, (as an accoucher hates celi- 
bacy because he gets nothing by it,) is em- 
ployed to put in new sashes. 

The grand juries in Ireland are the great 
scene of jobbing. They have a power of 
making a county rate to a considerable extent 
for roads, bridges, and other objects of general 
accommodation. "You sufler the road to be 
brought through my park, and I will have the 
bridge constructed in a situation where it will 
make a beautiful object to your house. You 
do my job, and I will do yours." These are 
the sweet and interesting subjects which occa- 
sionally occupy Milesian gentlemen while they 
are attendant upon this grand inquest of jus- 
tice. But there is a religion, it seems, even 
in jobs; and it will be highly gratifying to 
Mr. Perceval to learn that no man in Ireland 
who believes in seven sacraments can carry 
a public road, or bridge, one yard out of the 
direction most beneficial to the public, and 
that nobody can cheat that public who does 
not expound the Scriptures in the purest and 
most orthodox manner. This will give plea- 
sure to Mr. Perceval : but, from his unfairness 
upon these topics, I appeal to the justice and 
proper feelings of Mr. Huskisson. I ask him 
if the human mind can experience a more 
dreadful sensation than to see its own jobs 
refused, and the jobs of another religion per- 
petually succeeding? I ask him his opinion 
of a jobless faith, of a creed which dooms a 
man through life to a lean and plunderless in- 
tegrity. He knows that human nature cannot 
and will not bear it; and if we were to paint a 
political Tartarus, it would be an endless series 
of snug expectations and cruel disappoint- 
ments. These are a few of many dreadful 
inconveniences which the Catholics of all 
ranks suffer from the laws by which they are 
at present oppressed. Besides, look at human 
nature : — what is the history of all professions'? 
Joel is to be brought up to the bar: has Mrs. 



Plymley the slightest doubt of his being chan- 
cellor? Do not his two shrivelled aunts live 
in the certainty of seeing him in that situa- 
tion, and of -cutting out with their own hands 
his equity habiliments 1 And I could name a 
certain minister of the Gospel who does not, 
in the bottom of his heart, much differ from 
these opinions. Do you think that the fathers 
and mothers of the holy Catholic Church are 
not as absurd as Protestant papas and ma- 
mas ? The probability I admit to be, in each 
particular case, that the sweet little blockhead 
will in fact never get a brief; — but I will ven- 
ture to say, there is not a parent from the 
Giant's causeway to Bantry Bay who does not 
conceive that his child is the unfortunate vic- 
tim of the exclusion, and that nothing short of 
positive law could prevent his own dear pre- 
eminent Paddy from rising to the highest ho- 
nours of the state. So with the army, and 
Parliament; in fact, few are excluded; but, in 
imagination, all : you keep twenty or thirty 
Catholics out, and you lose the affections of 
four millions; and, let me tell you, that recent 
circumstances have by no means tended to 
diminish in the minds of men that hope of 
elevation beyond their own rank which is so 
congenial to our nature; from pleading for 
John Roe to taxing John Bull, from jesting for 
Mr. Pitt and writing in the Anti-Jacobin, to 
managing the affairs of Europe — these are 
leaps which seem to justify the fondest dreams 
of mothers and aunts. 

I do not say that the disabilities to which 
the Catholics are exposed amount to such in- 
tolerable grievances, that the strength and in- 
dustry of a nation are overwhelmed by them 5 
the increasing prosperity of Ireland fully de- 
monstrates the contrary. But I repeat again, 
what I have often stated in the course of our 
correspondence, that your laws against the 
Catholic are exactly in that state in which 
you have neither the benefits of rigour nor of 
liberality; every law which prevented the 
Catholics from gaining strength and wealth is 
repealed ; every law which can irritate re- 
mains ; if you were determined to insult the 
Catholics, you should have kept them weak ; 
if you resolved to give them strength, you 
should have ceased to insult them : — at present 
your conduct is pure, unadulterated folly. 

Lord Hawkesbury says, we heard nothing 
about the Catholics till we began to mitigate 
the laws against them ; when we relieved them 
in part from this oppression they began to be 
disaffected. This is very true ; but it proves 
just what I have said, that you have either 
done too much, or too little ; and as there 
lives not, I hope, upon earth, so depraved a 
courtier that he would load the Catholics with 
their ancient chains, what absurdity it is then 
not to render their dispositions friendly, when 
you leave their arms and legs free ! 

You know, and many Englishmen know, 
what passes in Chinas but nobody knows or 
cares what passes in Ireland. At the begin- 
ning of the present reign, no Catholic could 
realize property, or carry on any business} 
they were absolutely annihilated, and had no 
more agency in the country than so many 
trees. They were like Lord Mulgrave's elo- 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



473 



'quence, and Lord Camden's wit ; the legisla- \ 
live bodies did not know of their existence. 
For these twenty-five years last past, the Ca- 
tholics have been engaged in commerce ; 
within that period the commerce of Ireland 
has doubled : — there are four Catholics at work 
for one Protestant, and eight Catholics at work 
for one Episcopalian ; of course the propor- 
tion which Catholic wealth bears to Protestant 
wealth is every year altering rapidly in favour 
•of the Catholics. I have already told you what 
their purchases of land were the last year ; 
since that period, I have been at some pains 
TO find out the actual state of the Catholic 
wealth ; it is impossible, upon such a subject, 
to arrive at complete accuracy; but I have 
good reason to believe that there are at pre- 
sent 2000 Catholics in Ireland, possessing an 
income from 5001. upwards, many of these 
with incomes of one, two, three, and four 
thousand, and some amounting to fifteen and 
twenty thousand per annum : — and this is the 
kingdom, and these the people, for whose con- 
ciliation we are to wait Heaven knows when, 
and Lord Hawkesbury why! As for me, I 
never think of the situation of Ireland, with- 
out feeling the same necessity for immediate 
interference as I should do if I saw blood 
flowing from a great artery. I rush to- 
wards it with the instinctive rapidity of a man 
desirous of preventing death, and have no 
other feeling but that in a few seconds the 
patient may be no more. 

I could not help smiling, in the times of No- 
Popery, to witness the loyal indignation of 
many persons at the attempt made by the last 
ministry to do something for the relief of Ire- 
land. The general cry in the countiy was, 
that they would not see their beloved monarch 
used ill in his old age, and that they would 
stand by him to the last drop of their blood. 
I respect good feelings, however erroneous be 
the occasions on which they display them- 
selves ; and, therefore, I saw in all this as 
much to admire as to blame. It was a species 
of afiection, however, which reminded me 
very forcibly of the attachment displayed by 
the servants of the Russian ambassador, at 
the beginning of the last century. His excel- 
lency happened to fall down in a kind of apo- 
plectic fit, when he was paying a morning 
visit in the house of an acquaintance. The 
confusion was of course very great, and mes- 
sengers were despatched, in every direction, 
to find a surgeon, who, upon his arrival, de- 
clared that his excellency must be immediately 
blooded, and prepared himself forthwith to 
perform the operation ; the barbarous servants 
of the embassy, who were there in great num- 
bers, no sooner saw the surgeon prepared to 
wound the arm of their master with a sharp 
shining instrument, than they drew their 
swords, put themselves in an attitude of de- 
fence, and swore in pure Sclavonic, " that 
they would murder any man who attempted 
to do him the slightest injury; he had been a 
very good master to them, and they would not 
desert him in his misfortunes, or sufier his 
blood to be shed while he was ofi" his guard, 
and incapable of defending himself." By good 
fortune, the secretary arrived about this period 
60 



of the dispute, and his excellency, relieved 
from superfluous blood and perilous afiection, 
was, after much difficulty, restored to life. 

There is an argument brought forward with 
some appearance of plausibility in the House 
of Commons, which certainly merits an an- 
swer. You know that the Catholics now vote 
for members of Parliament in Ireland, and 
that they outnumber the Protestants in a very 
great proportion ; if you allow Catholics to sit 
in Parliament, religion will be found to influ- 
ence votes more than property, and the greater 
part of the 100 Irish members who are return- 
ed to Parliament will be Catholics. Add to 
these the Catholic members who are returned 
in England, and you will have a phalanx of 
heretical strength which every minister will 
be compelled to respect, and occasionally to 
conciliate .by concessions incompatible with 
the interests of the Protestant Church. The 
fact is, however, that you are at this moment 
subjected to every danger of this kind which 
you can possibly apprehend hereafter. If the 
spiritual interests of the voters are more pow- 
erful than their temporal interests, they can 
bind down their representatives to support any 
measures favourable to the Catholic religion, 
and they can change the objects of their 
choice till they have found Protestant members 
(as they easily may do) perfectly obedient to 
their wishes. If the superior possessions of 
the Protestants prevent the Catholics from 
uniting for a common political object, then 
the danger you fear cannot exist ; if zeal, on 
the contrary, gets the better of acres, then the 
danger at present exists, from the right of 
voting already given to the Catholics, and it 
will not be increased by allowing them to sit 
in Parliament. There are, as nearly as I can 
recollect, thirty seats in Ireland for cities and 
counties, where the Protestants are the most 
numerous, and where the members returned 
must of course be Protestants. In the other 
seventy representations, the wealth of the Pro- 
testants is opposed to the number of the Ca- 
tholics ; and if all the seventy members re- 
turned were of the Catholic persuasion, they 
must still plot the destruction of our religion 
in the midst of 588 Protestants. Such terrors 
would disgrace a cook-maid, or a toothless 
aunt — when they fall from the lips of bearded 
and senatorial men, they are nauseous, anti- 
peristaltic, and emetical. 

How can you for a moment doubt of the 
rapid effects which would be produced by the 
emancipation 1 — In the first place, to my cer- 
tain knowledge, the Catholics have long since 
expressed to his majesty's ministers their per- 
fect readiness to vest in his majesty, either with 
the consent of the pope, or without it, if it cannot 
be obtained, the nomination of the Catholic prelacy. 
The Catholic prelacy in Ireland consists of 
twenty-six bishops and the warden of Galway, 
a dignitary enjoying Catholic jurisdiction. 
The number of Roman Catholic priests in 
Ireland exceeds one thousand. The expenses 
of his peculiar worship are, to a substantial 
farmer or mechanic, five shillings per annum; 
to a labourer (where he is not entirely ex- 
■cused), one shilling per annum ; this includes 
the contribution of the whole family, and for 
2e2 



474 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



this the priest is bound to attend them wheYi 
sick, and to confess them when they apply to 
him; he is also to keep his chapel in order, to 
celebrate divine service, and to preach on 
Sundays and holydays. In the northern dis- 
trict a priest gains from 30/. to 50/.; in the 
other parts of Ireland from 60/. to 90/. per an- 
num. The best ^id Catholic bishops receive 
about 400/. per ann. ; the others from 300/. to 
350/. . My plan is very simple ; I would have 
300 Catholic parishes at 100/. per ann., 300 at 
200/. per ann., and 400 at 300/. per ann.; this, 
for the whole thousand parishes, would amount 
to 190,000/. To .the prelacy I would allot 
20,000/. in unequal proportions, from 1000/. to 
500/.; and I would appropriate 40,000/. more 
for the support of Catholic schools, and the 
repairs of Catholic churches : the whole 
amount of which sums is 250,000/., about the 
expense of three days of one of our genuine, 
good, English, just and necessary wars. The 
clergy should all receive their salaries at the 
Bank of Ireland, and I would place the whole 
patronage in the hands of the crown. Now, I 
appeal to any human being, except Spencer 
Perceval, Esq., of the parish of Hampstead, 
what the disaffection of a clergy would amount 
to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the 
crown, and M^hether Ignatius Loyola himself, 
if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead 
saint, could withstand the temptation of bounc- 
ing from 100/. a year in Sligo, to 300/. in Tip- 
perary? This is the miserable sum of money 
for which the merchants, and land-owners, 
and nobility of England are exposing them- 
selves to the tremendous peril of losing Ire- 
land. The sinecure places of the Roses and 
the Percevals, and the "dear and near rela- 
tions," put up to auction at thirty years' pur- 
chase, would almost amount to the money. 

I admit that nothing can be more reasonable 
than to expect that a Catholic priest should 
starve to death, genteelly and pleasantly, for 
the good of the Protestant religion; but is it 
equally reasonable to expect that he should do 
so for the Protestant pews, and Protestant 
brick and mortar 1 On an Irish Sabbath, the 
bell of a neat parish church often summons to 
church only the parson and an occasionally 
conforming clerk ; while, two hundred -yards 
off, a thousand Catholics are huddled together 
in a miserable hovel, and pelted by all the 
storms of heaven. Can any thing be more 
distressing than to see a venerable man pour- 
ing forth sublime truths in tattered breeches, 
and depending for his food upon the little offal 
he gets from his parishioners 1 I venerate a 
human being who starves for his principles, 
let them be what they may ; but starving for 
any thing is not at all to the taste of the hon- 
ourable flagellants ; strict principles, and good 
pay, is the motto of Mr. Perceval ; the one he 
keeps in great measure for the faults of his 
enemies, the other for himself. 

There are parishes in Connaught in which 
a Protestant was never settled, nor even seen ; 
in that province, in Munster, and in parts of 
Leinster, the entire peasantry for sixty miles 
are Catholics; in these tracts, the churches are 
frequently shut for want of a congregation, or 
opened to an assemblage of from six to twenty 



persons. Of what Protestants there are in- 
Ireland, the greatest part are gathered together 
in Ulster, or they live in towns. In the coun- 
try of the other three provinces the Catholics 
see no other religion but their own, and are at 
the least as fifteen to one Protestant. In the 
diocese of Tuam, they are sixty to one ; in the 
parish of St. Mullins, diocese of Leghliu, there 
are four thousand Catholics and one Protestant; 
in the town of Grasgenamana, in the county 
of Kilkenny, there are between four and five 
hundred Catholic houses, and three Protestant 
houses. In the parish of Allen, county Kildare, 
there is no Protestant, though it is very popu- 
lous. In the parish of Arlesin, Queen's county, 
the proportion is one hundred to one. In the 
whole county of Kilkenny, by actual enumera- 
tion, it is seventeen to one; in the diocese of 
Kilmacduagh, province of Connaught, fifty-two 
to one, by ditto. These I give you as a few 
specimens of the present state of Ireland; — 
and yet there are men impudent and ignorant 
enough to contend that such evils require no 
remedy, and that naild family man who dweU- 
eth in Hampstead can find none but the cau- 
tery and the knife, 



omne per ignem 

Excoquitur vitium. 

I cannot describe the horror and disgust 
which I felt at hearing Mr. Perceval call upon 
the then ministry for measures of vigour in 
Ireland. If I lived at Hampstead upon stewed 
meat': and claret; if I walked to church every 
Sunday before eleven young gentlemen of my 
own begetting, with their faces washed, and 
their hair pleasingly combed ; if the Almighty 
had blessed me with every earthly comfort, — 
how awfully would I pause before I sent forth 
the flame and the sword over the cabins of the 
poor, brave, generous, open-hearted peasants 
of Ireland ! How easy it is to shed human 
blood — how easy it is to persuade ourselves 
that it is our duty to do so — and that the de- 
cision has cost us a severe struggle — how 
much, in all ages, have wounds and shrieks 
and tears been the cheap and vulgar resources 
of the rulers of mankind — how difficult and 
how noble it is to govern in kindness, and to 
found an empire up«on the everlasting basis of 
justice and affection ! — But what do men call 
vigour? To let loose hussars and to bring 
up artillery, to govern with lighted matches, 
and to cut, and push, and prime — I call this, 
not ■vigour, but the sloth of cruelty and ignorance. 
The vigour I love consists in finding out 
wherein subjects are aggrieved, in relieving 
them, in studying the temper and genius of a 
people, in consulting their prejudices, in se- 
lecting proper persons to lead and manage 
them, in the laborious, watchful, and difficult 
task of increasing public happiness by allay- 
ing each particular discontent. In this way 
Hoche pacified La Vendue — and in this way 
only will Ireland ever be subdued. But this, 
in the eyes of Mr. Perceval, is imbecility and 
meanness ; houses are not broken open — wo- 
men are not insulted — the people seem all to 
be happy ; they are not rode over by horses, 
and cut by whips. Do you call this vigour 1 — 
Is this government 1 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



475 



LETTER X. AND LAST. 

Yer must observe that all I have said of the 
■effects which will be produced by giving sala- 
ries to the Catholic clergy, only proceeds upon 
the supposition that the emancipation of the 
laity is effected : — without that, I am sure there 
is not a clergyman in Ireland who would re- 
ceive a shilling from government; he could 
not do so, without an entire loss of credit 
among the members of his own persuasion. 

What you say of the moderation of the Irish 
Protestaat clergy in collecting tithes, is, I be- 
lieve, strictly true. Instead of collecting what 
the law enables them to collect, I believe they 
seldom or ever collect more than two-thirds ; 
and I entirely agree with you, that the abolition 
of agistment tithe in Ireland by a vote of the 
Irish House of Commons, and without any 
remuneration to the church, was a most scan- 
dalous and Jacobinical measure. I do not 
blame the Irish clergy; but I submit to your 
common sense, if it is possible to explain to 
an Irish peasant upon what principle of justice, 
or common sense, he is to pay every tenth 
potato in his little garden to a clergyman in 
whose religion nobody believes for twenty 
miles around him, and who has nothing to 
preach to but bare walls. It is true, if the 
tithes are bought up, the cottager must pay 
more rent to his landlord; but the same thing, 
done in the shape of rent, is less odious than 
when it is done in the shape of tithe ; I do not 
want to take a shilling out of the pockets of 
the clergy, but to leave the substance of things, 
and to change their names. I cannot see the 
slightest reason why the Irish labourer is to be 
relieved from the real onus, or from any thing 
else but the name of tithe. At present, he 
rents only nine-tenths of the produce of the 
land, which is all that belongs to the owner; 
this he has at the market price ; if the land- 
owner purchase the other tenth of the church, 
of course he has a right to make a correspond- 
ent advance upon his tenant. 

I very much doubt, if you were to lay open 
all civil offices to the Catholics, and to grant 
salaries to their clergy, in the manner I have 
stated, if the Catholic laity would give them- 
selves much trouble about the advance of their 
church ; for they would pay the same tithes 
under one system that they do undey another. 
If you were to bring the Catholics into the 
daylight of the world, to the high situations of 
the army, the navy, and the bar, numbers of 
them would come over to the established 
church, and do as other people do ; instead of 
that you set a mark of infamy upon them, rouse 
every passion of our nature in favour of their 
creed, and then wonder that men are blind to 
the follies of the Catholic religion. There are 
■hardly any instances of old and rich families 
among the Protestant dissenters ; when a man 
keeps a coach, and lives in good company, he 
comes to church, and gets ashamed of the 
meeting-house ; if this is not the case with the 
father, it is almost always the case with the 
•son. These things would never be so, if the 
dissenters were in practice as much excluded 
from all the concerns of civil life, as the 
Catholics are. If a rich young Catholic were 



in Parliament, he would belong to White's and 
to Brooke's, would keep race-horses, would 
walk up and down Pall Mall, be exonerated of 
his ready money and his constitution, become 
as totally devoid of morality, honesty, know- 
ledge, and civility, as Protestant loungers in 
Pall Mall, and return home with a supreme 
contempt for Father O'Leary and Father 
O'Callaghan. I am astonished at the madness 
of the Catholic clergy, in not perceiving that 
Catholic emancipation is Catholic infidelity; 
that to entangle their people in the intrigues 
of a Protestant Parliament, and a Protestant 
court, is to insure the loss of every man of 
fashion and consequence in their community. 
The true receipt for preserving their religion 
is Mr. Perceval's receipt for destroying it; it 
is to deprive every rich Catholic of all the 
objects of secular ambition, to separate him 
from the Protestant, arid to shut him up in his 
castle, with priests and relics. 

We are told, in answer to all our arguments, 
that this is not a fit period, — that a period of 
universal war is not the proper time for dan- 
gerous innovations in the constitution; this is 
as much as to say, that the worst time for 
making friends is the period when you have 
made many enemies ; that it is the greatest of 
all errors to stop when you are breathless, and 
to lie down when you are fatigued. Of one 
thing I am quije certain : if the safety of 
Europe is once completely restored, the Ca- 
tholics may for ever bid adieu to the slightest 
probability of effecting their object. Such men 
as hang about a court not only are deaf to the 
suggestions of mere justice, but they despise 
justice; they detest the word right; the only 
word which rouses them is peril ; where they 
can oppress with impunity, they oppress for 
ever, and call it loyalty and wisdom. 

I am so far from conceiving the legitimate 
strength of the crown would be diminished by 
these abolitions of civil incapacities in conse- 
quence of religious opinions, that my only ob- 
jection to the increase of religious freedom is, 
that it would operate as a diminution of po- 
litical freedom; the power of the crown is so 
overbearing at this period, that almost the only 
steady opposers of its fatal influence are men 
disgusted by religious intolerance. Our esta- 
blishments are so enormous, and so utterly 
disproportioned to our population, that every 
second or third man you meet in society gains 
something from the public ; my brother the 
commissioner, — my nephew the police justice, 
— purveyor of small beer to t!ie army in Ire- 
land, — clerk of the mouth, — yeoman to the left 
hand, — these are the obstacles which common 
sense and justice have now to overcome. Add 
to this, that the king, old and infirm, excites a 
principle of very amiable generosity in his fa- 
vour ; that he has led a good, moral, and reli- 
gious life, equally removed from profligacy 
and methodistical hypocrisy; that he has been 
a good husband, a good father, and a good 
master; that he dresses plain, loves hunting 
and farming, hates the French, and is, in all 
his opinions and habits, quite English ; — these 
feelings are heightened by the present situa- 
tion of the world, and the yet unexploded cla- 
mour of Jacobinism. In short, from the various 



aW 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



sources of interest, personal regard, and na- 
tional taste, such a tempest of loyalty has set 
in upon the people, that the 47th proposition in 
Euclid might now be voted down with as much 
ease as any proposition in politics ; and, there- 
fore, if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract 
truths of science as much as he hates concrete 
truth in human affairs, now is his time for 
getting rid of the multiplication table, and 
passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions 
of the hypothenuse. Such is the history of Eng- 
lish parties at this moment ; you cannot seri- 
ously suppose that the people care for such 
men as Lord Hawkesbury, Mr. Canning, and 
Mr. Perceval, on their own account ; you can- 
not really believe them to be so degraded as to 
look to their safety from a man who proposes 
to subdue Europe by keeping it without Jesu- 
ifs bark. The people, at present, have one 
passion, and but one — 

A Jove principium, Jovis omnia plena. 

They care no more for the ministers I have 
mentioned, than they do for those sturdy royal- 
ists who, for 60/. per annum, stand behind his 
majesty's carriage, arrayed in scarlet and in 
gold. If the present ministers opposed the 
court instead of flattering it, they would not 
command twenty votes. 

Do not imagine by these observations, that 
I am not loyal ; without joining in the common 
cant of the best of kings, I respect the king 
most sincerely as a good man. His religion is 
better than the religion of Mr. Perceval, his 
old morality very superior to the old morality 
of Mr. Canning, and I am quite certain he has 
a safer understanding than both of them put 
together. Loyalty, within the bounds of reason 
and moderation, is one of the great instruments 
of English happiness ; but the love of the king 
may easily become more strong than the love 
of the kingdom, and we may lose sight of the 
public welfare in our exaggerated admiration 
of him who is appointed to reign only for its 
promotion and support. I detest Jacobinism ; 
and if I am doomed to be a slave at all, I 
would rather be the slave of a king than a 
cobler. God save the king, you say, warms 
your heart like the sound of a trumpet. I can- 
not make use of so violent a metaphor; but I 
am delighted to hear it, when it is the cry of 
genuine affection ; I am delighted to hear it, 
when they hail not only the individual man, 
but the outward and living sign of all English 
blessings. These are noble feelings, and the 
heart of every good man must go with them ; 
but God save the king, in these times, too often 
means God save my pension and my place, 
God give my sisters an allowance out of the 
privy purse, — make me clerk of the irons, let 
me survey the meltings, let me live upon the 
fruits of other men's industry, and fatten upon 
the plunder of the public. 
• What is it possible to say to such a man as 
the gentleman of Hampstead, who really be- 
lieves it feasible to convert the four million 
Irish Catholics to the Protestant religion, and 
considers this as the best remedy for the dis- 
turbed state of Ireland? It is not possible to 
answer such a man with arguments ; we must 
come out against him with beads, and a cowl, 



and push him into an hermitage. It is really 
such trash, that it is an abuse of the privilege 
of reasoning to reply to it. Such a project is 
well worthy the statesman who would brings 
the French to reason by keeping them without 
rhubarb, and. exhibit to mankind the awful 
spectacle of a nation deprived of neutral salts.^ 
This is not the dream of a wild apothecary- 
indulging in his own opium ; this is not the 
distempered fancy of a pounder of drugs, deli- 
rious from smallness of profits ; but it is the- 
sober, deliberate, and systematic scheme of a 
man to whom the public safety is entrusted, 
and whose appointment is considered by many 
as a masterpiece of political sagacity. What 
a sublime thought, that no purge can now be 
taken between the Weser and the Garonne; 
that the bustling pestle is still, the canorous 
mortar mute, and the bowels of mankind locked 
up for fourteen degrees of latitude ! When, I 
should be curious to know, were all the powers 
of crudity and flatulence fully explained to his 
majesty's ministers 1 At what period was this 
great plan of conquest and constipation fully 
developed 1 In whose mind was the idea of 
destroying the pride and the plasters of France 
first engendered 1 Without castor oil they 
might, for some months, to be sure, have car- 
ried on a lingering war ; but can they do with- 
out bark 1 Will the people live under a go- 
vernment where antimonial powders cannot be 
procured 1 Will they bear the loss of mercury? 
" There's the rub." Depend upon it, the ab- 
sence of materia medica will soon bring them 
to their senses, and the cry of Bourbon and 
bolus burst forth from the Baltic to the Mediter- 
ranean. 

You ask me for any precedent in our history 
where the oath of supremacy has been dis- 
pensed with. It was dispensed with to the 
Catholics of Canada, in 1774. They are only 
required to take a simple oath of allegiance. 
The same, I believe, was the case in Corsica. 
The reason of such exemption was obvious J 
you could not possibly have retained either of 
these countries without it. And what did it 
signify, whether you retained them or not ? la 
cases where you might have been foolish with* 
out peril, you were wise ; when nonsense and 
bigotry threaten you with destruction, it is im- 
possible to bring you back to the alphabet of 
justice and common sense; if men are to be 
fools, I would rather they were fools in little- 
matters than in great ; dulness turned up -with 
temerity, is a livery all the worse for the 
facings ; and the most tremendous of all things 
is the magnanimity of a dunce. 

It is not by any means necessary, as yoii 
contend, to repeal the Test Act if you give re- 
lief to the Catholic ; what the Catholics ask 
for is to be put on a footing with the Protestant 
dissenters, which would be done by repealing 
that part of the law which compels them to 
take the oath of supremacy and to make the 
declaration against transubstantiation ; they 
would then come into Parliament as all other 
dissenters are allowed to do, and the penal 
laws to which they were exposed for taking 
office would be suspended every year, as they 
have been for this half century past towards 
Protestant dissenters. Perhaps, after all, this 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



^m 



is the best method, — to continue the persecut- 
ing law, and to suspend it every year, — a me- 
thod which, while it effectually destroys the 
persecution itself, leaves to the great mass of 
ma:nkind the exquisite gratification of suppos- 
ing thai they are enjoying some advantage 
from which a particular class of their fellow- 
creatures are excluded. We manage the Cor- 
poration and Test Acts at present much in the 
same manner as if we were to persuade parish 
boys, who had been in the habit of beating an 
ass, to spare the animal, and beat the skin of 
an ass stuffed with straw ; this would preserve 
the semblance of tormenting without the re- 
ality, and keep boy and beast m good humour. 

How can you imagine that a provision for 
the Catholic clergy affects the 5th article of 
the Union 1 Surely I am preserving the Pro- 
testant church in Ireland, if I put it in a better 
condition than that in which it now is. A tithe 
proctor in Ireland collects his tithes with a 
blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay-cock by 
storm, sword in hand ; to give him equal value 
in a more specific shape, cannot, I should ima- 
gine, be considered as injurious to the church 
of Ireland ; and what right has that church to 
complain, if Pai'liament chooses to fix upon 
the empire the burthen of supporting a double 
ecclesiastical establishment] Are the reve- 
nues of the Irish Protestant clergy in the 
slightest degree injured by such provision 1 On 
the contrary, is it possible to confer a more 
serious benefit upon thatchurch, than by quiet- 
ing and contenting those who are at work for 
^ts destruction! 

It is impossible to think of the affairs of 
Ireland without being forcibly struck with the 
parallel of Hungary. Of her seven millions 
of inhabitants, one-half were Protestants, Cal- 
vinists, and Lutherans, many of the Greek 
Qhurch, and many Jews ; such was the state 
of their religious dissensions, that Mahomet 
had often been called in to the aid of Calvin, 
and the crescent often glittered on the walls of 
Budaandof Presburg. At last, in 1791, during 
the most violent crisis of disturbance, a diet 
was called, and by a great majority of voices 
a decree was passed, which secured to all the 
contending sects the fullest and freest exercise 
of religious worship and education; ordained 
(let it be heard in Hampstead) that churches 
and chapels should be erected for all on the 
most perfectly equal terms, that the Protestants 
of both confessions should depend upon their 
spiritual superiors alone, liberated them from 
swearing by the usual oath, " the holy Virgin 
Mary, the saints, and chosen of God ;" and then, 
the decree adds, " that public offices and honours, 
high or low, great or small, shall be given to natural 
born Hungarians who deserve well of their country, 
and possess the other qualifications, let their religion 
be tchat it may" Such was the line of policy 
pursued in a diet con^sisting of four hundred 
members, in a state whose form of government 
approaches nearer to our own than any other, 
having a Roman Catholic establishment of 
great wealth and power, and under the influence 
of one of the most bigoted Catholic courts in 
Europe. This measure has now the experience 
of eighteen years in its favour; it has under- 
gone a trial of fourteen years of revolution, 



such as the world never witnessed, and more 
than equal to a century less convulsed. What 
have been its effects 1 When the French 
advanced like a torrent within a few days' 
march of Vienna, the Hungarians rose in a 
mass ; they formed what they called the sacred 
insurrection, to defend their sovereign, their 
rights and liberties, now common to all ; and 
the apprehension of their approach dictated to 
the reluctant Bonaparte the immediate signa- 
ture of the treaty of Leohen: the Romish hie- 
rarchy of Hungary exists in all its former 
splendour and opulence ; never has the slightest 
attempt been made to diminish it; and those 
revolutionary principles, to which so large a 
portion of civilized Europe has been sacrificed, 
have here failed in making the smallest suc- 
cessful inroad. 

The whole history of this proceeding of the 
Hungarian diet is so extraordinary, and such 
an admirable comment upon the Protestantism 
of Mr. Spencer Perceval, that I must compel 
you to read a few short extracts from the law 
itself: — "The Protestants of both confessions 
shall, in religious matters, depend upon their 
own spiritual superiors alone. The Protestants 
may likewise retain their trivial and grammar 
schools. The church dues which the Pro- 
testants have hitherto paid to the Catholic 
parish priests, schoolmasters, or other such 
oflicers, either in money, productions, or labour, 
shall in future entirely cease, and after three 
months from the publishing of this law, be no 
more anywhere demanded. In the building or 
repairing of churches, parsonage-houses, and 
schools, the Protestants are not obliged to assist 
the Catholics with labour, nor the Catholics the 
Protestants. The pious foundations and dona- 
tions of the Protestants which already exist, 
or which in future may be made for their 
churches, ministers, schools and students, 
hospitals, orphan-houses and poor, cannot be 
taken from them under any pretext, nor yet 
the care of them; but rather the unimpeded 
administration shall be entrusted to those from 
among them to whom it legally belongs, and 
those foundations which may have been taken 
from them under the last government, shall be 
returned to them without delay; all afiairs of 
marriage of the Protestants are left to their 
own consistories ; all landlords .and masters of 
families, under the penalty of public prose- 
cution, are ordered not to prevent their sub- 
jects and servants, whether they be Catholic 
or Protestant, from the observance of the 
festivals and ceremonies of their religion," 
&c. &c. &c. — By what strange chances are 
mankind influenced ! A little Catholic barrister 
of Vienna might have raised the cry of no 
Protestantism, and Hungary would have panted 
for the arrival of a French army as much as 
Ireland does at this moment; arms would have 
been searched for; Lutheran and Calvinist 
houses entered in the dead of the night; and 
the strength of Austria exhausted in guarding 
a country from which, under the present liberal 
system, she may expect, in a moment of danger, 
the most powerful aid ; and let it be remem- 
bered, that this memorable example of political 
wisdom took place at a period when many 
great monarchies were yet unconquered in 



478 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



Europe; in a country where the two religious 
parties were equal in number; and where it is 
impossible to suppose indifference in the party 
which relinquished its exclusive privileges. 
Under all these circumstances, the measure 
was carried in the Hungarian diet by a ma- 
jority of 280 to 120. In a few weeks, we shall 
see every concession denied to the Catholics 
by a much larger majority of Protestants, at a 
moment when every other power is subjugated 
but ourselves, and in a country where the 
oppressed are four times as numerous as their 
oppressors. So much for the wisdom of our 
ancestors — so much for the nineteenth centuiy 
— so much for the superiority of the English 
over all the nations of the continent! 

Are you not sensible, let me ask you, of the 
absurdity of trusting the lowest Catholics with 
offices correspondent to their situation in life, 
and of denying such privilege to the higher 1 
A Catholic may serve in the militia, but a 
Catholic cannot come into Pai'liament ; in the 
latter case you suspect combination, and in 
the former case you suspect no combination ; 
you deliberately arm ten or twenty thousand 
of the lowest of the Catholic people ; — and the 
moment you come to a class of men Avhose 
education, honour, a,nd talents, seem to render 
all mischief less probable, then you see the 
danger of employing a Catholic, and cling to 
your investigating tests and disabling laws. 
If you tell me you have enough of members of 
Parliament, and not enough of militia, without 
the Catholics, I beg leave to remind you, that, 
by employing the physical force of any sect, at 
the same time when you leave them in a state 
of utter disaffection, you are not adding 
strength to your armies, but weakness and 
ruin : — if you want the vigour of their common 
people, you must not disgrace their nobility, 
and insult their priesthood. 

I thought that the terror of the pope had 
been confined to the limits of the nursery, and 
merely employed as a means to induce young 
master to enter into his small clothes with 
greater speed, and to eat his breakfast with 
greater attention to decorum. For these pur- 
poses, the name of the pope is admirable; but 
why push it beyond ? Why not leave to Lord 
Hawkesbury all farther enumeration of the 
pope's powers 1 For a whole century, 5^ou 
have been exposed to the enmity of France, 
and your succession was disputed in two 
rebellions ; what could the pope do at the 
period when there was a serious struggle, 
whether England should be Protestant or Ca- 
tholic, and when the issue was completely 
doubtful ■? Could the pope induce the Irish to 
rise in 171.51 Could he induce them to rise 
in 1745? You had no Catholic enemy when 
half this island was in arms ; and what did 
the pope attempt in the last rebellion in Ire- 
land? But if he had as much power over the 
minds of the Irish as Mr. Wilberforce has 
over the mind of a young Methodist, converted 
the preceding quarter, is this a reason why we 
are to disgust men, who may be acted upon in 
such a manner by a foreign power? or is it not 
an additional reason why we should raise up 
every barrier of affection and kindness against 
the mischief of foreign influence ? But the 



true answer is, the mischief does not exist. 
Gog and Magog have produced as much in- 
fluence upon human affairs as the pope has 
done for this half century past ; and by spoil- 
ing him of his possessions, and degrading him 
in the eyes of all Europe, Bonaparte has not 
taken quite the proper method of increasing 
his influence. 

But why not a Catholic king, as well as a 
Catholic member of Parliament, or of the 
cabinet 1 — Because it is probable that the one 
would be mischievous, and the other not. A 
Catholic king might struggle against the Pro- 
testantism of the country, and if the struggle 
was not successful, it would at least be dan- 
gerous ; but the efforts of any other Catholic 
would be quite insignificant, and his hope of 
success so small, that it is quite improbable 
the effort would ever be made ; my argument 
is, that in so Protestant a country as Great 
Britain, the character of her Parliaments and 
her cabinet could not be changed by the few 
Catholics who would ever find their way to 
the one or the other. But the power of the 
crown is immeasurably greater than the power 
which the Catholics could obtain from any 
other species of authority in the state ; and it 
does not follow, because the lesser degree of 
power is innocent, that the greater should be 
so too. As for the stress you lay upon the 
danger of a Catholic chancellor, I have not the 
least hesitation in saying, that his appointment 
would not do a ten-thousandth part of the mis- 
chief tc the English church that might be done 
by a methodistical chancellor of the true Clap- 
ham breed; and I request to know, if it is 
really so very necessary that a chancellor 
should be of the religion of the Church of 
England, how many chancellors you have had 
within the last century who have been bred up 
in the Presbyterian religion ? — And again, ho\K 
many you have had who notoriously have 
leen without any religion at all! 

Why are you to suppose that eligibility and 
election are the same thing, and that all the 
cabinet will be Catholics, whenever all the 
cabinet may be Catholics "? You have a right, 
you say, to suppose an extreme case, and to 
argue upon it — so have I : and I will suppose 
that the hundred Irish members will one day 
come down in a body, and pass a law com- 
pelling the king to reside in Dublin. I will 
suppose that the Scotch members, by a similar 
stratagem, will lay England under a large 
contribution of meal and sulphur ; no measure 
is without objection, if you sweep the whole 
horizon for danger ; it is not sufficient to tell 
me of what may happen, but you must show 
me a rational probability that it will happen: 
after all, I might, contrary to my real opinion, 
admit all your dangers to exist; it is enough 
for me to contend that all other dangers taken 
together are not equal to the danger of losing 
Ireland from disaffection and invasion. 

I am astonished to see you, and many good 
and well-meaning clergymen beside you, paint- 
ing the Catholics in such detestable colours ; 
two-thirds, at least, of Europe are Catholics, — 
they are Christians, though mistaken Chris- 
tians ; how can I possibly admit that any sect 
of Christians, and above all, that the oldest and 



WORKS OP THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



479 



the most numerous sect of Christians, are inca- 
pable of fulfilling the common duties and rela- 
tions of life : though I do differ from them in. 
many particulars, God forbid I should give 
such a handle to infidelity, and subscribe to 
such blasphemy against our common religion! 
Do you think mankind never change their 
opinions without formally expressing and con- 
fessing that change 1 When you quote the 
decisions of ancient Catholic councils, are you 
prepared to defend all the decrees of English 
convocations and universities since the reign 
of Queen Elizabeth ■? I could soon make you 
sick of your uncandid industry against the 
Catholics, and bring you to allow that it is 
better to forget times past, and to judge and 
be judged by present opinions and present 
practice. 

I must beg to be excused from explaining 
and refuting all the mistakes about the Catho- 
lics made by my Lord Redesdale ; and I must 
do that nobleman the justice to say, that he has 
been treated with great disrespect. Could any 
thing be more indecent than to make it a 
morning lounge in Dublin to call upon his 
lordship, and to cram him with Arabian-night 
stories about the Catholics 1 Is this proper 
behaviour to the representative of majesty, the 
child of Themis, and the keeper of the con- 
science in West Britain 1 Whoever reads the 
letters of the Catholic bishops, in the appendix 
to Sir John Hippesly's very sensible book, will 
se« to what an excess this practice must have 
been carried with the pleasing and Protestant 
nobleman whose name I have mentioned, and 
from thence I wish you to receive your answer 
about excommunication, and all the trash 
which is talked against the Catholics. 

A sort of notion has, by some means or 
•another, crept into the world, that difference of 
Religion would render men unfit to perform 
together the offices of common and civil life ; 
that Brother Wood and Brother Grose could 
not travel together the same circuit if they dif- 
fered in creed, nor Cockell and Mingay be en- 
gaged in the same cause if Cockell was a 
Catholic and Mingay a Muggletonian. It is 
supposed that Huskisson and Sir Harry Engle- 
field would squabble behind the speaker's chair 
about the Council of Lateran, and many a turn- 
pike bill miscarry by the sarcastical contro- 
versies of Mr. Hawkins Brown and Sir John 
Throckmorton upon the real presence. I wish 
I could see some of these symptoms of earnest- 
^ ness upon the subject of religion ; but it really 
^ seems to me, that, in the present state of so- 
■ f ciety, men no more think about inquiring con- 
. I cerning each other's faith than they do concern- 
§ ing the colour of each other's skins. There 
f may have been times in England when the 
, quarter sessions would have been disturbed by 
the theological polemics ; but now, after a 
Catholic justice had once been seen on the 
bench, and it had been clearly ascertained that 
he spoke English, had no tail, only a single row 
of teeth, and that he loved port-wine, — after all 
the scandalous and infamous reports of his 
physical conformation had been clearly proved 
to be false, — he would be reckoned a jolly fel- 
low, and very superior in flavour to a sly iPres- 



byterian. Nothing, in fact, can be mort un- 
candid and unphilosophical* than to say th<t a 
man has a tail, because you cannot agree wi>i 
him upon religious subjects; it appears to bt 
ludicrous, but I am convinced it has done infi- 
nite mischief to the Catholics, and made a very 
serious impression upon the minds of many 
gentlemen of large landed property. 

In talking of the impossibility of Catholics 
and Protestants living together with equal pri- 
vilege under the same government, do you 
forget the cantons of Switzerland"? You might 
have seen there a Protestant congregation 
going into a church which had just been quitted 
by a Catholic congregation ; and I will venture 
to say that the Swiss Catholics were more 
bigoted to their feligion than any people in the 
whole world. Did the kings of Prussia ever 
refuse to employ a Catholic 1 Would Frede- 
rick the Great have rejected an able man on 
this account? We have seen Prince Czarto- 
rinski, a Catholic secretary of state in Russia; 
in former times, a Greek patriarch and an 
apostolic vicar acted together in the most per- 
fect harmony in Venice ; and we have seen the 
Emperor of Germany in modern times entrust- 
ing the care of his person and the command 
of his guard to a Protestant prince, Ferdinand 
of Wirtemberg. But what are all these things 
to Mr. Perceval? He has looked at human 
nature from the top of Hampstead Hill, and 
has not a thought beyond the little sphere of 
his own vision. " The snail," say the Hindoos, 
" sees nothing but its own shell, and thinks it 
the grandest palace in the universe." 

I now take a final leave of this subject of 
Ireland ; the only difficulty in discussing it is 
a want of resistance, a want of something 
difficult to unravel, and something dark to 
illumine ; to agitate such a question is to beat 
the air with a club, and cut down gnats with 
a scimitar ; it is a prostitution of industry, and 
a waste of strength. If a man says I have a 
good place, and I do not choose to lose it, this 
mode of arguing upon the Catholic question I 
can well understand ; but that any human be- 
ing with an understanding two degrees elevated 
above that of an Anabaptist preacher, should 
conscientiously contend for the expediency 
and propriety of leaving the Irish Catholics in 
their present state, and of subjecting us to such 
tremendous peril in the present condition of 
the world, it is utterly out of my power to con- 
ceive. Such a measure as the Catholic ques- 
tion is entirely beyond the common game of 
politics ; it is a measure in which all parties 
ought to acquiesce, in order to preserve the 
place where, and the stake for which they play. 
If Ireland is gone, where are jobs 1 where are 
reversions ? where is my brother. Lord Arden? 
where are my dear and near relations 1 The 
game is up, and the speaker of the House of 
Commons will be sent as a present to the 
menagerie at Paris. We talk of waiting from 
particular considerations, as if centuries of 
joy and prosperity were before us ; in the next 
ten years our fate must be decided ; we shall 
know, long before that period, whether we can 



* Fide Lord Bacon, Locke, and Descartes. 



*«^' 



480 



WORKS OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. 



bejf up against the miseries by which we are 
tweatened, or not; and yet, in the very midst 
/I our crisis, we are enjoined to abstain from 
/the most certain means of increasing our 
strength, and advised to wait for the remedy 
till the disease is removed by death or health. 
And now, instead of the plain and manly 
policy of increasing unanimity at home, by 
equalizing rights and privileges, what is the 
ignorant, arrogant, and M'icked system which 
has been pursued? Such a career of madness 
and of folly was, I believe, never run in so 
short a period. The vigour of the ministry is 
like the vigour of a grave-digger, — the tomb 
becomes more ready and more wide for everj' 
effort which they make. There is nothing 
which it is worth while either to take or to re- 
tain, and a constant train of ruinous expedi- 
tions has been kept up. Every Englishman 
felt proud of the integrity of his country ; the 
character of the country is lost for ever. It is 
of the utmost consequence to a commercial 
people at war with the greatest part of Europe, 
that there should be a free entry of neutrals 
into the enemy's ports ; the neutrals who car- 
ried our manufactures we have not only ex- 
cluded, but we have compelled them to declare 
war against us. It was our interest to make a 
good peace, or convince our own people that 
it could not be obtained; we have not made a 
peace, and we have convinced the people of 
nothing but of the arrogance of the foreign 
secretary ; and all this has taken place in the 
short space of a year, because a King's Bench 
barrister and a writer of epigrams, turned into 
ministers of state, were determined to show 
country gentlemen that the late administration 
had no vigour. In the mean time commerce 
stands still, manufactures perish, Ireland is 
more and more irritated, India is threatened, 
fresh taxes are accumulated upon the wretched 
people, the war is carried on without it being 
possible to conceive any one single object 
which a rational being can propose to himself 
by its continuation ; and in the midst of this 
unparalleled insanity we are told that the conti- 
nent is to be reconquered bjt the want of rhu- 



barb and plums.* A better spirit than exists 
in the English people never existed in any i 
people in the world ; it has been misdirected, 1 
and squandered upon party purposes in the ; 
most degrading and scandalous manner; they * 
have been led to believe that they were bene- 
fiting the commerce of England by destroying 
the commerce of America, that they were de- 
fending their sovereign by perpetuating the 
bigoted oppression of their fellow-subject; 
their rulers and their guides have told them M 
that they would equal the vigour of France by 
equalling her atrocity ; and they have gone on 
wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, 
which, if husbanded by prudent and moderate 
counsels, might have proved the* salvation of 
mankind. The same policy of turning the 
good qualities of Englishmen to their own 
destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent, ^ 
continues his power to those who resemble 
him only in his vices ; advantage is taken of ' 
the loyalty of Englishmen, to make them 
meanly submissive ; their piety is turned into 
persecution, their courage into useless and 
obstinate contention ; they are plundered be- 
cause they are ready to pay, and soothed into 
asinine stupidity because they are full of vir- , 
tuous patience. If England must perish at 
last, so let it be ; that event is in the hands of 
God ; we must dry up our tears and submit 
But that England should perish swindling and 
stealing; that it should perish waging war 
against lazar-houses, and hospitals ; that it 
should perish persecuting xvith monastic bigot- 
ry ; that it should calmly give itself up to be 
ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, 
and the narrow fanaticism of another ; these 
events are within the power of human beings, 
and I did not think that the magnanimity of 
Englishmen would ever stoop to such de- 
gradations. 

Longum vale ! 

PETER PLYMLEY. 



* Even Allen Park (accustomed as he has always been 
to be delighted by all administrations) says it is too bad ; 
and Hall and Morris are said to have actually blushed in 
one of the divisions. 



THE END. 



^^L29i94$ 



PHILADELPHIA : 
STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON. 



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LIBRARY 




